Alive by Melanie Challenger review – a fascinating study of what it means to be alive | Books

TThe bay east of Granton harbor is about 1km long, and divers can follow its curving finger, straight into the Firth of Forth, while benefiting from its reassuring presence. One Thursday at lunch time, I thought: why not, let’s go, and we went to its peak. I was cold, but as I progressed, I seemed to grow strangely. I didn’t notice my body’s complaints: the creeping numbness that went from my fingers to my back, or the coldness of my urine. It wasn’t until I got out of the water, clutching my claws, that it hit me that I was hypothermic.

The irony of this carelessness was that in my swimming bag was Melanie Challenger’s book Alive: The Hidden Intelligence of the Living World. It is a passionate exploration of the wisdom of bodies, a rhizomatic guide not only to us, but to all the organisms that surround us: from bacteria to asthma. His case is that we have neglected or misread the organization and purpose of bodies to destroy; in other words it is a request that you listen to them. I wish I had read it before I took the guilty bath.

Challenger says his book was born out of “wild curiosity”, and the idea that “the stories we told ourselves…were arrogant and unsatisfying”. For him, our focus on souls, genes or thoughts is a distortion of reality, and instead we should focus on our bodies, which are distorted, perhaps because they remind us of our vulnerability and death. It’s not that Challenger denies the importance of genetics; what they are asking is the lens through which we read the world.

Throughout the book he describes various living things, from slime to squid, exploring the ways in which they interact with each other and react to the world around them. Among other things, Challenger is a poet, and his descriptions are often beautiful. He describes the ice as “bright blue like an eye” and Humboldt’s arthritis as a “silver lozenge”. By denigrating or ignoring bodies, he says, we are blinded to the maturity of other forms of life, and we do not give them the respect they deserve; we mistake machines for knowledge and our knowledge of machines; we destroy habitats regardless of the non-human life that lives there.

Challenger cites a list of scientists and philosophers, but his intellectual mentor is Aristotle (whom he thanks for his acceptance). According to him, Aristotle was the one who first understood the philosophy of bodies, even though he had no science to support his ideas. He brings him to life in several aspects of the book, gets inside his head, and turns philosophy – this figure based on texts, translations, and comments – into flesh and bone.

I struggle to think of a book whose title I have felt both sympathy and joy for: the turn to the body, its deep criticism of scientific reductionism and false metaphors. But as a casual reader I often found myself confused, almost surrounded, by the text. I really wanted to follow my lead, but I kept feeling lost, left out, as the author filled in ideas and scientific research. This is perhaps the danger of every pioneer: you can cross the border, but can you bring others with you?

When I came out of the water, a pale and shaking corpse, I was greeted by two concerned women, experienced swimmers in dry suits, who were watching me carefully, and gave me a cup of tea and a sound guide. I am grateful to them for the way they were able to silently read their bodies, and mine, skillfully connecting them to the world around us. In a sense this book is an invitation to the reader to do the same; let go of the harmful readings we have adopted, and avoid self-destruction.