Science thoughts 2013-

The End of the Certain World. Jan 2018.  'Archaeology of Mind' - 2017.  Evolutionary Forces - 2016.  Alexander von Humboldt.  Plant Intelligence.  Planet of the Bugs - 2015.  Random evolution?   Survival & traditions.   Levels & paradox.  'Discipline' to display prowess.  Rarities.  Why is falling funny?  Serial killer sadism in popular thrillers.  'What is Life?'  Animal grooming . The food industry, bad eating habits and obesity.   

(Newest articles come first, older ones follow on...)
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The End of the Certain World. Jan 2018: Recently a cousin told me that Google’s ‘Doodle of the Day’ had just celebrated my maternal grandfather, the quantum physicist Max Born (1882-1970). A pioneer in quantum mechanics, Born  belatedly won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1954 for his much earlier fundamental research in Quantum Mechanics, especially in the statistical interpretation of the wave function. He is well-known for his 'Born Rule,' a quantum theory that uses mathematical probability to predict the location of wave particles in a quantum system. The Born rule provides a link between the mathematical formalism of quantum theory and experiment, and as such is almost single-handedly responsible for practically all predictions of quantum physics. Born, along with fellow German scientist Fritz Haber, formulated the Born–Haber cycle, that calculates lattice energy or the energy needed to form a crystal from infinitely-separated ions. His other notable works include Born–Oppenheimer approximation, the assumption that the motion of atomic nuclei and electrons in a molecule can be separated, and Born-von Karman boundary condition which imposes the restriction that a wave function must be periodic on a certain Bravais lattice. (Physicas facts from an associated ‘The Hindu’ article) He had a life-long friendship with Einstein and their letters have been published. He also has an excellent biography, ‘The End of the Certain World’ by Nancy Greenspan, which contains a photo of me and my twin sister as babies... 

'Archaeology of Mind'.  Jan 2017

I have just read an eye-opening book, ‘The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary origins of human emotions’ by Jaak  Panksepp, 2012. Panksepp, a neuroscientist and psychobiologist working primarily with animals, coined the term 'affective neuroscience', the name for the field that studies the neural mechanisms of emotion. Modern work on human/mammalian and other animal minds/brains shows that they have evolved emotional hierarchies. The primary emotions are created and governed by the oldest evolutionary area of the brain and form the fundamental level. These can then be controlled and modified by more recently evolved structures such as the amygdala, forming the next level up and giving more social and emotional control and variation (such as shame, jealousy, vengefulness). Then humans have a top layer of intelligence and self-consciousness created by our most recently evolved brain areas, allowing a further level of control of, and detachment from, the emotions below.

Panksepp’s research is into the fundamental  primary emotions, that can be identified and tested neurologically. He lists them as: Seeking, Care, Panic/Grief, Rage, Fear, Lust and Play. They have been researched in mammal, birds and some reptiles; generally the behaviours resulting are rewarded by powerful brain chemicals such as dopamine. What I find so interesting is that while this list includes the raw and violent emotions we think of as occurring at this level, it also includes ones we may think of as far from primary - as sophisticated and elevated. Rage, Fear and Lust speak for themselves, though unmodified by ‘higher’ emotions they usually have a purity without punitive motivations. But see how ‘evolved’ the others can be:

- Seeking: Why any of us do anything! The desire to do, to discover, to persist that needs to happen in even the humblest creature if is to find food, evade danger and live on; but that also drives our search for knowledge and our desire for beauty and creativity.

- Care: particularly shown in the devotion of animals that raise their own and sometimes other’s young; and that we could easily call - love.

- Panic/Grief: the emotion that as well as protecting youngsters from danger, is used to generate life-long societal bonds and the need to be part of a social unit.

- Play: the desire for often rambunctious, competitive rough-housing with others of ones kind and the environment, naturally controlled by others’ willingness to join in, preventing it degenerating into real violence or unpleasant control. It also turns out that many other mammals beside humans have primary laugh reflexes with enjoyable ‘tickle’ areas! Play is possibly also a daytime equivalent of dreaming, allowing integration of new events.

Evolutionary Forces. Oct 2016

New Scientist recently had an article on the latest discoveries and ideas on evolutionary forces, including many adaptations beyond the crude ‘selfish gene’ concept. I have been deeply dissatisfied with the latter approach for 30 years or more (and I can’t be the only one), so it is most refreshing to see straight science moving in this subtler (almost Lamarckian!) direction, without being labelled Creationist... I was moved to send NI the following letter, published 22 Oct 2016 as 'Evolutionary forces may evolve too':

‘Is it not likely that evolutionary forces are themselves also subject to evolutionary forces? After all, anything that gives living organisms the edge in survival will be prioritised, and that would include any improvements on the purely ‘blind chance’ method of generating adaptive variations, as discussed in your article, ‘Evolution Evolves’ dated  24 Sept 2016.’

Alexander von Humboldt

I recently read the new biography of pioneering naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769  1859) by Andrea Wulf. His many striking contributions included:

Pioneering the ‘web of Nature’ approach which underlies modern environmental thinking, in which living organisms from large to microscopic are seen to contribute to an integrated whole. He studied and understood that deforestation, monoculture and overuse of natural water sources by man, were harmful to soils, living things and the climate; and that man had already been using these harmful practices for millennia and had consequently permanently altered much of the globe for the worse. He also forecast that overuse of fossil fuels would detrimentally alter climate.

