Contents:
And he tamed fire which, like some beast of prey,
Most terrible, but lovely, played beneath
The frown of man; and tortured to his will
Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of power,
And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms
Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves,
He gave man speech, and speech created thought,
Which is the measure of the universe;
And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven,
Which shook, but fell not; and the harmonious mind
Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song;
and music lifted up the listening spirit
Until it walked, exempt from mortal care,
Godlike, o'er the clear billows of sweet sound;
And human hands first mimicked and then mocked,
With moulded limbs more lovely than its own,
The human form, till marble grew divine;
And mothers, gazing, drank the love men see
Reflected in thei
He told the bidden power of herbs and springs,
And Disease drank and slept, Death grew like sleep.
He taught the implicated orbits woven
Of the wide-wandering stars; and how the sun
Changes his lair, and by what secret spell
The pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye
Gazes not on the interlunar sea:
He taught to rule, as life directs the limbs,
The tempest-winged chariots of the Ocean,
And the Celt knew the Indian, Cities then
Were built, and through their snow-like columns flowed
The warm winds, and the azure aether shone,
And the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen.
Such the alleviations of his state,
Prometheus gave to man, for which he hangs
Withering, in destined pain: but who rains down
Evil, the immedicable plague, which, while
Man looks on his creation like a God
And sees that it is glorious, drives him on,
The wreck of his own will, the scorn of earth, The outcast, the abandoned, the alone?
Not Jove: while yet his frown shook Heaven, ay, when
His adversary from adamantine chains
Cursed him, he trembled like a slave…
Who is his master? Is he too a slave?
From Prometheus Unbound by Percy B. Shelley
“The experience of the last 150 years has shown us that life is subject to the same laws of nature as inanimate matter. Nor is there any evidence in a grand design in the origin or the evolution of life. There are well-known problems in the description of consciousness in terms of the working of the brain. They arise because we each have special knowledge of our own consciousness that does not come to us from the senses. In principle, no obstacle stands in the way of explaining the behavior of other people in terms of neurology and physiology and, ultimately, in terms of physics and history. When we have succeeded in this endeavor, we should find that part of the explanation is a program of neural activity that we will recognize as corresponding to our own consciousness.
But
as much as we would like to take a unified view of nature , we keep
encountering a stubborn duality in the role of intelligent life in the
universe, as both subject and student.
We see this even in the deepest level of quantum physics, “[1]
The Titan Prometheus
("forethought") fashioned man and brought fire from
In Genesis, Adam and Eve are created in a pristine
blissful ignorance, all needs, eternal life provided for in the womb-like
Garden of Eden. Eve takes knowledge for herself, encouraged by the evil
rebel Satan. In fact
God created a world, beings and circumstances that made these events
inevitable, and therefore in His own omniscience, He certainly planned to make
things go just this way.
Man, even in Genesis, was intended to have knowledge and all its
consequences. If in biblical tradition
knowledge is Satanic in Greek lore, it is Promethian,
heroic. Both agree that man, in acquiring knowledge and thought becomes god-like.
Surely experience teaches us that knowledge has good and evil
consequences.
In former generations man's level of expertise grew
almost linearly. There were distinct limits in our ability to know. Men in
other times were bound to the earth.
They knew nothing of what they saw as they stared into the sky, the true
extent of the cosmos, of other galaxies just our own Milky Way, that contain
hundreds of billions of stars. Earth's
gravity limited them too. Only recently
have men been able to fly and even to occasionally escape earth's gravitational
field. And knowledge was very limited in other ways, about our own makeup, and
how it might be changed, about the basics of biology and the biochemistry of
genes and how genes can be altered. Also
knowledge was once province of the relatively privileged few, while today it is
democratized. Everyone with a computer
and this will be just about everyone, will feed at the trough of knowledge as
libraries as we know them, become a thing of the past. The quantity of knowledge more than ever, is
growing exponentially, explosively. And
so mankind is escaping all limits all bounds, as in the past, but the likes of
which, quantitatively we have never witnessed before. On the brink of the twenty-first century we
have, ladies and gentlemen, Prometheus Unbound, not freedom only, that would be
relatively trivial, but knowledge and possibilities beyond bound.
What will happen when we truly are aware that we've
escaped finally the limits and gravity of the earth, that we gaze upon the true
magnificence of the cosmos, that once and for all we've thrown off the fetters
of our own biological limitations? No
one knows, nor can predict.
In previous chapters I explored biological and
neurological mechanisms that lay the foundation for our humanness. As useful as these mechanisms are, we have
found them wanting. Section one dealt
with various states of consciousness, unconscious and altered states of
awareness. Consciousness is a composite function involving various specialized
modules tied together by an executive. The anatomical location of this
kernel-integrating unit is unknown at present and the executive function cannot
be described given our current level of knowledge. A complete accounting of the
miracle of consciousness will require a basic revolution in our mode of
thinking. In section two we looked at vision as a model for sensory
perception. Again we had the
advantage that more is known about the physiology of vision than any other
sense. In Section three I explored
memory, as the simplest mental faculty, would be more difficult to describe,
given our current state of knowledge. Memory is far more complex than one would
imagine, as it is linked with other cognitive abilities. Finally the fourth
section dealt with executive function as an extension of motor or efferent
function. In all cases there was a lot
of very useful knowledge, yet there was the sense that mechanistic explanations
were far from adequate. The deeper we
got into physical explanations for neural function, the more we had to
learn. Any scientist would acknowledge
that they can't explain a lot of phenomena, but most would maintain that this
is only due to the deplorable state of our current knowledge, that given time
and enough hard work, "brute force" utilizing the scientific method,
scientists will slowly tease out the answers to all of our deepest mysteries.
Science is a temptress at once beguiling us as layers of knowledge are peeled
away, but when it comes to understanding of ourselves our fondest wish may
never be fulfilled or at least our deepest questions will not be solved solely
by the scientific method. As far as
humans are concerned there is more than meets the material eye.
Scientists are in the best position to appreciate
the limitations of science. Layman or non-scientists see science from afar.
Wowed by practical technological advancements and having limited understanding
of scientific techniques and methods, they tend to view science as an all
powerful extraordinary undertaking.
Scientists on the other hand, aren't anxious to give up their admiration
even majesty and mystique. With the
deepest respect for the scientific method,
I have come to the conclusion that there is far more to human potential
than will ever be revealed by science.
In this chapter we will make
a more advanced argument. Here we will
ignore the fact that scientific explanations are necessarily incomplete. We
will begin to observe that humankind has already ventured past biological
bounds. Previous chapters have scanned abilities and connected them with
neurological and physical principles.
Mental capacities are deeply embedded or immanent in biology. But biology does not explain all. Some
capacities transcend biological mechanisms, typically the works of modern man
in recent centuries and especially of recent years. This may be the very reason
that these capacities have yet to be appreciated for what they are, beyond or
transcending biology. One of the pivotal
concepts of theology is an immanent and transcendent God by which is meant that
the spirit of God is at the same time deeply situated in the world and hovering
above it. Leaving theology aside here, I borrow this useful concept for the
idea of humankind, embedded in (immanent) and at the same time, transcendent
upon biology, science, matter, mechanics.
A reasonable question is what drives a species to
explore new territory. Answering this question gives us a better handle on
human exploration, the desire to explore possibilities outside of the current
range. Is exploration of surroundings
beyond our own a purely biological
imperative which we fulfill so eminently merely because of the size of our
brain and use of superior mental tools also provided by biology, or is there
something more to it, a striving that is outside over and above what is
provided by biology?
To answer this we need to examine what keeps an
organism in a particular habitat and what are the forces that drive it to
explore other environments, from whence comes wanderlust? A given species of plant will survive and
compete best at a particular altitude within the dense lush growth of a rain
forest. It is well adapted there. Where there is abundant speciation, this
range of habitat can be extremely narrow.
On the other hand when competition is limited the range can be quite
large. Pines and maples compete
successfully within a certain latitude describing a particular temperature and
humidity ranges or alternately within a given range of elevation above sea
level. It is not as if maple trees have
not dropped seeds above or below this level, only that other species compete
more successfully because of more or less cold or heat or water adaptation or
due to different relationships with animal fauna.
Hominid forebears of humans adapted away from
apelike ancestors fit for life in trees.
Hominids favored the savanna and later the desert as bipeds. Pelves became
shorter and wider, the lumbar or lower spine longer, the arms shorter all in
preparation for a bipedal existence rather than a knuckle walking. According to new evidence, it was not a new
hominid line that separated from the rest of the apes, chimps, gorillas and orangs between five and seven millions of years ago.
Rather, chimp and human lines formed their own branch for a time separating
from other apes. It is said humans share
98 percent of genes with the
chimpanzee, our closest living relative,
but this depends on the method of reckoning for what constitutes an identical
gene. There are striking similarities and differences between the two species
not to mention the most obvious, that our brain is about 1350 cc. Compared to
the chimp's 400. A bigger brain of course comes into the world through its
mother's pelvis. She needs to be able to
walk as well as to give birth. Eve's curse for eating of the tree of knowledge
of good and evil "I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy travail; in
pain shalt thou bring forth children" is
literally due to bringing forth children with large enough brains apprehend
this knowledge. Our offspring matriculate in the real world. Since a pelvis capable of a reasonable ambulation
can give birth to a neonatal head with a
brain of not more than about 350 cc. and the adult brain of 1350 cc is some
four times this size, the other necessary accommodation to the excessive size of the adult human
brain is a prolonged dependent childhood, fostering the brain's physical as
well as mental development[2].
Men, apes and indeed all species fill their own
ecological niche. Time saw a progression
of proto-human forms such as the Australopithecines, still later Homo habilis, Homo erectus and finally Neanderthals and modern man, Homo sapiens sapiens.
After Australopithicus, the genus Homo separated on
its own evolutionary branch from other apes. The first upright hominids were
more adapted to life on a sparsely treed grass plain with their upright posture
and built better fo
Somewhere along the course of human evolution, the familiar
menstrual cycle replaced the standard ape estrus cycle. This meant women were sexually receptive most
of the time rather than only about twice a year during a brief period of
fertility. And the enlargement of the male penis and testicles, adapted for
increasingly frequent copulations. Sex was a bigger deal. These changes sponsored far more enduring
cultural ties, perhaps long-term commitments, and stable family relations
(either monogamous or polygynous). The growth of cultural relations in general
was probably the most potent stimulant for brain growth. The development of culture implies a
meaningful tradition is passed down and is in a communal repository to be built
upon and improved. Homo Erectus dating from as long ago as 1.8 million years ago
has been found as far afield as Java
Current evidence is that at
least the later forms particularly the Neanderthals, successfully radiated all
over the map, through the
But they were human in a lot of respects.
Neanderthals were extant from about 200,000 to 35,000 years ago. Their brains
were slightly larger than ours up to the 1500cc range, though we have no
knowledge of their brain's microscopical anatomy or synaptic relations between
cells and we can only conjecture even about the size of individual lobes,
Broca's and Wernicke's areas involved in language and therefore social function
. They were tool makers more advanced
than H. erectus, founders of the
Mousterian (for Le Moustier on the
As much as Neanderthals were thick boned and thick
muscled with big brows, modern humans
are thin boned or gracile. Our skeleton
and body are much lighter; there is more marrow, cancellous or latticed bone
and less heavy calcium with smaller muscles.
The earliest modern humans, are recognized by their gracile, thin-boned
less brutish skeletons, especially a thinner brow ridge, due to the fact that
the skeleton is what is left of them. Well before the invention of writing,
some form of culture probably spread out of
On the basis of expectations of only a finite number
of mutations in a small circle of 37 genes that is part of mitochondrial DNA
over tens of thousands of years of human generations you have an internal clock
in a sense which ticks in divisions of time, so many mutations per 10 thousands
of years. Observing DNA taken from current humans all over the world, one can
compare the variation in DNA which could only have accumulated through
mutation, and draw important conclusions, about the age of last radiation of
humans from their starting point wherever that might be to all other
habitats. The two important facts are
that the amount of variation between mitochondrial DNA between modern humans
would seem to place the date of modern human worldwide migration fairly recent
within the last 200,000 years. Another
very surprising fact is that the mitochondrial DNA of indigenous Africans
varies much more than the racially diverse DNA of all other locations -there is
more variability in
Most probably there were multiple separate
radiations of proto-humans over the
Enter gracile man, maker
of bone tools of many varieties, bead and stone necklaces, Lascaux cave, user of wood and of fire, cave dweller and
human art only some of which done for a practical end. Modern man radiated
throughout the known world. 40,000 years ago they went as far as
There are competing forces at work. Firstly there is
crowding and competition. We may reproduce until there is no more carrying
capacity in the environment. This holds for inefficient hunter-gatherers in
particular. A given habitat is capable of supporting only a small number of
persons occupying the pinnacle of the food chain. Ineffective hunting methods
with limited implements may allow capture of only the most vulnerable prey, the
slow the sick and the old of animal species that are themselves overpopulating
their habitat. Competition for food and mates may drive away members of the
community who will be forced to make their way in a remote location. The bulk
of adult males may wish to strike out on their own, forming an new family unit,
founding a new people because of, or in spite of, the competition. The great bulk of geographic radiation
results from the experiment that each individual of a species ultimately
is. Each person is like an individual
seed that falls from a tree. He will
land on a habitat and either survive or not survive, bear fruit or wither, much
as does the seed of a tree (perhaps with a higher probability of survival than
a plant seed).
