As I've noted before, unlike many of my classmates, I loved school. I liked the routine. I liked (and continue to like) to study all sorts of things: grammar, language, history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, belief systems, and many more subjects. However, during my school years, there was one topic I did not enjoy: science!
As long as we talked about the lives of animals, I was captivated. Show a filmstrip on the lives of wolves, wombats or voles and I would be in the front row. But turn the discussion to the biological/chemicals properties that cause wolves, wombats and voles to be who and what they are and I would look for an escape route!
Chemistry, in particular, makes no sense to me whatsoever. All I see are a bunch of random numbers and letters on a page. Give me a formula to work out and it simply doesn't compute. This is as true today as it was in 5th grade. For whatever reason, it all seems like gibberish to me.
With this long preface in mind, I am finding the book Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief by Lewis Wolpert a most interesting read! While the author has not discussed any specific chemical formulas thus far, some of the evolutionary theories broached have been quite fascinating. One of these has to do with the origins of the brain.
As Wolpert tells it, the brain is derived from the evolutionary rise of movement in cells.
He sums up this section,
Maybe science ain't so bad after all!!
As long as we talked about the lives of animals, I was captivated. Show a filmstrip on the lives of wolves, wombats or voles and I would be in the front row. But turn the discussion to the biological/chemicals properties that cause wolves, wombats and voles to be who and what they are and I would look for an escape route!
Chemistry, in particular, makes no sense to me whatsoever. All I see are a bunch of random numbers and letters on a page. Give me a formula to work out and it simply doesn't compute. This is as true today as it was in 5th grade. For whatever reason, it all seems like gibberish to me.
With this long preface in mind, I am finding the book Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief by Lewis Wolpert a most interesting read! While the author has not discussed any specific chemical formulas thus far, some of the evolutionary theories broached have been quite fascinating. One of these has to do with the origins of the brain.
As Wolpert tells it, the brain is derived from the evolutionary rise of movement in cells.
Movement was present in our ancestral cells which gave rise to multicellular organisms some 3,000,000,000 years ago...This movement was a great advantage in finding food, dispersal to new sites, and escape from predators. A key point is that the protein molecules that produced these movements are the precursors of muscle cells.He goes on to state that the brain evolved to coordinate the movements of muscles, to "excite muscles in the right order." As life continued to evolve, it became necessary to "perceive the nature of the environment in order to decide when and where to move." In time, senses were developed -- sight, smell, hearing, touch -- to help filter the information.
He sums up this section,
There is no human or animal emotion that is not ultimately expressed as movement; in fact the argument is somewhat circular, for what else is human behavior?He has a point. When something appeals to us emotionally, we say the words, music, art, event or thought has MOVED us. It has taken us from one point of consciousness to the other. We started in one place and found ourselves transported somewhere else.
Maybe science ain't so bad after all!!
i love biology :) i find it extremely fascinating. right now i'm reading a book about the human brain, written for a layperson in a non-scientific format, and it's really captivating. i was the kid in biology class who got excited when we studied cellular nucleoles... lol
ReplyDeleteI don't even know what a "nucleoles" is! :-D
ReplyDeleteI visited a philosopher friend recently (philosophy of science)and he introduced me to a book on a 'philosophy of cybernetics' (if I remember the title rightly). This was written by a medical scientist of the human brain. I had only time to briefly scan page one of the introduction but one simple line left a lasting impression: "I am a materialist and thus believe the the brain is the mind." This is a common enough belief, I suppose, but it affected me greatly and I said to myself: "Whatever philosophy of life I grow, it must be in theoretical harmony with even this." Not-knowing, having no answers of a metaphysical nature, throws one back always to "the sage's only map", "The Radiance of Drift and Doubt." To the extent that this radical materialism bothers me, I cling to belief and 'hope'.
ReplyDeleteA couple of other thots:
ReplyDeleteRegarding "moving" as what defines life: "Before I find what moves me into activity, it is myself that is full and real. But as soon as I find what moves me, it turns out that 'myself' has never begun to exist." (Z-z, Chap.4; Ziporyn, p. 27.) Z-z seems to see 'movement' as the most fundamental expression of the Mystery. His way is to go with the flow of that primal movement, rather than to attempt to impose a movement upon it.
In this same vein, he invites Huizi's criticism by suggesting that the sage does not "have the charactreristic inclinations of a human being." (Z-z, Chap. 5; Ziporyn, p. 38) These 'inclinations' are emotions arising from 'likes and dislikes', that is, movements whose origin is other than the primal movement.