Life According to Brian

What is life?

It’s a challenging question few attempt to answer comprehensively.  And to propose a purely scientific basis for that elusive spark, well, in some places that could earn you some unpleasant correspondence, at the very least.

I am on the edge of my seat for the next episode of Dr Brian Cox’s Wonders of Life (BBC) which began its series with an episode asking precisely this.

The general line of the broadsheets seems to be the contention that sure Cox’s explanations are only in GCSE-level chunks, but despite this it still makes quality viewing.

Ahem!

It’s cracking on for three decades since I took my O levels, and vague memories of copper sulphate and palisade cells are about the sum of what remains of my scientific education.

Mitochondria ? Electrolysis? Whaaat??? 

Mere GCSE-level explanations are about the limit of what my intellect can digest  - particularly on a Sunday evening. So, thanks Dr Cox for recognising the difference between dumbing down and enlightening the ignorant.

I don’t believe that great mathematicians and physicists generally make great teachers. They inhabit an ‘other’ world of imaginary numbers and engage with that world through their mind. They are up there – out there – in the ether, far away from the hoi polloi. 

In physics even ‘equals’ are not all equal. Such startling linguistic anomalies makes the special language of physicists impenetrable to the uninitiated.

½ of MVsquared may carry potential understanding from their point of view, but from where I’m sitting comfortably on my sofa, M is mumbo jumbo and V is the speed of this information passing, uncomprehended, through my brain.

So Dr Cox is a rare (and some might say beautiful) thing. He is attempting to be a compassionate conduit of knowledge between an alien world and me, the viewer.

I should probably leave it there – Brian has taken it on himself to prove that the plebeian masses can appreciate science in much the same way Jamie Oliver has tried to foist nutrition on the fast-food generation, so it seems a tad precious to examine the man behind the mission (key word alert).

But.

There’s one other factor, other than my scientific illiteracy, that hinders my ability to take on Dr Cox’s painstaking explanations of protons and disordered energy …and that’s Dr Cox.

Is it his unpretentious gravitas? The intensity of his passion for the subject?

In Sagada, Philippines, Cox gazes out over the flickering torchlit spectacle of hundreds of people celebrating and communing with the spirits of their departed. He seems utterly rapt in thought as he surveys the festival of the dead; the viewer’s gaze through the camera feels intrusive. 

He is on the brink of dismissing the belief system that has prompted this festival; the viewer can only guess at his feelings over this display. 

When he articulates his thoughts about how we amount to something more than ‘a bunch of stuff’, he finishes his sound-bite and the pregnancy of his pause and the unbridled candour of his look to camera make me feel so uncomfortable, I find myself looking away.

I felt…what did I feel? Was it, as one friend speculated, his pain?

For someone who possesses such certain and incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, does it hurt to witness the wilful disillusionment of humanity in pursuit of the mystical and the occult?

Dodging wild animals and, undoubtedly, many vile tropical diseases, to bring us a beautifully shot fest of the weird and the wonderful organisms to which we are all related, and the scientific reasons for them (and us) being here at all, seems to me the mission of a science evangelist.

And don’t forget that Dr Cox also has a pop music pedigree, and in choosing to collaborate with Eric Idle on an updated version of Python’s ‘Galaxy Song’ shows us the colours of his flag, for the lyrics declare:  Life from a star is far more bizarre, 
than an old bearded man they call God
/So gaze at the sky, and start asking why
/You’re even here on this ball
…

I wonder just how different our world might be if scientists were as vocal and influential as religious leaders.

Imagine, as Mr Lennon put it.