Animal or plant, all organisms naturally radiate to
fill their niche. They are always testing the limits of that niche. Where there
are many species, as in a tropical rain forest, competing for lush resources
but trying to make a living in the same way, the size of the ecological niche
will necessarily be very small, but out on the tundra where less species
compete, the niche will be geographically larger. This is exactly the same
situation as competition in an economy between start-up companies[3].
The company in an economy is analogous to the individual in a ecosystem or
possibly a small social group, or better, a species. A crowded field will
produce many superspecialists, a phenomenon which we
see in computer or bio-tech fields in
Figure
1: Four species of antwrens forage
in tiny habitats in a lush Amazonian forest at specific heights above
ground. 10 species can occupy a single
locale[4].
Humans are unique as a single highly sapient species
that fills an enormous range of habitats and are distributed worldwide. Though
he may rarely choose to do so, a Scandinavian may easily breed with a
Hottentot. More importantly, as vividly illustrated by Jared Diamond[5] in his book The Third Chimpanzee although some human groups such as the
Australian aborigines may have been isolated and have had no exposure to modern
culture and technology, their intellect
will allow them to integrate into modern society within a short time and even
to fly our jet planes or operate machinery. Admittedly it may take them
generations to fathom the meaning of the new technology they have easily
mastered, which is the reason for so much war and strife in countries recently
given their own autonomy with decolonization but they may take advantage of
technological advances nonetheless. We are one species, the differences among
us are literally skin deep. Genetic
studies show that we have separated and differentiated only quite recently in geologic
time. Think of what might happen if the world were peopled with two or more
sapient species especially if both were as self-serving and bellicose as our
own. Or is it inevitable perhaps that sapiens should exist as a single
biological entity? It is quite possible that once we had close rivals,
Neanderthals or others that modern humans took out of the competition. Or
perhaps circumstances, a long chain of accidental circumstances led to our descent are so unique on earth, or
even in the universe. This is the stuff of the anthropic cosmological principleY . We are unique.
The natural tendency is for any species to radiate,
to expand its geographic and ecological base. This will make possible an
increase in population and make the species less vulnerable as well. A wide
base is more difficult to push or topple over.
Species spread out over a larger geographic area unless pushed out by
other competing species or if they are simply unfit for a different habitat or
if a boundary such as a large mountain of body of water prevents spread.
Perhaps mankind, able to compete in many directions is sort of a jack of all
trades while some other specialists may out-compete mankind in some limited
sphere of endeavor. Human genius overcomes most habitat limitations. We are
able to survive in the tundra or the
Humans, by virtue of their ability to adapt to
environments without having to make biological changes, with the aid of the
brain in other words that makes them infinitely more adaptable, were able to
survive in all kinds of climates and habitats.
They are widely successful because of not being limited by their biology
alone. Then there is the wanderlust, which is an intangible, the sense of
wonder about what lies over the next hill or the further horizon, curiosity
breeds success.
We can only theorize about what gave one group an
advantage over the other. They migrated o
Over the last 200 or so thousands of years, forebears of modern men radiated into diverse
climates very possibly emerging out of Africa, spreading the fertile crescent
and thence into Asia and earlier than 50 thousand years ago, into
Australia. This latter journey was
undertaken quite possibly on makeshift floating structures resembling boats by
inordinately courageous folks driven into discovery of new lands that would
support them.
Carbon and Silicon Wed:
Carbon Silicon
Figure 2: Schematic of
Carbon and Silicon atoms not
drawn to scale.
With Chemistry being a distant memory and unnatural
subject for most of us, few appreciate
the implications of the elements Carbon and Silicon. Carbon and Silicon on the
Periodic Table are in the same family of elements. Both have 4 electrons in
their outer shell. Electrons don't haphazardly encircle atomic nuclei as
planets orbit their sun. A star may have almost any number of planets of
different sizes. At the level of the atom we are in the quantum world. In the ordinary macroscopic world
You can easily see that that for Carbon with 6
electrons, four will end up in the outer
shell which is the same as for Silicon with 14
( Figure 2). Silicon has 3 shells in comparison with
Carbon's 2. Silicon is a larger and heavier atom with electrons furthe
In consideration of their unfilled outer electron
shells one of the things both Carbon and Silicon frequently do is bond with
four other atoms. In so doing Carbon or
Silicon will share an electron with each. A perfect atom to bond with is
another copy of itself, Carbon with Carbon or Silicon with Silicon each
achieving the happy status of 8 electrons in its outer shelly . Either Carbon or Silicon will form a perfect
crystal by latticing in this way as can be seen in Figure 3.
Figure 3: The crystal lattices of Carbon and Silicon are
similar- By sharing electrons each element gets
8 elecctrons in its outer shell.
Carbon is a social element. It bonds with itself extensively and most
importantly not as a crystal lattice structure as illustrated above but in
chains of double and single bonds Carbon also associates extensively with
other elements, particularly Oxygen, Nitrogen, Sulfur and so forth, even with
metals such as iron in hemoglobin.
Carbon's repertoire of covalent bond association is truly amazing. This is organic chemistry of course, the chemistry of life. It's important to
realize that all of this, all life, is made possible by chemistry and physics,
the quantum properties of the element Carbon.
If Silicon is the same as Carbon, then why is there
not Silicon based organic chemistry, Silicon life? This is the stuff of science fiction. Maybe somewhere on our planet, perhaps on
other worlds there might be organisms based on Silicon chemistry. Well, Silicon is not the same as Carbon.
Silicon can form chains with itself but partly owing to the larger size of the
silicon atom, Silicon-Silicon chains are unfortunately not very stable. By
virtue of its being a larger atom and because of other properties of
chemical bonding Silicon life does not appear to be possible.
Just one example is in the way Silicon bonds with Oxygen. Carbon and oxygen associate extensively and
in a variety of ways. The simplest
relationship is Carbon dioxide, a gas whose properties are taken advantage
extensively in organisms in energy storage and respiration. CO2
is cycled by plants which fix it in sugars that store energy for
almost all forms of life and produced in the respiration of animals and
plants. SiO2 , Silicon
dioxide, is totally different. It is a solid, not fit for any respiratory
cycle, a crystal, the formula for glass, sand, and quartz. Carbon dioxide has a
double bond between Oxygen and Carbon, Silicon Dioxide a single bond and it
forms another stable crystal lattice (Figure 4).
Figure 4 Silicon dioxide is the formula for glass. sand, and
quartz. It has a hard crystalline structure in in which Si bonds with O with a
single bond in contradistinction with Carbon Dioxide which is a gas with double
bonds to O.
The Silicon crystal lattice has other interesting
properties that make it useful. It forms
the basis the current semiconductor industry, the heart of computer electronics. As we have seen the Silicon crystal lattice
is essentially the same as Carbon's.
Life does not utilize Carbon crystals, but takes advantage of Carbon
chains. Silicon crystals on the other
hand lay the basis for the semiconductor industry. Silicon wafers may be 'doped'
with impurities especially Boron, with just 3 electrons in its outer shell, and
with Phosphorus, with 5. The impurities add an extra electron freely mobile within the structure in the case of
Phosphorus doping making it negative (N-Type Silicon). Boron doping will create a deficiency of one
electron giving a free positive charge (P-type) which given the motility of
negatively charged electrons will create a semi-conductor, the basis of all
computers.(Figure 5)
Figure 5: Silicon crystal may be "doped" with
phosphorus which has a fifth electron in its outer shell, or with Boron with 3 electrons. The free
extra or deficient electron creates a negative or positive charge freely mobile inside the crystal making it a
semiconductor.
The interesting part of all of this is that P and N
type silicon are conjoined to replicate electronic components, diodes that
allow current to flow in only one direction, and most importantly transistors,
which act as electronic switches. Transistors acting as switches or gates are
always either in an open or a closed state, allowing or disallowing the flow of
current. This is the binary state as
discussed in Chapter one of the computer which processes series of 1's and
zeros in binary code, also to some extent neurons too, which at any time are
either firing or not firing. Other impurities including Germanium, and other
elements and even Carbon, can be added to the Silicon crystal lattice or wafer
which may be used to make the wafer size even smaller and enhance electrical
and storage properties. This aspect of materials science, the creation of a
better Silicon device is explored mainly in
Transistors replaced vacuum tubes, which served the
same function, during the 1950's. I
recall going with my dad to the drugstore to get vacuum tubes tested. We'd
suspect a tube was blown when a table radio or television stopped working
and a tube didn't glow. Usually we were right. When I was very young
transistors replaced vacuum tubes. Transistors were a lot more reliable and
never had to be replaced. Transisto
The very first computers were mechanical not
electrical contrivances. They were bulky
and could only do limited calculations due to errors in mechanically setting
dials and gears and the inherent slowness in mechanical gear motions. Mechanical computers are analog devices with
inherent inaccuracies. When you look at
your analog watch with hands that point at the time, you can only estimate the
exact time. Inaccuracies will multiply with a large number of arithmetic
operations in any analog mechanical computer.
The great mathematician Wilhelm
Leibniz the co-inventor of Calculus, built a mechanical computing machine in
1672 , writing presciently, "For it is unworthy of excellent men to lose
hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could safely be relegated
to anyone else if machines were used."
The first modern computers were conceived in the early 1940s used to
figure artillery shell trajectories. The Mark I used electromechanical relays
as on-off switches that opened and closed utilizing an electromagnet, a relay.
The machine was useful but slow because of its mechanical nature. What was needed was a pure electrical
device. The next advance was to replace
mechanical switches with vacuum tubes. As we have seen the ENIAC computer used
in the war effort to help develop the H-Bomb had 17,468 vacuum tubes and
weighed 30 tons. The computer size decreased, speed, power, and economy
increased with advancements of methodology and hardware. The invention of the transistor was a
revolution. Transistors are much
smaller, more reliable and generate less heat.
Next came integrated circuits in the '70s and '80s and finally the
Silicon microprocessor. Computer speed is measured in FLOP's
, floating point operations per second. The Mark one could do one operation in
3 seconds working at the speed of .3 flops whereas the fastest modern computers
work in the teraflop range (1 trillion flops). This increased speed derives roughly from product of the number of switches and the
speed of switching. Computers with 10's
of thousands of transistors became possible with the demise of the vacuum tube.
But the biggest advance was the microchip made of Silicon on which you could
place the equivalent of thousands of transistors in a small space. A simple
flat transistor element may consist of a juxtaposition of N-P-N or P-N-P
Silicon on a wafer. Complex circuits could be etched on wafers and mass
produced. Parallel arrays of Silicon be
used to create machines with incredible computing power[6].
Tiny light beams of different electromagnetic frequencies etch smaller and
smaller patterns on modern Silicon wafers and there is a race to develop and
use this technology to mass-produce smaller chips with the equivalent of
millions of flat transistors.
We all know
what modern computers can do. Younger persons can barely imagine life without
them. Elementary mathematics curricula
use calculators. Consequently some
children are not able to calculate without a machine. But we all depend on
computers in our daily lives. They
extend and expand our abilities. Even if
we can figure things out on our own,
especially if we can, calculators do figures much faster and free our
minds for more abstract tasks. For advanced students of mathematics the
scientific calculator is commonplace and leverages abilities. Task specific machines are analogous to other
machines which extend abilities and function as tools. A man can't run very
fast but is able to travel faster than the speed of sound in an airplane. While
our body limits us, we can only get our legs to propel us so fast, still we
dream of making past these limitations
and our will takes us so much farther in
a lot of instances. A man is quite
limited in his ability to dig
foundations but this task is made amazingly easy with heavy equipment. The
computer is no different. It's becoming an indispensable tool. Those who have
it and have more powerful than those who don't and so computers proliferate.
There are those with advantages of wealth and other comparisons of cognitive
power. There are two kinds of persons,
those who have computers and those who don’t.
The haves will outcompete the have-nots every
time. Armed with computers humans learn
faster and will undoubtedly out-compete those who don't in such diverse areas
of endeavor as learning, business and
war. Men with the most modern tools
will generally perform better in the same way that an army with modern weapons,
an air force with the latest equipment and so forth. The computer is a tool, similar
to a backhoe or a car or jet plane but with a catch.
Computers work not in the mechanical world so much
as to extend understanding. As long as
they are simple single task machines such as calculators, and graphers or
game-players, they simply extend human abilities just like any other machine. But a multi-task machines that can calculate,
search libraries of information and retrieve data, process words, recognize and
produce speech, all with great fluency and accuracy, start to look very human. The Silicon wafer has made all of this possible.
A lot of people have begun
wonder about the computer's ability to think.
Will it be possible in the future, perhaps by virtue of advanced
processing and brute force, power, increased computation speed, increased number
of Silicon transistor equivalents, parallel arrays of processors, for Silicon
machines to "think" or even become conscious beings? Today computers function merely as extenders of human capacities,
as slaves. They don’t initiate thoughts
or actions and seem unable to feel or experience. Computer characters that
function as human equivalents are by now deeply embedded in American culture,
from Hal in "2001" to R2D2, and Data in Star Trek. Spock was a
descendant of computer in earlier science fiction genres. Computers seem not even to have the will to
live, fear of death, that we know occur in the smallest brained birds o
Would humans be able to exist alongside sapient
silicon based computer beings endowed with their own free will? Inevitably each superior cognizant being would
be challenge the other for dominance. Wars would be fought. One being would
inevitably replace the other much as Cro Magnon replaced Neanderthal. And one would end up winning out, maybe
wiping the other off the face of the planet. It would be a war between the
elements Carbon and Silicon, the former sapient alive with blood flowing though
its veins, the latter made of cold sand and glass. For the foreseeable future, Silicon serves
Carbon. Silicon is a lifeless tool, incapable of strategizing, a planning
without a destiny of its own.
