The Way of the Cell: Molecules, Organisms, and the Order of Life [Paperback]

Harold's eloquence is remarkable. Consider the following quotes:

1. "Over time functional systems would have "crystallized" into successful configurations, and therefore become less receptive to the import of novelty..."
2. "The genetic free-trade zone fragmented into protected enclaves, not abruptly but gradually on a time-scale of millions of years..."
3. "...leaving a huge lacuna in any account of cell evolution, but fostering a crop of stimulating conjectures."
4. "Molecular phylogenists, who draw their opinions from the bedrock of gene sequences, view the matter somewhat differently but still in a glass, darkly."
5. "The better part of valor may be to sit tight and await the tide of new data, but only dullards are proof against the temptations of myth-making."
6. "There is a fine air of whimsy, about those imaginative tales ...They also stop insouciantly around patches of quicksand, such as what brought about early cellular fusions that are not permitted to contemporary prokaryotes..."
7. "The profusion that came after is built like a fugue upon the deep theme of eukaryotic order."
8. "On the outer banks of science, one often suspects that the believer is happy while the doubter is wise; and yet, too critical a spirit is apt to overlook the genuine contribution that complexity studies have already made."
9. "The rocky path from RNA replicators to DNA genes and from catalytic RNA to protein enzymes calls for stout boots and a good head for heights."

This makes for engrossing reading, as the mystique of Biology can be overlooked when the text is dry and scholarly. There is delight, however, in reading Harold, similar to what the reader can get from Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, and Stuart Kauffman, to name a few. I can imagine Harold entertaining his audience in a seminar with his penchant for combining words elegantly.

Today I was in a seminar where a famous molecular biologist (also a cancer biologist) admitted to a sabotage against the reductionist agenda as more scientists begin to realize that life processes cannot be just explained by the panoply of bioorganic molecules, proteins especially, and the genes that encode them. Harold fiercely stresses that DNA, for all the glorification that it deserves, is not all there is. New properties emerge as biological molecules find themselves in different cellular compartments and environments, at different stages in the development of the organism, and as the organisms themselves explore all possibilities of trading and swapping genes, and even fusing their entire bodies in one. Read this book, and be enveloped by the biological mystique!

No, the author is not addicted to Latin and Greek. His writing is colloquial and accessible. It's hard to explain, but in its context that sentence above is amusing. This book is an easygoing but fairly detailed tour of cellular life. It brings us down to the level of the cell - even the bacterial cell - and then begins to investigate how things look from that perspective.

From a cell's-eye view, big molecules are important parts of the landscape. Particular types of macromolecules and complexes have just a few (hundred or thousand) representatives, so each is important to the cellular economy. From here, it seems as if we can, almost, understand how a cell lives.

Franklin Harold shows us, in broad strokes with descents into telling detail, what he knows, and what he (and everyone else) does not know at this point about the life of cells. This book gives us a rich picture of life at the most fundamental level, and shows us, too, the puzzles that are the subjects of current research. With his pictures of cellular action, metabolism, and growth, he is attempting to answer Shrodinger's question: what is life?

We know immensely more than we used to about the details of life's machinery. But do we understand how all that intricate, mixed-up chemistry can get up and live? Harold insists that we do not, and that these questions of biochemical detail have so mesmerized us that we no longer are even asking - as if understanding emerges from a pile of facts.

Franklin Harold's motivation is not lack of interest in these details (they occupied him during his years of research), nor an anti-scientific despair that says life can only be understood in some holistic and intuitive way. Rather, it is in the spirit of what is now called Complexity Theory (and used to be called General Systems Theory). Life seems to be an emergent property of the complex system we call the cell, whose many interacting parts we more or less understand if we think about them in isolation, but whose real-time interactions are too complicated and involve too much feedback to be grasped directly.

He pursues this question, too, in reviewing the current state of science as it investigates the origin of life. His agnostic, but still hopeful, take on much of the rather vaporous speculation that fills in for any real results in this area rather appeals to me.

This book is the best sort of popular science: it gives plenty of hard fact and cogent reasoning, but avoids the trap of exhaustive textbook detail. It is a surprisingly slow read: although the author is skilled at telling us what we need to know, he is reasoning along with us about fundamental matters that are part of the dialectic of current research. When you finish this book you will feel that you have been given a straight shot of some of the heady brew that biologists these days are imbibing.

So what is life? This book is an apology for man's inability to create life in a test tube. Yes, the author ends the book by throwing up his hands but the journey is still exciting. Man's attempt to create life in a test tube is merely his attempt to magnify these cellular sized wonders. By magnifying the lego pieces within the cell Harold shows that man within is filled with a billion tiny oceans teaming with life. Life must lie hidden in the currents which flow within the cellular oceans. When man can navigate these currents he will understand what life is. The author helps to reveal the wonder of this fantastic voyage.

What is life? Man knows it when he sees it. The fact that we can't manufacture life from scratch is no different than not being able to create a second sun from scratch. If life were a book of blank pages, the cell is the printing press that imprints the book with words, sentences and paragraphs. Another analogy Harold uses is that of a river of DNA flowing within cellular banks. The author warns us that analogies are only half truths. Since his book is filled with analogies, the whole truth of what life is can never be told.