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studying any one level on its own.
The book will be a terrific
resource for anyone who wants to
learn about cutting-edge research
into creating artificial cells or
other aspects of synthetic biology,
or in areas such as epigenetics,
where the old gene-centric point
of view has been more or less
completely undermined.
These ideas have helped drive
complexity science forward over
the past few decades. Indeed,
Capra and Luisi argue that the
21st-century zeitgeist is changing
from one of world-as-machine to
world-as-network, a holistic
system in precise interrelation
rather than a collection of
dissociated parts. That sounds
fine in theory, but how can we
put it to use
This is the focus of the third
and final broad section of the
book: on sustaining the web of
life. Here, Capra and Luisi make
some fairly routine observations,
for example, that our success will
require a shift to more sustainable
kinds of economic growth, and
finding ways to organise our
activities in a manner that doesn’t
interfere with nature’s inherent
ability to support life.
Ideas like these are hardly
new, and that could also be said of
much of the book, especially its
discussion of systems theory,
complexity science, ecology and
the roots of our global problems.
“ We are not ecologically
literate or systems literate:
these are languages we
will have to learn ”
But this is a broad synthesis,
linking many areas of science to
make one very important point:
that there’s very little we can do
without holistic thinking, despite
the obvious difficulties involved
in doing it well. We are, they
suggest, not “ecologically literate”
or systems literate, and these are
languages we will have to learn.
As in The Tao of Physics, there is
some Eastern mysticism in this
book, and rightly so. After all,
those philosophies have always
emphasised the deep dependence
of everything human on nature
and the environment, and have
taught living with nature rather
than trying to dominate it.
We should have been listening
long ago. I hope that Capra and
Luisi will manage to persuade
many that we must start listening
now – or face the consequences of
our own ignorance. ■
Mark Buchanan is a visiting professor
at the IMT Institute for Advanced
Studies in Lucca, Italy
JENS RYDELL/NATURBILD/CORBIS
In praise of hoverflies
There is subtle treasure in the indistinct
boundary between science and literature
The Fly Trap by Fredrik Sjöberg,
Particular Books, £14.99
Bob Holmes
“LIMITATIONS
cheer me up,”
writes Fredrik
Sjöberg. By that
standard, he
should be
positively radiant.
He finds travel
neither pleasant nor instructive,
preferring to spend his days on a
small island off the Swedish coast
near Stockholm, where he is one
of just 300 permanent residents.
There, the great passion of his
life – and the ostensible subject
of The Fly Trap – is collecting and
studying hoverflies. No flashy
butterflies or beetles here, not
even an ambitious attempt at the
hoverflies of the world: just the
202 species on his island that he
has come to know like old friends.
Of course, as Sjöberg himself
admits, “the hoverflies are only
props… Here and there, my story
is about something else. Exactly
Studying Swedish hoverflies
was a passion for Sjöberg
what, I don’t know.” The reader
doesn’t either, not at first.
Sjöberg, a translator and
literary critic as well as a hoverfly
expert, thrives in the indistinct
boundary between science and
literature. “I used to say that I was
a writer,” he tells us, “but all the
women on the island felt so sorry
for my wife that I started insisting
I was a biologist instead.”
The book unfolds like a leisurely
after-dinner conversation, as
Sjöberg meanders through the
pleasures of collecting hoverflies
on a summer’s day, the
eccentricities of entomologists
and the surprising intimacy of
conversations between strangers
on a ferry (the end of a crossing sets
a time limit, focusing the mind).
Along the way, he indulges a
fascination for the life of Swedish
entomologist René Malaise. Best
known today as the inventor of
an insect trap – hence the book’s
title – he was, in many ways, the
anti-Sjöberg, someone who never
acknowledged limits. As a young
man in the 1920s and 30s, he
collected insects and acquired
a reputation as an intrepid
adventurer and a bit of a ladies’
man: Sjöberg tracks his love life
by noting which women he
named insects after.
But the real message of the
book, published in Swedish a
decade ago and now translated
into English, is the quiet pleasure
to be found in reading the fine
print of knowledge. “A world full
of highly personal mastery
without petty rivalries would be
a nice place to live,” he writes. In
this subtle book, Sjöberg provides
a convincing example. ■
Bob Holmes is a consultant for
New Scientist
31 May 2014 | NewScientist | 47