As an interesting sidebar, it would seem, that it
would be virtually impossible for two sapient species to exist side by side.
Endowed with free will, each would inevitably protect its own interest and
there would be wars for supremacy. This is what we’ve experienced throughout
our own history, where intolerance inevitably occurs between races and
nationalities. We’ve seen so many fights
break out between sports fans from different cities, in competition between
colleges, annihilation of populations and world wars. Smart aggressive beings will always crave dominance. What is the wisdom of actually seeking other
intelligent beings from outer space as envisioned in the SETI project? If such intelligent beings exist, and this
may be likely, they will inevitably be somewhat different than humans and we
there is certain to be an altercation between them and us. Under ordinary
circumstances, it is so difficult to see humans and aliens just sharing common
wisdom. That scenario would seem more than a little naïve.
Human expertise in creating computers is advancing
rapidly. Yet it would seem our ability to create willful sapient Silicon beings
is just as much of a longshot as our finding aware
and alive aliens in space. This is all for the best because such “Contact[7]”
is far and away most likely to be destructive for both sides.
The picture I’m presenting is the computer as a
tool, an unfortunately lifeless, car, plane, gun, backhoe, extender of human
abilities. And it's striking that as circuitry advances, as computer chips get
ever smaller and more powerful, that humans and computers begin to work as
close proximity, hand in hand, that we
have become ever more dependent and are living closer with our computers. This is an observation that seems rarely to
be made, but it is what I call the marriage of Carbon and Silicon. What has
made the intimate relationship between humans and computers possible?
First of all the tininess of the Silicon chip. Not too long ago they took up buildings o
A paraplegic patient can be made to walk. These are persons whose spinal cords are
damaged by trauma for the most part, whose legs are paralyzed. Very simply, one places electrodes over large
leg muscles. When an electrical impulse
gets to the muscle, it will contract, moving the hip, knee or ankle. A Silicon
computer device controls the succession and amplitude of the electrical impulse
in very much the way that they are progress within the spinal cord first to
anterior tibialis, then quadriceps then the gluteus maximus, then the gastrocnemii, then to the iliopsoas on the opposite side,
and so forth to produce a functional gait. Someone who is wheelchair confined
and highly motivated may be able to get up and stand, first of all, and then
walk, usually short distances. Other
persons use electrical stimulation to prevent muscle atrophy. In paraplegics lower extremity muscles
languish unused and wither away. Electrically stimulated muscles are made to
contract against resistance and can rebuild muscle mass. Here as with the
cochlear implant, the Silicon device itself isn't actually implanted, but is
carried about, outside the body.
A patient with intractable right hand tremor can
have a pacemaker wire implanted in his left thalamus which helps control the
hand. Tremors can obliterate normal
functioning movements and turn a dominant hand into a useless liability. A person may be unable to feed or to write. The thalamus is a bundle of
nuclei. Each nucleus in the thalamus is
an anatomical grouping of neurons. The sinus node and a-v node of the heart
each have an intrinsic rhythm and drive the rest of the heart to beat at a
specific frequency o
Physicians literally “reach into” the brain every
day. Some stupendous examples involve replacing poorly functioning brain cells
with new ones. In Parkinson’s disease
immature (fetal) midbrain cells and also cells from the adrenal medulla that
secrete Dopamine, the transmitter deficient in Parkinson disease, are implanted into the brain with some
success. Therapeutic fetal brain cell transplants are being tried in
such diverse disorders as stroke, which results in the death of brain cells,
and in spinal trauma[8].
These techniques are being tried on a practical basis, without anyone even noticing their
philosophical implications. Scientist clinicians are reaching into the brain to
treat disease and improve function. In doing so they are taking furtive steps
beyond the limitations of biology; they are unbinding the patient from his
biological limitations. They provide the
proof that the patient, and any person adds up to much more than his own
biological limitations. Though of course
the victim of Parkinson disease or stroke is unable to operate on himself, he
is the beneficiary of a communal level of knowledge or expertise.
Inevitably similar techniques will be used someday
to maximize physical and mental performance. On a rudimentary level, stimulants
and hormones increase atheletic performance in
competitions around the world every day.
Drugs, antidepressants among them, improve function in day to day living
by their chronic effect on intrinsic neurotransmitters. Silicon devices add
precision in drug delivery. Precise
fixed amount of drug is dripped into the spine using a technique that has
become commonplace today. Baclofen is delivered
directly into the cerebrospinal fluid to inhibit neurons and control spasticity
or pathological tightness, resistance to motion in muscles. Spasticity often results from spinal injury
from trauma, birth injury and such diseases as multiple sclerosis which prevent
the inhibitory controlling impulse from higher areas of the nervous system from
reaching the spinal cord. When you
give large doses of Baclofen by mouth, which causes a lot of side effects, very
little of it gets into the brain and spinal cord where it must work. It may be
excluded by the blood-brain barrier.
Given intrathecally, directly into the spinal fluid, the results can be
stunning. Suddenly a person formerly
unable to walk, can get up on their feet. Others in a bed-ridden contracted
state are finally able to stretch out and move.
Similar pumps are used to deliver narcotics to control intractable
chronic pain, to dose insulin and other drugs requiring precise titration
schedules. It means the difference
between functional vs. non-functional life.
Tiny Silicon wafer circuits have made all of this possible and for us to
begin to ask where does the living Carbon based biological system end, and
lifeless Silicon begin, proving again
that we are far more than our biological machine which is our body allows us to
be. Devices are born of a dream or a conception
but are made into reality.
Figure 6: cochlear implant device.
Figure 7: Electrodes place directly on muscle stimulate it to contract. Computers control the order in which muscles contract to produce stance and gait.
Figure 8 : A pacemaker for the brain
controls tremor[9]
We all use keyboards and pointing devices such as the mouse and trackball, and joystick. But the problem is that in order to communicate with a machine which is separate from ourselves we need to translate our desires into a form the machine can understand. A lot of steps impede the direct transfer of information. This relationship needs to be more intimate. By this I mean that what we ultimately need to achieve is full incorporation of Silicon devices into our brains to communicate electrically with the relevant tissue and improve and expand upon normal function. When we use devices to overwhelm a disability, that is just practice for situations where such devices would really be useful, namely the elaboration and expansion of normal human capacities. As we have seen computers far surpass the human brain in two important areas, information storage (memory) and speed of calculation. Memory and retrieval of information is not trivial. We have seen that memory intimately ramifies with all other areas of cognition. Libraries of data are stored in smaller and smaller space. Soon optical systems may store data in three-dimensional arrays. They will make our compact discs that already store whole encyclopedias or shelves of books on one small disc, seem large by comparison. Information will also be infinitely more accessible, easy to call up with the aid of infinitely more mnemonic "handles" than even the living brain is able to provide, not only logical knowledge categories, but by spelling and phonemic and positional classification schemes.
Far more sensitive input devices will be
necessary. Hopefully, cells and Silicon
wafers will make direct electrical connections as both systems work via the
transfer of positive and negative electrical charge. Presently devices are touch pads, joysticks
and electrodes placed about the eyes that sense the field of gaze in eye
movements. These may be useful for
fighter pilots for faster communication with a precision machine and in virtual
reality games. Electrodes can be placed on any electrically active surface to
gain sensitive feedback, for example in muscle where the state of relaxation or
contraction can be monitored by computer, analogous to proprioceptive input
into the brain. This data can be used to
control movements for athletic movement or to modify accelerations in machines
used to carry people. A computer
commanded by eye movements may make rapid communication possible for the first
time in patients with the locked-in syndrome (See Chapter One) who are unable
to move anything but their eyes and otherwise are awake but can’t communicate.
Some persons with severe forms of cerebral palsy and acquired neurological
diseases may benefit. Perhaps EEG
activity and distribution may be used to communicate with Silicon devices that
can easily recognize patterns and spatial distributions of brain electrical
activity. Such devices may someday be
used to stop abnormal electrical discharges such as epileptic seizures, but more importantly sense and control brain
waking an sleep rhythms on long trips such as space journeys. These devices amplify command and control,
the efferent side of neural function.
We use many devices on a routine basis to extend the
afferent powers. Infrared and other detectors extend our sensitivity to signals
and energy sources that as biological organisms we haven’t receptors for,
electromagnetic energy outside the visual spectrum. These devices are mostly used in war and for
night vision as in hunting but detectors on earth and in space have multiplied
our powers of observation. Astronomers observe today in all parts of the
electromagnetic spectrum, infrared, at radio and gamma frequencies,. analyze
and collate with the aid of computing machines. In the not too distant future
we can expect more devices to directly stimulate nervous tissue, to expand sensory
function in much the same way as the cochlear implant does, and enhance tactile
and visual function as well. Predictably
these may at first to treat the blind and sensorily deprived, but one day they
will be used to extend the sensory function of normals. We will have Silicon devices surgically
implanted, some directly into the skull
and brain. These devices will extend our
sensory abilities, improve motor
function, increase our memory and
augment cognitive function. They will
be sensory, mnemonic, cognitive, and motor enhancers and extenders..
Of course, everyone depends on Silicon devices to extend capabilities.
Silicon devices calculate, write, retrieve and store abundant information. In
selected situations as miniaturization progresses these devices may be
implanted. Carrying small notebook computer devices around with us as we do
even today is tantamount to implantation anyway. Ou
The argument that we humans are nothing more than
our biological endowment succumbs then to the power of human invention. Expansions of human abilities and
possibilities that are even now possible in the computer age. We are more than our biological endowment
allows us to be, we have become more because we have dared to imagine. Our
inventions have had us escape our own innate limitations. We have hatched out of our biocapsule.
Carbon and Silicon are ever more being tied
together. They are married. The result is an exponential growth of human
capacities. Computers have done far more
than affect our daily existence. Subtly, slowly, they have altered our
philosophy, have changed the way we see ourselves. Firstly, as I have been
saying, we are in no way limited by our own body our biological endowment. That is a tremendous realization. More than
that has changed. By some reckonings, the sum total of human experience that is
a life can be boiled down to a huge quantum of information. This is a
legitimate claim. The next time you talk
to your spouse or an acquaintance, or any other person, what you see before you
will fundamentally change from a clothed body and face that you recognize,
something material, to a package of
non-material ideas, perceptions, and actions, something immaterial in
other words. What resides in your brain
right this moment, the effects of all of the memories and experience which are
part of your life, is expressed in the form of information.
Suppose we could set all the electrical activity in
all of your brain cells at exactly settings that are there at this moment which
we designate t0 , then
recorded also the exact anatomy and array of synaptic connections, also the
placement and composition of all cells and substances such as proteins and
nucleotides within cells, this is just information, admittedly an awful lot of
information, but the point is that it can be stored in machines designed to
store mountains of data. If we have all of this data stored in a Silicon
device, we have an essence then of what a person is at that specific time t0
and presumably have a good handle on what is to happen at t1j . What's more an essence,
expressed as information content, is separable from a biological entity not
unlike a soul in religious parlance.
Perhaps more importantly the integrated
consciousness that is a person and more will represented in a "second
generation" inside a Silicony device. Whenever our civilization has advanced far
enough, and this will not be anytime soon, all information should be carried by
vessels that are non-biological. Someday
we will be fully developed as non-biological beings, capable of experience well
beyond our current limitations, sensitive to vibrations along all areas of the
spectrum, vision in simultaneously infinite projections, enhanced tactile sense
and epiphanies of emotion such as those never experienced by any one with
paltry biological endowments. What is important is that we will reach this
stage, and I have every confidence that we in fact will, in spite of our
limited abilities and because whoever or wherever we are, we have an inner
drive to reach beyond our limitations, we
crave more knowledge and we
dream, we want always to reach out and experience more. We are material yes, but there is some
essence that is not expressed in material terms. I would ask this question.
Have advances in twentieth century science proved that we have a non-physical
essence then, what is indeed a soul?
You might point out that in fact, this inner essence is already recordable,
though not with precise fidelity, in the form of books and othe
If you still maintain that there is nothing to
humankind except biology there is yet another means of attack on this
assumption. Through mastery of genetics we will soon find this biology in and
of itself is a moving target. Genetics too can be reduced to information
transfer and manipulation. Genes are nothing but the biochemical transference
of data. Most of the time this information is transferred vertically from one generation to the next but more and more, as we
are learning, information gets transferred in other ways. As we have already pointed out, neither
simple cell division no
Genetics is the key to manipulation of life for our
own purposes. It is hard to believe that the structure of DNA the molecule that
carries the bulk of genetic information,
was elucidated only in 1953. This is one of those seminal practical
discoveries akin to Hubble's discovery in 1929 that M31, Andromeda, was not
just a "nebula", or cloud of gas inside our own Milky Way galaxy, but
a separate galaxy that contains its own stars, thus implying that many of those smudges or nebulae, are
actually other galaxies equivalent to our own.
