Physics and Biology

WIRED has an interesting article on physics and biology. By the title, I thought maybe it would be along the lines of what I think is an interesting observation about physics and biology: namely that on the one hand we know from biology of one way in which "particles" reproduce or clone each other, and from physics, we observe incredible numbers of identical particles at various levels of granularity. How did they come to be, e.g. from something simpler and "fewer"?

But, instead, it seems to be a more traditional primacy-of-existence vs. primacy-of-consciousness style discussion. It's an interesting dialog, which I would like to write a sci-fi novel about some day. Imagine a world in which metaphysics is created and defined individually and collectively by minds. Take it straight. What would it mean?