Prof. Brian Cox, the University of Manchester's premier scientific celebrity, has started presenting a new television series. The first episode tackles the question: 'What is life?' He is on typical form here: amiable, goofy, clear and earnest, and I for one am delighted to have him back on our screens.
The first thing you might notice is that the program asks a question that is ostensibly not a question about particle physics, (Prof Cox's subject of academic expertise). It would appear to most to be a question of biology, and might also exercise the mind of philosophers used to being asked to hone a definition of a complex or abstract term in the manner of a Socratic dialogue.
What interested me in particular was the way in which he reduced these kind of questions down to something explainable in scientific terms. It was an overtly reductionist approach.
In my opinion this episode succeeded greatly, with some great explanations of the notion of cascades of proton gradients and a coherent thread running through it.
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