Many of these galaxies contain hundreds of billions stars. This single discovery miraculously expanded
the field of human gaze. Suddenly God,
if there was a God, was not God of the world, or of the Solar system, or even
of the Milky Way, but the God of
hundreds times hundreds of billions of solar systems, a god of a wider cosmos
than had ever been imagined by any of our ancestors, and all of this at one
fell swoop. The study of genetics opens
up similar possibilities for us, only here we are gazing inside or
ourselves. Few persons will eve
New discoveries in genetics will allow us for the
first time to manipulate biological reality. The genetic code is the Periodic
Table, the Grand Unified Theory, of Biology.
Scientists are discovering that genetics is far more complex than they
imagined, the more they discover the more complex the phenomenon their work
becomes. As it turns out, if you know the all about the chemistry of
reproduction of the DNA molecule you still understand very little about the
myriad ways this technique is used in nature.
Nature is extremely inventive.
But there is not doubt that we will be able to design a different human
form and pass down this change. That is why when I see a movie about men in
the distant future, say the year 2100, I
can be confident, men won’t look or think like that the way they are always presented like current modern,
humans. People will be fundamentally
changed in the future, in form and function, of that we can be certain (that is
if we don’t do ourselves in before that, and I doubt that will be the case.) We
will make these changes according to our own will and won't any longer be
subject to biological serendipity.
Our basic identity at this stage is known. We know what a human is. There is little confusion about the basic
form or shape of a human person that has two eyes, a head, a trunk flanked by
two arms and two legs. But think one day
what it will be like when we are able to change this form, as will some time
inevitably be the case. Suppose someone takes the decision that some persons
should be specialists at working at a desk and that these would be better shorn
of their legs and perhaps with shorter arms and longer fingers to fit
keyboards. Or perhaps there should be generations of professional basketball
superstars for our entertainment, with small cerebra, large cerebella, and long
legs and further that these features should be passed down through
generations. A great confusion would ensue
about what is the human form and at the very least about what specific physical
characters make a person. As time goes
on the human morphology will change dramatically and there are likely to be
humans of many different varieties,
endowed with a special function
perhaps. These changes, for better or
for worse, will be premeditated and planned.
Living long enough, or coming back in a time machine we would not
recognize our own descendants.
(Humans will undoubtedly be able to change their own
form by genetic manipulation. At first this will start with the elimination of
undesirable traits. Mutations for such disorders as sickle cell anemia, cystic
fibrosis, Tay-Sachs, Hurler’s syndrome,
As if this weren’t enough, along the way scientists
will uncover certain characteristics that increase math or literary prowess,
spatial ability or general intelligence.
Traits for height, muscle development, speed, physical attractiveness
will appear in scientific literature along with the technology to alter or mix
such traits. Inevitably we will plan to raise super movie stars, soccer
players, physicists or some combination of the above. Perhaps we will seek to eliminate
psychological traits such as self-doubt, guilt, anxiety that might be conceived
to get in the way of accomplishment. In some cultures then, particularly in
cultures where there was sufficient wealth and expertise, the human form would
change. By the year 2100 or so people
would take on different characteristics.
They’d be untrammelled by any anxiety
depression or guilt. You would see more
men over 6 feet tall, with large muscular biceps and thighs, bred in other
words for increased sinew and intelligence.
The marathon would be run in an hour and thirty minutes, and the brains
would create unparalleled works of art and science. Perhaps professions would be decided at
conception rather than allowing a person to gravitate into the way of life that
he is inclined to.
This is a fanciful yet highly likely peek into the
future. Very little will be left to chance.
The future of the human race would proceed by design, by careful
planning, in other words. What is likely
to be the outcome of such planning?
Linkage is a basic genetic concept. Genes on a chromosome are either close to or
far away from other genes. Recall that a
gene is defined as a strand of DNA encoding
for a single protein. In this manner traits are linked to each other
which means in practical terms that they are likely to occur together because
they are close on the same chromosome.
As DNA is moved from one cell to another certain traits are very likely
to be moved together at least at first, before techniques get precise enough.
But this is a technical obstacle that will be overcome. Another more difficult
problem that will not be solved so easily is that genetic traits, single
genes, have multiple effects. The sickle
cell trait doesn’t just cause sickle cell disease. It protects against malaria,
and the Tay-Sachs allele may well have done the same
for tuberculosis. But even this is not a particularly difficult problem. However, protein gene products inevitably
have multiple effects in many systems.
If you want more or less skin pigmentation, you in an attempt to make
sexy blondes or dark skinned virile males there will be fallout affecting other
propensities as well. Suppose you find a
trait giving rise to large muscular thighs and calves for future soccer
players, you will find that many of the proteins giving rise to characteristics
of muscle, also affect brain cells. In fact muscle proteins and enzymes have a
lot in common with proteins inside the brain. Muscle and brain diseases have
some common genetic characters. In other
words you may alter mental characteristics in many ways that you didn’t bargain
for. Genetics is far more complex topic that
is dreamed about in our philosophies.
One single trait even in isolation will undoubtedly affect hosts of
other genetic characters.
If we try to alter the natural order of things, we
are inevitably going to get into some trouble.
The best analogy I can think of though admittedly with something a great
deal less complex, is the economy. In
our world today we see various kinds of planned economies, and more or less
natural laissez-faire type systems. The
best example of a top-down planned economic structure is the Soviet type
economy, now pretty much universally accepted as a dismal failure. Lenin said, in essence, let not the market
place determine the production and distribution of goods, but have the state determine
what will be best for everyone by design.
Decision would best trickle down from the top. We, the politburo, will determine how many shoes will be
necessary, tons of steel production, farm implements, beef and pork. Actually as things turned out the Russians
ended up eating most of their horses and still starved by the millions, making int possible to state cynically why leave anything to
chance when we can rely upon the human frontal lobe? One problem with this
scheme is that various constituencies sought to gain personally from state
decisions. But what really killed the
system is that even in something so simple as an economy, there is an
inestimable number of interactions to thwart any planning mechanism under the
best of circumstances.
Indeed this is what happens to us every day in the
practice of medicine. We are aiming to
control the body’s function by design. In the Intensive Care Unit we try to
control fluid balance, heart rate, cardiac output, blood pressure, level of
sedation - hosts of factors. The aim is to leave nothing to chance. Yet
“chance” events, shock, cardiac arrest, cerebral hemorrhage among them, do
occur and at such a rate that under most circumstances even with intensive
nursing and monitoring, it is impossible
to predict what will occur even a minute after an examination.
Which leads me to again ask
the question: How do systems function better, by human design or by
serendipity? In previous chapters we
wondered whether insects and bacteria, which change randomly and rapidly adapt
by natural processes would eventually win over humans endowed with
intelligence. Complex systems with numerous rapidly interacting nodes, the
economy, genetics, biology, nature, will
be difficult perhaps impossible to master at any time even considering
advancements in cognitive and computing powers that will come under our
control. Note here that I have deliberately skirted the issues and fears in the
area of bio-ethics that arise whenever we talk about manipulating genes. The most basic bio-ethical issue is will we
in fact be better off after manipulation of our own genome.
The most powerful argument of all in plans for
genetic design is that the human organism has already evolved via recombination
of thousands genetic traits. Why haven’t
we evolved that perfect six foot stature with large thighs and perfectly
functioning brains. I believe that
looking at the whole system, where the human is biologically at this time, we
will discover that the situation is close to optimal. We still have abundant genetic variation, the
raw material for adaptation increase fitness and evolution. My guess is that
even some genetic imperfections will be found to have widespread positive
effects which have escaped our notice. Perhaps some very disruptive traits such
as Huntington’s disease can finally be eliminated. It is important to note that from the
population geneticist’s standpoint, even very injurious traits marking a person
for severe disease, must have some adaptive fallout that confers an adaptive
advantage, perhaps to the heterozygote, but an advantage nonetheless.
Genetics is a mechanism to transfer information
vertically through generations, from parents to their offspring. Genetics comes
from Greek roots meaning to produce or origin or birth. Nucleic acids as the biochemical substrate of
genetics, have acquired a broader context merely as chemical information which
under normal circumstances in the living organism, can amplify and reproduce.
Genetic information is used more broadly than simple inter-generational
transfer primarily in natural reproduction. While a particular set of genes
defines a species or variety of organisms genes and groups of genes are readily
transferable to other animals or plants. A particular gene encodes for a specific
protein product. But the gene and the
protein produced are readily donated to other organisms, in which case you may
say we have produced a certain hybrid and you would be right, except a hybrid
is formed by mixing nearly equal moieties of genes from each parent most of the
time.
Today it is possible to transfer a gene from one
species that has it to another that does not.
Think of a gene as the instructional code in the language of a chain of
nucleotide codons to produce a chain of amino acids
that is assembled into a protein. Every
cell of every animal and plant and even bacteria, contain the machinery to
translate this genetic code, into real proteins. The information that defines all living
organisms is in this universal genetic code.
There is no reason why data from one organism can't be placed in any
other given simple technology. Viruses do it and provide a model for
information transfer. (Figure 9).
The bacteriophage is a DNA virus that infects bacteria. It inserts viral DNA into an unsuspecting
bacterium, which will then reproduce it and make new viral particles.
Figure 9: Action of
bacteriophage, bacteria infecting virus as a model for viral transfer of
genetic information into cells[10].
Figure 10:
Schematic of HIV, the AIDS virus, infecting a cell and reproducing itself,
a general model for
viral infection.[11]
The simplest examples of gene transfer thus occur in
nature. A virus is made of a strand of DNA or RNA enclosed in a protein coat,
in other words no more or less than a repository of genetic information, whose
aim is to reproduce. You can argue,
whether a virus is living or not, since it fulfills only one criterion of life,
by simply reproducing. It does so by
finding a mechanism for injecting genetic material inside of a cell, then enlisting the infected cell's machinery
to reproduce the viral, as opposed to the cell's own, genetic material. The AIDS virus infects human lymphocytes,
attaching to protein receptors, the CD4 protein which marks the cell surface,
as a lymphocyte of a certain type. These
surface receptors fit perfectly with the surface of the AIDS virus. Having attached itself to the lymphocyte cell
membrane, the viral RNA is injected into the hapless lymphocyte and the
lymphocyte's own cellular machinery
reproduces HIV, an irony, since our immune system, of which the
lymphocyte is a part, tries to protect us from invasion of foreign organisms.
In principle, a quantum of genetic information from
any organism can be placed in any other to reproduce part of itself either as
genetic information or used to make one organism's own proteins in another.
Thus we have not simple vertical transmission of information, as we usually
think in genetics, but horizontal transmission, from one cell to another. Over
the last few years different techniques have developed to reproduce strands of
DNA and to make gene products in large quantity. The most efficient is to move
genes into bacteria that have an extremely short generation time, in order to
make huge quantities of the gene protein product. Industry manufactures and even patents
proteins for diverse purposes such as digesting oils and PCB’s. Proteins are made courtesy of bacterial servants include medicines such as
peptide hormones, growth hormone, insulin, clot-busting proteins such as t-PA
used to treat heart attacks and strokes, Interferons and a large array of
immune mediator signals. Specially bred plants incorporate genes giving them
resistance to disease. Cloned sheep incorporating human genes produce protein
product excreted in milk. It is now technically feasible to produce large
amounts both of a novel gene and its product and this so routine that doctors
use it to test for genes that implicate particular infectious agents to make
diagnoses. Bacterial hosts allow
workers to amplify tiny quantities of genetic material of the invading
organism. If a small genetic fingerprint
is there, amplification methods will detect it and a diagnosis of infection can
be made. One method is called PCR the
Polymerase Chain Reaction. This is simply a method to amplify a tiny quantity
of DNA. DNA from one person is not identical with another person's DNA and each
organism has its own segments of DNA that are unique to it as well, act as a
fingerprint tht implicates that particular bacterium
or virus in an infection, even if there is a vanishingly small amount of
material to test. Crime labs use the very same methods. Human genetic markers are amplified and
implicate criminals with relative certainty, provided adequate care is used a
suspect's genetic material can be identified in blood, or semen. The perpetrator of a crime or the father of a
child can be determined with a high degree of certainty.. This goes to show
that once you discover something really basic, there will be thousands of
different applications for the discovery.
Bacteria exchange genetic information frequently in
nature. We have discovered this much to our amazement and dismay in examining
antibiotic resistance. Bacteria may
acquire resistence to antibiotics by making proteins
that break down the antibiotic. Some of these protein making genes are encoded
on plasmids, separate circular pieces of DNA that can be passed between
bacteria, even between species. Some bacteria resist penicillin through use of a penicillinase enzyme that breaks the
penicillin molecule down. Other bacteria in the same region, say within a given
hospital or in the gut, can easily acquire the gene which produces
penicillinase, thus resistance to penicillin. They can pick up this gene simply
by coming to life in the same region as other dead or disintegrated bacteria
and picking up as if taking up so much garbage or waste, the dead bacterium's plasmid. Alternately, the plasmid can be trasmitted as if by infection by a bacteriophage. Thirdly, this genetic information can pass
between bacteria via conjugation. In any event, whenever you have a patient
taking penicillin, bacteria that are penicillin resistant will be the only ones
to survive and multiply, and you will thus be selecting fo
The much touted Human Genome Project aims to map all
human chromosomes and to relate perhaps one hundred thousand or so loci to
specific human characters and diseases. What is not commonly realized is that
each gene may have numerous variants when one looks at the whole human family.
