THE 21st century, so pundits keep telling us, will be the century of biology. There is no doubt that biology is advancing rapidly on many fronts, from molecular biology to evolutionary theory. On the other hand, the opposition is not making much of a race for it. Physics’ greatest endeavour has ground to a halt.
We are in “a period of utter confusion”, said Nobel laureate David Gross, summing up last week’s prestigious Solvay conference on the quantum structure of space and time (see “Baffled in Brussels”). That is worrying because the topic is central to finding a “theory…