An amino acid is specified by a series of three nucleotide bases, e.g. CAGF , some genetic varieties
may differ from others by as little as a single base, some may be altered at
more than one site, and one interesting and important type of variation that
was totally unknown until recently is the replication of a triplet or
trinucleotide repeat. A series of three nucleotide bases is what specifies a
particular amino acid in a protein chain of amino acids. As it turns out this
trinucleotide repeat is a chain of nucleotides that gets longer with each
succeeding generation. This turns out to
be an important common mechanism for passing down neurological disease such as Huntington's
disease, Freidreich's and a group of ataxias, familial diseases similar to ALS, so-called
Lou Gerig's disease and Myotonic muscular dystrophy. The more repeats the inherited
the more serious the disease and the earlier it becomes manifest as a general
rule as has been found to be true for Huntington's disease and Myotonic
dystrophy. Many years ago clinicians observed that not only does Huntington's
disease run in families as a dominant trait, it also seems to affect persons in
succeeding generations at an earlier and earlier age, a phenomenon known as
anticipation. With Huntington's disease, the average age of onset is about
35. Those who have symptoms at an
earlier age, have the illness more severely. Now we know why. The culpable
trinucleotide repeats, get longer as they are reproduced in germ cells and
passed through generations. This new genetic discovery is one that scientists
never could have predicted by just knowing the basis of genetic chemistry as
outlined such a short time ago by Watson and Crick.
But this advanced know how was unnecessary in the
most ancient use of gene and many different mechanisms of heredity. Undoubtedly the first domesticators of
animals and plants learnt how to mix varieties of plants and animals in order
to gain more yield, hardier forms, and even alter the personality of the animal
product. Dogs are probably the best example, beginning a long relationship with
men that started some 12,000 years ago, are pictorially represented by the
ancient Egyptians who counted them among their gods. We have segregated a single species Canis
familiaris into about 400 different breeds,
used for diverse human purposes ranging from companionship and protection
to hunting and smelling out bombs and narcotics. Jacob in
the Bible became a wealthy man when while working for Laban bred
speckled sheep for himself which Laban had agreed to let him keep. Ancient men
of agriculture bred and domesticated all manner of animals and plants for their own purposes,
camels, oxen, horses, and cattle without the slightest notion of Mendelian laws
of inheritance or modern biochemistry of DNA, certainly not a double helix
molecule. Gregor Mendel with his peas outlined simple
mathematical laws of genetic inheritance without having the slightest idea that
we have today about the biochemistry and mechanisms of inheritance. Humans
throughout history have been a part of biology, but at the same time, have
always manipulated biological inheritance and that of all manner or biological
organisms. Since this is part of what humans do and have always done, you may
consider the science of genetics wholly natural, a product of human's superior
mental capacity. This goes to show that
we have used and designed biology for
our own purposes well before the high technology of our own twentieth century.
Computers and our own genome are thus mere
repositories and reproducers of information. In biology one may ask, what is
the simplest unit of information transfer?
Biology, biochemistry seems to like chains, polymers, concatenations of
small numbers of simple units which end up doing everything that all organisms
do. DNA is a chain of only four nucleotide bases which encode for
some twenty different amino acids which begin to form proteins, also joined in
chains. Amino acid chains may join each other and also add side chains and by
the end of the process a protein will be acted upon by other protein enzymes to
add side moieties such as carbohydrate residues onto the protein molecule at
various amino acid sites. In the end the
whole protein structure, composed of chains, side chains, and non-amino acid
residues will have certain charges and bend and twist, forming a unique three
dimensional stereoscopic structure. A particular protein may function in very
much the same way having minor differences between species and also among
various members of a single species; there may several equally effective, legitimate sub-varieties of a single protein,
in other words in a single species.
These will ultimately determine varieties or traits such as temperament
or eye color, facial features and so forth so that all of us are unique though
we have the same genes and chromosomes.
In other instances the replacement of a single amino acid residue or
misreading of a DNA strand ("missense") may
be caused by replacing a single nucleotide base, with another on a single DNA
strand.
One of the most fascinating stories that is being
uncovered at this time has to do with prions, which
cause what are termed "slow-virus" diseases. These include Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, new
variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease otherwise known as "mad-cow
disease", Kuru, Gerstman-Straussler disease,
fatal familial insomnia all severe fatal diseases that cause dementia,
psychiatric changes and generalized deterioration in neurological function.
These are the so-called "slow virus" diseases, or transmissible
dementias, because they are infectious diseases under the right very restricted
circumstances.
These terrible, fortunately rare disorders have been spread between humans,
almost exclusively by direct transfer of nervous system tissue. Kuru was the first of these mysterious diseases to be extensively studied in
pioneering work done by J. Carlton Gajdusek. Gajdusek's work
showed that Kuru was transmitted by cannibalistic practices of the Fore tribe
in
In late 1995 two cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
were noted in British teenagers. There have been at least 15 cases of this
"New Variant" or Bovine spongiform encephalopathy in all. The presentation is atypical in that it has
much younger victims who tend to be seen first by psychiatrists and they did
not have the typical EEG pattern. These
persons are now thought to have acquired the disease by eating meat from
British cows. The whole picture is not completely developed yet, but it appears
that the problem arose soon after British cattle came down with a Bovine form
of the disease, which was likely the result of these cows being fed offal or
brain and spinal cord remnants from sheep.
This was done as a nutritional supplement for cattle and comes from not
wanting to waste any animal products from slaughtered sheep. Sheep may get a spongiform encephalopathy of
their own called Scrapie, named for the tendency of afflicted sheep to scrape their backs against
fences and other objects as a part of the behavioral manifestation of this
brain disease. Then by a curious
combination of circumstances cow brain was used by the industry as a binder for
hamburgers and sausages, (to paraphrase Upton Sinclair on the meat-packing
industry, they use everything but the squeal) until the practice was stopped in
1989 due to fear of bovine or cow disease being spread, but not before the
disease spread to some humans. Thus the passage of this terrible disease appears
to have been due to direct consumption of nervous system tissue in a most
unnatural way from Scrapie affected sheep, to cows thus infected with bovine
spongiform encephalopathy, to humans, some unusually young persons by the
standards of naturally occurring disease[12].
Some might point out that the use of offal to feed
cows, which are naturally vegetarian,
and then the lacing of human food, with cow brain binders, is more than unnatural. It is anti-natural, an abomination. As we learn more about
genetics and master a sort of techno-biology we will come upon more and more
scenarios which offend our sensibilities.
Some examples are in the field of infertility. Hiring young women for ten or twenty thousand
dollars and using a healthy uterus to nurture a fertilized egg (zygote) from an
infertile or just a wealthy couple which can't be bothered with a natural
pregnancy and delivery is one example. It may be almost the same thing as the
old practice of using a poorer woman's breasts as a wet nurse. But in this instance a baby develops moves, gets born and to a great
extent the "birth mother" goes
through the very human process of
bonding, learns to love this baby. We
have confusion and conflict, the stuff
of legal battles. Artificial
insemination though simpler and not quite as extreme, also creates
problems. It's almost impossible to tell who are and who are
not one' s relatives. You could easily
marry your half sister without even being aware of it and barring stringent
checks, abuses could well occur. Where
is the guarantee that you are getting the sperm you thought you were
getting? An interesting conundrum arose
on one occasion where a physician, used his own sperm to fertilize a large
group of unsuspecting women thus creating a large posterity for himself.
Even more bizarre are plans by
physicist-entrepreneur Richard Seed, who announced late in 1997 in light of reports of the successful cloning of adult female sheep,
Dolly by
Edinburgh embryologist Dr. Ian Wilmut, his intention to clone humans. In order to
make this project financially feasible, Seed intended to service infertile
couples. The idea is to eithe
Seed uses Genesis as his rationale declaring that
man is made in the image of God and he is taking an important step therefore to
make man One with God, men manipulating biology will be God, for this is the
destiny of man. That man thinks, means
that he extends himself beyond his biological endowments and in that man is a
free conscious agent, he resembles God. Men are
made in God's image. But this
is not the same as saying that Man is
God, or at least it seems to me that all of this is so much hubris. If after all of our great scientific
advancements you still need to raise antiquated metaphors from Genesis, you might go forward a few chapters to
As we learn more about embryology, we will more
practical things that we can do. The
protein products of genes such as Lim1[13]
controls gradients of development, for example. Lim1 is a gene that helps create the embryonic gradient that determines differentiation of the
longitudinal head to tail axis in an embryo.
Absent the protein product of this gene, the animal, toad, mouse,
or human, will fail to develop a head end. Only the
body will develop. Suppose a viable animal could be produced which lacks a
head? This torso could be used to
harvest all kinds of products, meats for one thing, could be produced as long
as one could find a way to keep a torso alive.
Industrial farmers could raise chickens and cows without heads which
would alleviate concerns about husbandry or humane treatment of animals, for
example overcrowding. Protein and other
organic products and blood and organs could be harvested. The next step would be finding a way to
preserve life in headless human embryos.
This could save lives of headed humans as in implantation of organs and
other parts and products. As we uncover
the genetics of senescence it will inevitably become possible to keep certain
human cell lines reproducing in perpetuity,
if not to keep the whole human organism alive, as long as he or she is not destroyed by
trauma or other unexpected event. Does
any of this offend your sensibilities?
The real question about any of this is on what level we are offended if
at all. Where do we draw the line,
decide what, if any of this is not allowable?
Figure 11: Headless mice[14].
Such "ethical" dilemmas will be decided on
the basis of subjective assessments that are essentially esthetic. That is, the
headless animal/human embryo example is especially unesthetic therefore is not
very likely to be accepted by the vast majority of ethicists no matter what the
potential benefits. On the other hand
the perceived benefits to be derived from a technique may well counterbalance
esthetic sensibilities. Should we pursue these lines o
Surrogate motherhood is rather confusing and
appalling as well, which may explain why it is not very popular. It's almost
impossible to draw up a strict set of standards or criteria to meet all of the
myriad possibilities here. The feeding of sheep meat to vegetarian cows, the
lacing of hamburgers with offal and giving it to unsuspecting child hamburger
eaters is unesthetic, abominable, unethical. Some people might say that in
doing so, people have gotten what they deserve except that the innocent
inevitably suffer.
Unfortunately our approach to the ethics of new
science is not at all efficacious. We
let politicians who have little or no knowledge and have still less
understanding for ethics, determine
policy, mostly by imposing moratoria. What politicians respond to is what
happens to be popular at the moment.
Successful politicians are trying to get re-elected. At least involving politicians enfranchises a
lot more people, brings non-research scientists who may be more disinterested
and less likely to respond to immediate reward at the expense of the big picture
into some form of public ethical debate.
You can't put a moratorium on thought. To deny this is swimming against the tide.
Someone perhaps clandestinely in this country or perhaps abroad where there are
less constraints, will continue research. One cannot when all is said and done,
stop progress. The desire to go foreword
and continue to discover is an irresistible urge. Putting brakes exploration is a only finger
in the dike. It will only increase the impulse for progress.
The bigger picture is that humanity cannot, in the
long run be squelched or defeated. A
woman I saw complained of awakening at night, full of sweat her heart pounding,
in a state of panic. Our conversation
seemed to shift almost instantly to an account of life at her new job. She had left school after a minor head injury
to work full time for a computer firm in a phone-in customer service
position. Her computer terminal keeps a
running average of time spent on calls that come in. The time spent to take care of a customer phone call is
calculated to be only 5.35 minutes. Her
average was somewhere in the range of 6.55 minutes, which pulls down the record
of her work group, which competes with
other work groups at the same job. As she logs on and off her terminal, her
breaks are also precisely timed and compared with other workers. Of course, some employers also keep video
logs of goings-on in employee bathrooms as well as all computer activity at the
employee's computer terminal even during off periods, though I had no idea if
her particular employer was doing the same thing. Your boss, who has control of activities
while you are in the office, also thinks he should know what you do on your off
time, what drugs you take, whether you
eat salads or steaks, smoke or do now smoke, have sex, and so forth, because some behaviors aren't
good for your health and affect productivity.
This reminded me of an HMO which installed doctors conveniently in
airports and shopping malls, then videotaped them, in order to evaluate such physician quality
measures as number of smiles per patient encounter and compare these numbers
with results of patient customer
satisfaction questionnaires. This information was useful, as the doctor who
smiled less that average could later be nudged by management to turn out a larger number of smiles per
minute. To managers of health care plans, medical care is a business which
means that patient encounters, and operations, medical care, are mere widgets,
no different than boxes of cereal. The
aim is to give as little "product" possible and charge the highest
prices (insurance costs), yet still
maintain customer satisfaction. If you
can make that box look bigger, with the aid of slick advertising and
graphics, while actually putting a little less cereal in the box, and the customer fails to notice, that efficiency. Doctors who are still
deluded with ideas of grandeur and think of their work as something other than a widget, bridle at this
materialistic entrepreneurial view of
healthcare. Despite these
negative influences on our work, not a few of
physicians continue to do what they have to, to do the best work for
their patients. Entrepreneurs are material men who will attempt to
control, to dehumanize. Managers who treat persons as commodities
decapitate them. This is esthetically unappealing, abominable, immoral for most
of us. As long as most persons can keep
rampant materialism from sickening them,
if they know what they are and
what they are about, they can work steadily to reaffirm their humanity and that
of others. Revulsion can be used for positive change. Humanity survives along with its head.
Twentieth Century history has shown that evil can triumph over the short run. The
Third Reich lasted 12 or 13 years, the Evil Empire of the
These and other attempts to crush the human
spirit, are short-lived in the scheme of
things. No need to panic or worry. Good
eventually will triumph, though we may see over the short run, the destruction
of a lot of good people. Be strong, steadfast and work to improve and repair
the world.
The mystery of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is far from
being solved at this point, but the really
interesting question is unprecedented in the annals of medicine, that
is, what kind of agent is infectious yet at the same time a genetic
disease? What possibly could be the
explanation for this very unique phenomenon?
Figure 12:Schematic
rendering of a likely shape of prion
protein which has a complex helical, linear and sheetlike
3 dimensional structure.
The "infectious particle" is protein, and,
its seems, contains no DNA or nucleic acid, in other words is not a biological
organism, but more of a poison that induces a fatal change in its hapless
host. This is designated
a prion for proteinaceous
infectious agent by Stanley Prusiner who continues to
do extensive pioneering basic and important work, winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine in
1997. With these disorders it appears
that merely specifying a precise concatenation of amino acids, by writing a
certain sequence of nucleotide bases is not enough. The process is post-translational, that is,
occurs after a specific amino acid sequence for the relevant protein has been
specified by thr DNA template. The prion is a protein which has a specific
three dimensional stereoscopic structure, designated PrP. PrP in the form PrPSC which is the disease causing form of
PrP, sidles up to the natural form of
this protein present in all of us, which is designated PrPC and causes a deformation of PrPC protein. The protein, thus permanently deformed, will
sidle up against other copies of naturally occurring PrPC causing
these molecules to deform to PrPSC
as well, thus creating a chain reaction causing
accumulation of the injurious neuron-destroying PrPSC and Creutzfeldt-Jakob and by similar
mechanism the other spongiform encephalopathies. It's been shown that abnormal
prion protein accumulates in specific loci within the brain, and that
destruction of neurons correlates with accumulation of this abnormal
protein. This is analogous to the
formation of Amyloid, whose another accumulating protein destroying neurons
causing the dementia of Alzheimer disease. In fact, prion proteins are capable
of polymerization and coalescence into amyloid plaques. Hence, prion research
may well apply to Alzheimer disease though amyloid protein is chemically
distinct from Alzheimer beta amyloid.
It is as if the brain auto-infects, the responsible agent spreading to
adjacent parts of the brain in just the same way that an pus and organisms
spread in any infectious process[15]. For the first time a protein is in essence a
complete infectious cause or transmissible agent. This protein is partially
insoluble and resistant to normal enzymes that break down proteins known as
proteases, they are protease resistant, which makes them highly stable. The
order of amino acids as specified by host DNA does not cause the disease except
in the few instances where the disease appears to be genetically specified and
to run in families.
The gene encoding
PrP is on chromosome 20 in humans. In certain
instances persons who differ in their own prion protein gene by as little as
one amino acid specification sometimes
by as little as a single nucleic acid, for example substitution of ATG for GTG
at codon 129 for the PrP gene on chromosome 20 in both their chromosome copies
will result in replacement of the amino acid Methionine with Valine and the
subject will not be able to have his or her PrP deform to the pathological PrPSC
and therefore will be unable to acquire Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. For example all of the cases of New Variant
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease were homozygous for methionine at codon 129. The expression of other prion diseases also
depends on changes in single amino acids at position 129 and other areas
further up the line. A mutation at PrP codon 178 causes aspartic acid in the
PrP to be replaced by asparagine. That
mutation along with methionine
specification at codon 129 are sufficient to cause a different genetic variant
familial fatal insomnia. Fatal familial
insomnia is a genetic human disease that has been transmitted to other animals. For some reason it appears to affect primarily
the thalamus and first causes an alteration in sleep-wake cycles then
secondarily progresses to dementia and death.
The distinction between inherited and acquired
disease is blurred here. This has been one of the most controversial areas in
psychology and development - which characters are acquired and which inherited.
With transmissible dementias we have a situation for the first time in which
even the mechanism of inheritance comes into question. Can certain characteristics be transmitted
purely through protein transfer or does inheritance need to affect DNA or
RNA? Prion like particles have been
passed down in yeast cells which can inherited improperly folded protein which corrupts other protein
in the cell. This process is self-perpetuating and is inherited by other yeast
cells in a process of vertical as well
as horizontal transmission without changing DNA or RNA[16].
Here we have for the first time an example of a
genetic disease that is also "transmissible" in other words
simultaneously infectious, albeit under very restricted circumstances. It is most efficiently transmitted to a host
who is genetically susceptible, that is one who has methionine at PrP codon
129, by direct implantation of brain tissue.
Like other infectious diseases, whether the disorder will be transmitted
largely depends on the size of the inoculum.
If you give a small dose, the animal or person is likely to escape
infection. What happened to those poor
young hamburger consuming British kids who acquired the new variant form of
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is that they probably got a large dose of PrPSC from the cow brain binders and then this
protein was absorbed. The protein seems
to be absorbed largely unchanged despite
the fact that in our gut we don't absorb intact proteins, but instead digest
proteins into their component amino
acids. Part of the explanation may be
that proteases used to digest proteins may be ineffective here or maybe some protein
is absorbed intact for example by engulfing immune cells that line our mouth
and gut. Since this PrP resembles our
own internal protein, it may not be
susceptible to attack from the immune system which only recognizes and attacks
strange proteins and that is how the stuff may gain entrance to the inner
sanctum, even perhaps cross the blood-brain barrier as it must in order to
cause disease. In fact our immune cells may provide the portal of entry for
this lethal protein into the brain.
The discovery of proteinaceous infectious particles
begs the question about what is the simplest particle of infectivity, the
smallest amount of data that may be transferred which is at the same time
self-propagating, thus self-serving , yet causes an alteration in the host.
The concept of information transfer unifies genetics
and infectious disease. Infectious
diseases such as Leprosy, Tuberculosis,
Bubonic plague, Influenza or any of the other scourges of mankind, can be viewed in terms of mere information transfer. The infectious agent transfers instructions,
information, into its host, and devises a way to utilize the resources of the
host to reproduce. If the parasite is
very good, that is if it has been at its game for a long time and has
experienced millions of infectious transfers, both parasite and host will have
had time to adapt to one another and the tendency is, over many generations
together for the infection to slowly become less virulent. Viruses, bacteria etc. that cause the host to die swiftly such as
Ebola , will have very little time to
transfer from one victim to the next and won't be able to claim very many
victims. The infected hosts will die
before they can spread the dread disease.
For the infectious agent there will always be an incentive, that is, one
will reproduce much more successfully and widely if the host's reaction is
slight, non-lethal, as chronic as
possible, and if one can take advantage
of the habits of the host to spread and reproduce the parasite and produce
others of its own kind. Host and
parasite over time adapt to one another, the host being selected just by the
mechanism of surviving the infection, and there is a lot of pressure on the
infecting agent to be less virulent. As
time goes on, with host and parasite living together, they adapt sometimes more
sometimes less happily to one another.
The infecting agent becomes less like disease-bearing parasite. Infection and infectee begin to resemble symbiotes or commensals, in fact the line of demarcation
between parasite and host and symbiote is blurred, as anyone with any knowledge
of this subject knows.
Consider what has happened over the very few years
we have been aware of HIV. HIV is a
rapidly mutating virus. The first recognized cases were rapidly fatal,
partially because when you have a new disease entity only the most egregious
cases are the ones at first recognized but also most probably because the virus
at that time was all the more aggressively virulent. The infectious agent took
full advantage of the behavior of male homosexuals and i.v.
drug users that allowed direct transfer
of the virus through direct injection of body fluids into the bloodstream. Semen had access directly to the bloodstream
because of the inadequacy of anal epithelium to resist unnatural use. Widespread use of needles was also an
unnatural and unusual practice that allowed direct blood to blood contact and
direct efficient injection of large
viral inoculums. Early recognized cases had fulminent disease. Over a short space of time physicians learned
how to treat AIDS and the disease evolved into a chronic form. The virus itself, may well have become less
rapidly fatal. Don't forget that rapidly
fatal fulminent infections tend to be selected against in favor of more chronic
milder forms that stick around longer to allow the host to spread the organism
to others. At risk groups hosts, i.v. drug users and male homosexuals may have evolved as
well in a sort of survival of the fittest, those who were more susceptible
dying early of the disease. But the
really interesting thing is how technology, man's own design, has changed the
character HIV disease and this is almost unprecedented. Physicians have devised means of treating
unusual infections that AIDS patients acquire, but also combinations of drugs
that include newer protease inhibitors.
Now AIDS has been transformed from a fulminent to a very chronic disease allowing infectious
hosts to survive almost to a normal life span.
Now the host will be infectious for a long time. The only saving grace
is that viral loads and titers may be very low in HIV carriers decreasing the likelihood of transmission, or
infectivity.
The virus has taken full advantage of certain human
behavioral practices. Despite what the media say and experts have warned us
about, HIV remains rare in the
Humans have had a long relationship with viruses of
the Herpes family. We know this because
these viruses survive within our tissues especially nervous tissue over a long
life span. Studies have shown that the
vast majority of Americans harbor different types of Herpes viruses especially
Herpes simplex, Herpes zoster the cause of chickenpox and shingles, and the
Epstein-Barr virus that causes mononucleosis.
The hallmarks of a mutually long relationship between virus and host are
there. The vast majority of Americans
are infected with these viruses while young.
Most do not recall their primary exposure, which means that infection
caused so few symptoms, it was not even noticed. That happens in the situation of all three of
the above viruses. 80-95% of adult
American harbor antibodies against the above Herpes viruses, which means we've
been exposed and harbor viruses as well, but do not even recall having
symptomatic disease. Most of us are
immune to mononucleosis which is caused by the Epstein-Barr virus but very few
of us recall having it. Virus and host have had a long time to adapt to one
another. Since antibody can be detected over many decades in most of us, Herpes
takes full advantage of our own machinery to reproduce. Perhaps it even gives
us something in return for the bargain, that we are unaware of. This is done assymptomatically in most cases
and only rarely will large amounts of the virus be reproduced and a person in
the case of shingles will infect himself with his own internal Herpes zoster
virus, or if extremely sick old or frail where immune surveillance
is down, he may acquire virus from
others. It can be said that Herpes
family viruses are almost a part of us, less a parasite or disease, than a
commensal. This is speculation but it is possible that humans have had such
close relationships with parasites in our distant past, that their genetic
instructions do indeed become part of our own genetic endowment, in other words
that we today are infected with even older viruses whose infection is
completely silent or undetectable, that ou
A neutrino is a subatomic particle having almost no mass and no
charge. Neutrinos are stealth particles.
You cannot weigh them because they are so light, nor do they can they be
detected by any device that measures charge, since they lack electrical charge.
Yet some astronomers postulate that neutrinos are so numerous, they may
constitute so-called "dark matter" in the universe that in aggregate
may be the great bulk of mass or substance in the universe. It is possible the great bulk of our genome
is parasitic, yet undetectable as such due to the fact that these old parasites
no longer cause disease. Disease is the major way we have of detecting
infection. We may have been infected by
numerous organisms that have since become a permanent part of the human genome,
stealth particles that escape detection. Some of these have conferred certain
advantages such as mitochondria that introduced new repertoire of energy
utilization to early species and whose genetic specifications were incorporated
permanently into the cell. It is theoretically possible that a good deal of
genetic material now part of the machinery of the cell, actually originated
from infection by other organisms rather than purely through adaptation and
natural selection.
In the case of genetics,
just as the study of space and information and computer theory, the more we
discover, the more we learn what we do not know. We have abundant knowledge about the
molecular biology of inheritance, but over the past 50 years or so since Watson
and Crick's elucidation of the basic chemical machinery of inheritance more and
more varying pathways of information transfer have been elucidated that need to
be explored further. To think that because scientists can use bacteria to make
genes or protein products or clone sheep from adult cells, that we are all
powerful or have done anything but merely scratch the surface of genetic
knowledge is pure hubris. The last few paragraphs give a limited view of how
incomplete our knowledge base is.
Distinguishing lines are completely blurred in the transfer of genetic information. What is the fundamental unit of matter used in the transfer of genetic
information, DNA, RNA, protein in some instances? What is the basic unit of information
transfer? Is it a single gene alone that seeks to propagate itself or a larger
aggregate genetic product, a bunch of genes that have bet their futures
together as members of a group that we call an organism? Prions, genes,
chromosomes, plasmids, mitochondria, chloroplasts, nuclei, bacteria, protozoa
have all been agents of transfer. What
is the distinction if any between an infecting organism, a parasite and its
host? Given the abundance of strategies
for propagation after one's own kind, what is the distinction between an idea,
a particle or datum and the material biological vessels used to promote and
reproduce that idea? The distinction is
analogous to matter and energy an idea freely mobile between a biological
material state and a particle of information.
Here we see in miniature a reaffirmation of perhaps the greatest discovery
of the Twentieth Century the equivalence of matter and energy.
As scientists acquire more information our vision,
if anything, blurs. Typical distinctions are indistinct. The fundamental relation between matter and
ideas appears to be that matter serves as a temporary storage device or vessel
for ideas but that as time goes on and we begin to master the process, matter
and ideas will become freely interconvertible.
For the moment, matter and ideas are indistinct. Both turn out to be an
apparition or ghost, which as we try to grasp it, disintegrates in our hands.
The more we learn the more we find out how much we do not know. Perhaps this is the fundamental secret of the
universe that it is here for our pleasure, always just beguiling enough not to
bore us, just large enough to be beyond our grasp, just barely in the range of
wonder. Matter at best, and here we are
talking about matter in the form of biological reality, is a temporary vessel
for the propagation of ideas. At least at this early stage we have come to that
realization. Perhaps the computer, our
latest gadget for storage, manipulating and transmitting information may one day supersede the human brain. An alternate strategy would be to change
properties of the brain itself to overcome its limitations. Humans may
fundamentally alter our biology to increase mental and other capacities that are today totally
out of ou
Figure 13: The human condition. The total organism is specified by the genetic complement plus informational content of the brain.
The idea here is if one died and were to come back,
on what basis would we reconstruct the same individual, one who would not only
exude the same response in a similar situation. But would sense and cognate,
process i information in the same way. This newly reformulated person would be
identical with the decedent in every respect and would in fact be that
person. The two sources of information
necessary for this specification are represented in the figure above.
Here is the cool position we are in: If we want, we have the technology to alter
fundamentally our own form and anatomy. The danger is that we will change
ourselves so much we will no longer be able to
keep track of who we are. Suppose someone creates a new human with a
bigger head and shorter arms, another proprietor makes persons with longer
legs, bigger lung capacities and so on. After a while we'd accumulate so many
varieties of the human form we'd lose track of what a human is. We would do
this to compete with ourselves, to run faster, live longer, remember more,
think better, experience life with greater intensity, etc. The other strategy is to keep form
essentially the same, which would simplify accountability, keeping track of who
we are (though I think we will hardly be able to resist making some
"improvements" or at least eliminating diseases and disabilities) and
utilize tools or our own invention - the best example is computers and Silicon
devices, but cranes and trucks buildings and all civilized accouterments fall
into the same category - and to work ever more closely with these machines, and
still expand our capacities. The point is this goes to prove, that there is
much more to us than is specified in biology. Even at this primitive stage of
our existence, we are no longer confined by our biological endowments. It
proves that biology does not limit us, our material nature does not even define
us at all. There is far more to the human condition than is specified by
biology. After we reach a certain point,
perhaps getting rid of some imperfections and accidents, eliminating disability suffering and disease,
the stuff that is done by medicine, and
providing for basic needs food, comfort, jettisoning limitations, the human
spirit will soar, showing once and for
all, in case some of us remain unconvinced, that there is more to humankind
than material existence.
This is a summary of who we are. At very bottom we are biological creatures of
course. Our needs are basic to ensure survival. They are food, shelter,
sustenance, freedom from disabling disease.
If we are successful we reproduce our own kind, not an exact replica of
ourselves but creatures that claim a resemblance to us, sons and daughters. In
order to accomplish this most successfully,
we use the tools of a family and more extended social structure. We seek
to avoid death as much as possible. Death occurs anyway because without it,
there could only be a vastly reduced number of experiments that we perceive as
individuals of a kind, and without extensive experimentation with different
individuals, there can be no adaptation, hence those of this certain kind would
lose out ultimately in the game of fitness which involves adaptation to new
environmental vicissitudes. Thus the paradox that organisms that will be
successful need to die but individuals of a species as a general rule try with
might and main to preserve their own life.
Biology is only the beginning. Biology is matter but without it we have
nothing. Our anatomical and chemical
form up until now, was the stable base from which persons were recognized and
defined, and still are to some extent, considering our current state of
knowledge. Our cells and our aggregate
organism, is the repository, the growth capsule, the spore or protector of
data, an abstract idea that is us. All
at once this organism is us, but it has lately become only a launching platform
which is necessary to allow human development and life. But at some point we
are becoming bursting forth from the egg the biocapsule which has up until now
formed and defined humankind.
Humans specifically, perhaps alone among all
organisms, step beyond this basic biology.
In this text we have come to consider the biological machinations as
only a beginning, necessary but not sufficient for the nurturing of an idea.
Humans have learnt through their history to step beyond this biology yet have
heretofore but perhaps not forever, will use biological capacities as a
springboard to greater accomplishment.
Long ago humans learned to take one step beyond the
biological imperative, that is to want more than mere subsistence, wonder at
the world. Mundane day to day existence
and survival were one thing, but very early in human history there were those
who insisted on something more than mere survival. These were the artists of
It is in this effort to step beyond the bounds of
biology, dissatisfaction with mere survival but turning outward from ourselves,
and inward too exploring uncharted regions in and out of ourselves, that was
the start of self-expression, art. It began with an incautious curiosity and
dissatisfaction with the status quo and meant taking risk, sometimes the risk
of death, and a step away from the biological imperative. In the long run this tendency was
instrumental in the survival of humankind even if it meant, as it inevitably
did, short-term danger.
When the work of the day was done, when basic material
survival was ensured, the artists of
But there is yet a third phase that is in fact more
transformative and it is almost a kind of Messianic era that we are entering
today. It is the transformation of ourselves from our basic biological endowment. As we have seen computational devices allow
us to store and manipulate data, and to sense as never before. These devices
whether implanted or not, don't just enhance our cognitive capacity, but
radically change who we are. Mind extenders increase our mental potential. And
with this added potential we soon will develop new genetic techniques to change
even that basic biological form. We will one day perhaps not recognize
ourselves, our appearance will be materially altered by the machinations of an
expanded mind.
Human life is a sheet of many dimensions. Every
person who was is or will be can be found within as given set of
space-time coordinates. Though Einstein
is dead now it will always be possible to return to his own coordinates, at
The cosmos is a giant fabric of n dimensions holding
all that was, is and will be. Humans, within their limited capacity, strive to
sense the contents of this fabric, like the way a phonograph needle, tape or
computer disc magnetic head, or CD laser sensor plays contents over a limited
extent of these storage devices, just as ribosomes
read the sequence of nucleic acids on RNA.
All of these situations have in common a limited capacity to experience
at any time only the tiniest portion of the total contents of writings on the
storage device. Religionists may call this cosmic fabric the Mind of God, but
if there is a God, this is only the memory of the Mind of God, all the more
impenetrable, unfathomable is the entire neural structure.
Every life is then an engram
laid out in some gigantic neural structure. Each person hammers out for him or
herself a structure of limited scope in perception, thought and action, a
neural structure within another neural structure, the Mind of God. At any moment, this engram
which is a life, may theoretically be retrieved, extracted by its memory
handle. Each of us exists and ever will
exist in the great eternal mental structure of our cosmos.
Given that we cannot be defined by a limiting form
which give birth to us, our spirit, then is ever harder to grasp precisely who
we actually are, our full essence. So much more is there to us than is
delineated by material understandings. We have only to realize that we are far
more than a machine, a mechanical contrivance. What we strive for, more than
anything else, is to get our bearings in the midst of an exploding maelstrom of
a cosmos. Where we live, knowledge built
upon other knowledge expands exponentially, we have to be in a state of
perpetual confusion, a divine diversion that commands our attention and ever
holds interest if only because complete mastery and understanding always will
be just beyond our grasp.
If this is true then it must be the idea rather than
the receptacle device storing the idea that is the important element. The preservation of a living container,
occupies us most, but is comparatively unimportant. A physical body is as a plastic compact disc
is very nearly worthless without its proprietary contents. In just the same way
the mind exists in an organism, a mere receptacle for information. Uncovering
biological, chemical, electrical mechanisms gives us many tools for
understanding ourselves, but describes life only at its most superficial level.
Mind and brain complementary understandings
analogous to wave and particle descriptions in physics. Mind and brain, energy
and matter, ideas and physiology are
equivalent and interconvertible aspects of the same phenomena. Understand one aspect and your understanding
is incomplete. If physics were only seen
from the standpoint of particle interactions with no input from wave
mechanics, knowledge would be one sided,
incomplete. In just the same way the
human condition is only incompletely apprehended through understandings of
physical brain sciences. Hence we have
complementarity. We may hope perhaps that one day scientists will unify
complementary conceptions into a single unified theory, but this is not likely
to happen soon and is likely to occur only after we alter some current
fundamental misunderstanding.
This is the world of the future. As this book was
obsessed with viewing the mind through the window of the brain, matter makes
mind, matter makes ideas. If there is
one lesson as we move into the twenty-first century, it is that the idea is the maker of matter. We are right now transitioning from the
notion that matter makes the man to the idea as the essential element. We see this on a practical level as we
experience even in our economy that persons who know how to manipulate things,
are relegated to repetitive tasks are losing income relative to those who can
manipulate symbols. Persons who
manipulate symbols and words achieve success. Ideas have it over matter.
The Mind has control over the brain.
As time passes, in our economy,
we are exiting the world of matter and enter to one of pure
thought. We are breaking out the egg
which bore us out of our
biocapsule. As our efforts become
more and more exuberant and adventurous,
biology will be ever more surrounded, conquered, outflanked.
And our method for increasing adaptation to our
world has changed strikingly in recent history.
Formerly knowledge was revealed as from on high by a seer or a
prophet. At present we depend on the
scientific method to tease the facts out slowly, patiently and
methodically. Science, discovery, not prophesy has provided the revelations for
our age. Knowledge is won by dint of
hard work, fastidious methodology.
The work, sweat, sacrifice of discovery, making of man in our own image.
Previously there seemed to be no purpose
to the universe. That is the horse race. At present those who believe in
purpose, in creation of an ordered cosmos
at one instant are winning. How large is the cosmos? Large enough to keep our
interest.
Here is a new optimism. Gone is despair and panic that results from
wholly material man with fixed chemical composition, that there is little or nothing
more to our essence than mechanistic relationships, the profoundly distressing and depressing point
of view held by many of our contemporaries. The wholly material person derives
from a misinterpretation of modern scientific data. We have good reason to hope, now with a
proof that what we are will never be confined by material and machine, that we
have crossed into the threshold of a brave new Promethian
world- beyond biology.
Many of our most prominent thinkers, brilliant
scientists, have sought to reduce us to our material constituents. They have used as their argument, advances
in technology that have enabled us to study and understand more than we have
ever grasped before. As I hope I have
shown, they are defeated by their own discoveries. Great scientists such as E.O. Wilson, Francis
Crick, among others, seek only to subsume all thought under an umbrella of
biological causation. The argument goes something like this: The greatest
inventions of the human mind, buildings, works of art, ethics, have come about
merely as a product of a biological determinants, mere parts of a larger biological imperative.
Music? Well that came to be because of the need for the human family or tribe to form an emotional bond to help in the aim for adaptive societal cohesion. It’s so easy to see how initiation, marriage, war ceremonies and other types of nodal tribal events were helped along by rhythmic tribal dances and mesmerizing repetitive patterns in sound which enlisted limbic or emotional parts of the human brain. Primitive art? The same mechanism. Primitive art illustrates techniques of the hunt, and inculcates respect for the hunted animal, which sacrifices its life for the survival of the tribal group. This served as an efficient means to hand down basic concepts from one generation to another. The groups that were more successful in doing so are the ones that survived, by virtue of their cohesion. Writing? Writing, indeed defines the boundaries of history and pre-history, and has been with us only for a few thousand years. This is biological too. It’s always more adaptive to be able to record and pass down specific information.
Ethical principles derive from a biological
imperative. Wilson and others have
shown how the almost universal incest
prohibitions make eminent sense from the biological perspective. Incest is maladaptive in that it decreases
genetic variation and increases many fold the chances of having genetically
defective offspring or even offspring with fatal genetic flaws. Just as incest
taboos have arisen, and make excellent biological sense, so must all ethical
principles be essentially from a biological adaptation. Good ethics increases
fitness, adds to the probability of survival.
No need to invoke concepts of a supernatural deity handing down laws
that make eminent biological sense.
Great scientists more than the average mortal, are
aware when they are reason on the basis of example. They know, or they should know that their
examples will not suffice to describe a whole class of phenomena, particularly
in the category of ethics. Reason by
example is inductive as opposed to deductive logic. Induction presupposes that once you have
uncovered a pattern in a few examples,
the rest of the phenomena in the same
category work by a similar mechanism.
Hopefully you have come upon a pattern, but it just as possible that you
have veered in the wrong direction. Reason by pattern of course, differs from
deductive logic of stepwise implications.
Scientists. of all people should insist on filling
in the blanks. A few examples may fail to establish a definite consistent
pattern. Incest is an almost but not quite universally taboo. In
Other areas of ethics are far more unfathomable from
a biological adaptation perspective. Laws about just treatment of helpless
widows and children, all matters pertaining to altruism, religious rituals
including sacrifice and hosts of other customs, the support and toleration of
weak and unproductive members of society and those laws accepted as part of the
social contract, ancient rules of war, the Geneva Convention are profoundly unbiological in that they are impossible to explain on an
evolutionary basis. These laws may be
accepted as “fair price” to pay for the object of societal cohesion but here we
get into the very sticky areas of group vs individual
selection, not accepted by all evolutionary biologists.
The unit of selection from the biological
perspective is the individual. In biology
the name of the game is to pass on your own genes. The organism is merely vehicle for the
transmission of genes. When an animal
performs an altruistic act, for example, warning other members of his group
about the approach of a predator thus calling attention to himself or
sacrificing his life for someone else’s benefit as an soldier ant might do
during an attack, or even better, standing up to a vicious animal in order to
allow others to escape as is found even among primates, he is performing an act
inimical to the passing on of his own genetic traits. Such an act will not be selected for except
for a couple of considerations. If his
altruism signifies that an equally altruistic act will be performed by others
in the altruist’s behalf, then there is
a reciprocal relationship.
Alternatively, and this is by far the most frequent
explanation, he may pass on his own genes providing other members of his group
whom he has saved are very closely related, meaning that they share many of the
same genes. One example is
so-called kin selection. The ordinary animal shares an average of half his genes with first degree relatives,
siblings, children and parents. If he
sacrifices his life so that two children survive, he will more than break even,
particularly if he has finished making offspring. The name of the game from the evolutionist’s
viewpoint is to pass on one’s own genes. A gene for altruism will survive in a
population if it helps the carrier pass on his genes. Otherwise the altruism
gene is detrimental. Take a group of social insects where thousands of
individuals share the same genotype.
Nothing at all is lost with the sacrifice of an individual. Preordained sterility as often is possible as
is known with workers of a hive. This is the calculus of biological altruism,
which is not, as can plainly be seen, altruism at all. The natural altruistic act is performed for
the benefit of the individual performing it. Otherwise most biologists dismiss
the notion that the individual gains because of preservation of members of his
group, so-called group selection.
Evolution progresses for the benefit of the individual, not the group.
The individual is the unit of selection.
In humans, and only among humans, things may well be
fundamentally different. Throughout
history large societies even cities and states have competed directly with each
other. The consequences of losing a
competition are often disastrous, particularly in war. Loss of a head to head
combat most frequently ends in annihilation of the losing side and that often
includes an entire city-state or nationality.
At the very least men of the conquering tribe will inseminate women
if they allow women to stay alive as an
entire culture becomes subsumed in another. Certainly in human populations,
though individual selection likely still predominates, group selection is important as well.
Thus group cohesion and all ethical principles that
would promote the survival of the group hold little water when it comes to pure
biological argumentation, while for humans things may be different. This being
the case it is far more parsimonious from the scientific perspective to observe
that basic ethics, that is the most primitive taboos, perhaps derive originally
from a biological imperative, but from there on, ethics acquires a life of its
own. When congress is deciding to change a law,
primary considerations are whether the change is consistent with
previous derived laws and principles or if the newly considered variation is
not with these principles, not whether the change will be adaptive from the
biological perspective. Not a few
biologists might suggest that the primary consideration for ethics and laws
ought to involve adaptive considerations, but all would agree that this would
mean the primary thought in this instance would be for the fitness of the
individual and this in turn would mean preserving the reproductive potential of
the most fit among us, which is not what the operation of modern societies is
about.
In fact, many of our laws invoke quite the opposite,
protection of the weak and minorities among us. Laws in a modern society are
(ideally) passed and enforced for the greatest good. One of the pressing issues
in our own day, as in the past, is whether to accept immigrants and in what
numbers and under which circumstances to accept them. Immigrants as a rule flee
political and economic disadvantage. These underprivileged persons come to us
starving, filthy, diseased, and undereducated.
At first glance they are highly unappealing, that is until one realizes
mostly by virtue of empirical (historical) evidence that immigration is the
greatest engine of American diversity, most probably the main cause for our
international hegemony. (Recall how the raw material of biological adaptation
is also diversity.) Immigrants are no
random sample of foreign populace. They among their compatriots are the ones
who risked everything to, of their own accord, flee the status quo or
persecution and economic disadvantage.
Displaced persons are proven to be more productive than a native
populace typically within one or two generations. Thus initial impressions are deceptive. More
than that, the members of human societies are genetically diverse. Yet they compete, today more than ever,
directly with each other, not only militarily in the past, but to a much
greater extent in a global economy.
The difference between humans and animals is of course, the brain, which allows the maintenance of complex societies with their own geography, language, customs, ways of making a living, and defense. Human societies are cemented together by various cohesive elements, but the important point is how the fortunes of the individual are linked with every group member. And members of a societal group need not be as closely related genetically, need not be kin at all, in order to share a common lot. It is because of the brain that the units of inheritance are not only genes, but also common patterns culture, societal rules. All persons are a part of a vast societal framework, a collective consciousness. This information is reproduced and passed as surely as are genetic traits, from generation to generation.
Groups that espouse cohesiveness, productivity,
freedom, respect for individual differences, a host of non-biologically based
values, increase their own fitness.
Groups that espouse a specific ethic o
Music too and all other art forms no doubt,
originated as biological adaptation. But
biology cannot explain a Beethoven symphony. The symphony was born in the
limbic system or emotional mind of Beethoven or perhaps in a motivational area
of his brain, the anterior cingulate.
From there his cortex would have been instrumental in design of the
ultimate structure of the symphony. But
as I hope we have seen over again in preceding chapters, these brain structures
have served as a platform or basis for invention. Without any one of these structures and many
other brain constituents too, Beethoven would never have been able to write his
symphony. But this says nothing about
the final form of the work or its meaning, which comes not only from the brain,
but something intangible in the man who wrote the music. That is to say without
his brain Beethoven could not have written his music. The brain of Beethoven thus exerts somehow a
permissive effect on his work, but does not determine the final form, which
comes from something defying anatomical description deep within his being.
That, in fact, is the story behind all invention. To state that the brain is necessary is a
truth with a small t. In fact so are his
kidneys, liver and so forth necessary, as but for them he would not have been
alive to accomplish his work. To maintain that to know this brain anatomy and
physiology in toto, would tell us how he did his work and all of the meaning
behind it, is at this point in time a leap of faith.
The brain is and all its products are subject to the same rules as govern any complex mechanical contrivance. A good metaphor is the power plant of your car. At best this performance machine allows you to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in a few seconds. Take out the battery, and the thing won’t start. You conclude the battery starts the car. More precisely the battery is necessary to start the car, not that other parts don’t participate in this effort and are not also necessary, least of which is the starter. Certain defects are fatal. If the oil pressure is down for a long enough period of time the engine will seize turning your car into lifeless scrap. In other situations the engine will continue to function, though at an impaired way for example with defects in the valves or carburetor. The car won’t run smoothly and will lose power in passing and on hills. Maybe it will burn oil. But the thing will limp along and carry you for a long while. So it is for the brain which may have fatal or not so serious deficiencies. Punch a hole in the brain, create a lesion as by a stroke, and the organism, as a general rule continues to function. An accumulation of defects or a single serious event makes brain function incompatible with life.
Lesion the cingulate gyrus,
and a composer will be unable to produce a meaningful work. The same holds for the left hemisphere. Both of these structures are necessary for
the creative work of our composer. According to this line of reasoning, the
logic of the lesion experiment, the
intact normal functions in a manner indistinguishable from the lesioned animal.
Both the cingulate and left hemisphere are necessary for musical
composition. But necessity does not
equal sufficiency. No one has proved the brain alone as flesh and blood is
sufficient cause for high human creativity.
Music, like ethics, may start in biology, then acquires a life of its
own, separate from biological contingency.
In music, art, writing, architecture, ethics the
first furtive steps of the initial journey probably did occur because of a
biological need, but all of these endeavors and more, later acquired a fire of
their own. Primitive music enhanced tribal ritual and cohesion. It’s easy to
picture it as an adaptation, in that tribes without music may have had more
difficulty surviving than tribes that had it.
Once having gotten started music developed as a thing in itself. That
means that modern music plays many roles fa
All branches of learning and accomplishment have
gone in their own separate directions, branching from their biological
origins. They’ve evolved into separate
flames kindled by that original biological fire. All of these areas of endeavor began out of
biological need, but at some point, in some cases very recently in our history,
we have managed to break free of biological causation and limitation. The
reason for modern advancements has little or nothing to do with original
biological causation. All fields of intellectual endeavor worked by specialists
who transmit and advance each individual field. The reasons for pursuing these
separate endeavors now has little to do
with survival and fecundity o
What then is the role of the brain? The brain is a platform, making possible high
human accomplishment. With the aid of a
system of human invention and technology which bootstraps upon itself. The
brain is merely a launch pad. The rocket
attains escape velocity freeing itself from the limits of gravity. And as everyone knows, it is not the launch
pad that determines the rocket’s trajectory.
From the scientific perspective all fields of human
endeavor will be found to have a physiological or anatomical, that is, a
mechanistic cause. That cause resides in
the brain. That the scientific method will reveal everything by brute force,
that is the steady application of scientific method, over a long enough period
of time, is an article of faith as much as is found in any religion.
From whence springs this freedom this creativity
that we find in the intact functioning human?
If not for the machinations or the white and gray matter of the brain,
from where does this derive? With
self-accusatory tongue in cheek all I can say is this comes from a certain Je ne sais
quoi. No matter how wise we think ourselves to be, there is still a basic
elemental constituent uncounted by any mechanistic theory. This is what some
might call a non–material soul the origin of all motivation, of all thought
feeling and action. Using current tools
and limited by mechanical as opposed to spiritual considerations, I see little
hope of ever localizing initiative in the substance of the intact functioning
brain. The brain is a single platform housing only a small quantum of memory
and thought. As human expertise advances each individual is less and less
limited by the capacity of a single brain. As has been made abundantly clear by
this time, the limit of awareness ranges far outside the confines of any single
human head.
But what of perhaps some kind of communal instrument
of thought? Indeed one expert may reach
into the brain of another to alter or improve his function. The expert
functions with knowledge shared between myriad practitioners of the art. A universal
expertise, a communal knowledge transcends us all. The farther we wander in the
journey of human understanding, the more we appreciate that now, more than ever
how we have evolved into a form emancipated from the limits of our own body and
brain. Humankind is as Prometheus
unbound – unbound from our own biological beginnings.
Each of us, every human born, can be seen as a small
node in giant pattern of human societal evolution and technological development,
artistic expression. Each of us is born, takes his or her place, continues
suspended in those coordinates in life and then in death. Awareness is a communal enterprise, each individual
person no more than a node, a part of
something larger.
“Hm-m,” he said. “Lookie, Ma. I been all day an’all night hidin’ alone. Guess who I been thinkin’ about? Casy! He talked a lot. Use’ta bother me. Bot now I been thinkin’ what he said, an’ I can remember – all of it. Says one time he went out in the wilderness to find his own soul, an’ he foun’ he didn’ have no soul that was his’n. Says he foun’ he jus’ got a little piece of a great big soul. Says a wilderness ain’t no good, ‘cause his little piece of a soul wasn’t no good’ less it was with the rest, an’ was whole. Funny how I remember. Didn’ think I was even listenin’. But I know now a fella ain’t no good alone.” –
John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath (Chapter 28)
A life lived is
an indelible record in a huge space-time array that we call everything or simply,
the cosmos. At any time, before or after
the actual consummation of that life, it should theoretically be possible to
extract that memory module, to replay a single life. The process is similar to a
phonograph needle or laser lighting on a record or CD to replay its contents. As discussed, these “universal” memory engrams most likely are recorded and recalled holographically
as are memories within the brain. Everything living and dead leaves a trail of
its existence in space-time. These trails or engrams
are ordinarily discoverable by use of the scientific method. They may be sensed
by other means, through affect or subtly as through emotion, or sensed through
intrinsic memory mechanisms, much as the emotion-charged memory of a loved
person springs into our mind at times or subtly influences our behavior.
The difference between the atheist and religionist
is teleological. The atheist and religionist would agree that events and lives
leave a record or trail of discovery.
The atheist sees these lives and events occurring without method or purpose.
To the atheist the cosmos is a mechanical device. The religionist looks out into space and sees
an Eternal Mind, with all of its constituents not the least of which is
motivation, strategy and purpose. The
religionist might admit that the cosmos seems to work mechanically, but it is a mechanical contrivance put
together or set in motion by a higher being. Each person’s mind, is a component of
universal knowledge which in turn has a place in larger human history of life
and understanding, a communal knowledge passed horizontally and vertically from
person to person, community to community.
The bigger picture the human essay, part of the Eternal Mind
conveniently represented here not as some mechanical recording device, but symbolized
by the entire human brain, signifying that these memories at the human,
communal, historical, universal levels are multimodal. They require all of our pitifully limited
human faculties, auditory, visual, and a lot more to appreciate their fullest
splendor.
Figure 14: A human mind remembered in the in
the mind of the Eternal (not to scale).
.
The rendering of the brain here of the Eternal, the
depiction of the cosmic mind in the form of the human brain doesn’t imply that
the Eternal’s mental machinery is as limited as the paltry
contents of a single human skull. Instead it is meant to signify a certain
completeness and purposefulness of being, a wholeness of thought, feeling, perception,
cognition, volition that are composite functions of the brain with each of its
lobes, brainstem, cerebellum and all of its other parts. The brain isn’t
everything, just a symbol. In our feeble
attempt to grasp something infinitely larger than ourselves it helps to
anthropomorphize it, at least as a first step in understanding.
In closing we should all be mindful that each and
every one of us is a part of a much larger plan, that we are suspended for all
eternity in this plan. It helps to keep this perspective even as we are harassed
by the narrow limitations of our mundane daily existence at work and at home. This
realization is the very meaning of freedom. In it we are suddenly transformed, unbound from grind of everyday life. We escape
our own worldly concerns, as we jump out
of our own skins, seeing how we
transcend our own biological organism.
This material is copyrighted. It may be reproduced
only by written permission of its author Charles S. Yanofsky