Humboldt also seems to have been the first person to notice how flora and fauna change as one goes further towards the poles, in a similar way to how they change as one climbs a mountain, so there are zones of types affected by climate/temperature.

He observed the similarities of some species in both Africa and South America, and suggested the idea that separate continents might have been joined in the past – a forerunner of tectonic plate theory. This was helped by his suggestions that a continuous area of molten rock within the earth created volcanic events that were linked, and formed major geological features.

He wrote the first ‘popular science’ books. He held the first international inter-disciplinary scientific conference.

He had a huge influence on many other scientists, artists and thinkers, including the geologist Lyell, Darwin, and members of the Romantic movement like Coleridge.

He promoted the idea that indigenous people were not savages but had their own rich history, languages and culture. He campaigned against slavery his whole life, and encouraged democratic movements wherever he could.

He was incredibly famous in his lifetime and for subsequent decades, but if almost forgotten now except for the many geographical features named after him...

Plant Intelligence

 From an online précis by Mark Berkoff PhD, writer on animal emotions)

Charles Darwin was the first to seriously question Aristotelian ideas that plants don't have the stuff of life that animates us and other animals, simply because they don't move. One of his books, published in 1880, was provocatively titled The Power of Movement in Plants. But despite this patronage, plants didn't catch the fancy of biologists pondering intelligent life for more than a century.

However in the past decade, researchers have been making the case for taking plants more seriously. They are finding that plants have a sophisticated awareness of their environment and of each other, and can communicate what they sense. There is also evidence that plants have memory, can integrate massive amounts of information and maybe pay attention. Some botanists argue that they are intelligent beings, with a 'neurobiology' all of their own. There's even tentative talk of plant consciousness.

There's also what researchers call "underground intelligence”: A root is a complex assemblage. There's the root cap, which protects the root as it navigates through soil, but also senses a wide range of physical properties, such as gravity, humidity, light, oxygen and nutrients. Behind this is the meristem, a region of rapidly dividing cells. Further back is the elongation zone, where cells grow in length, allowing the root to lengthen and bend. And between the meristem and the elongation zone is a curious region called the transition zone - traditionally, it was thought to have no purpose, but researchers think it is actually the nerve centre of the plant.

While there is some skepticism about just "who" plants are and what they are capable of knowing and feeling, even the skeptics don't dispute that plants are extremely aware of their environment, and are able to process and integrate information in sophisticated ways. In fact, a plant's awareness of its environment is often keener than an animal's precisely because plants cannot flee from danger and so must sense and adapt to it. Research also shows that plants see light and have a sense of smell, taste, touch, and hearing.  

Planet of the Bugs

Earlier this year I read a newly-published book about insects called 'Planet of the Bugs: evolution & the rise of insects', by Scott Richard Shaw (professor of entomology, Wyoming). I found it so interesting that I did a precis of its most arresting points. Re-reading this recently, I thought some other people might enjoy it so I copy it below:

·         If insects became extinct, ‘the terrestrial environment would collapse into chaos’.

·         Less than 1% of insect species are significant pests. Also by stressing over-vigorous plants they allow more species to coexist in smaller spaces.

·         Most plant-feeding insects are food sources for other wildlife, & a fundamental, nutritious source for vertebrate species including humans.

·         They adapt to most extreme conditions on earth. One fly’s dehydrated larvae can tolerate  immersion in boiling water and liquid helium.

·         They can feed on and metabolise plants highly toxic to vertebrates.

·         They quickly evolve resistance – despite our best attempts we have not exterminated a single species.

·         They innovated complex metamorphosis which is an outstandingly efficient form of development and gives youngsters a very protected well-nourished start, which can ride out environmental changes and catastrophes. Youngsters don’t compete for food with adults.

·         In the Cambrian the first multicellular animals lost little time in evolving structural support and protective gear: cuticles, skeletons and shells appeared in only 5 my.

·         As atmospheric oxygen levels rose, potential oxygen toxicity drove cells into clusters for safety, and aerobic respiration drove greater activity.

·         The Cambrian continental drift rate was apparently 10x faster than now – which reconfigured earth rapidly, with land masses nearer the poles which stabilised climate, and provided more shorelines, habitats etc. Also the Earth span faster, the Moon was closer, and higher tides caused rapid pulses of nutrient flow.

·         Early shelly animals built portable hard parts be secreting waste products that solidified.

·         By the Silurian the first land animals evolved (arthropods etc.).

·         Plants couldn’t survive on land till an ozone layer developed, and they had developed structural supports: by the late Silurian they had evolved lignin and cellulose.

·         Contrary to conventional wisdom, animals may have moved ashore long before the plants, and in order to move ashore the plants needed the animal communities to prepare the soil.

·         Insects evolved six-legged locomotion which is the most stable, efficient and quickest.

·         During the Devonian arthropods got smaller – they were thus less easily predated, could take advantage of safe mossy-type micro-environments, could breathe directly through their cuticles, grow & reproduce faster, and needed fewer resources for survival. They also survived the first forest fires!

·         Springtails survive extreme conditions – some have glycol antifreeze in their blood and are the only hexapods known to live along Antarctic shorelines. Some survive dessicating deserts, & can dry out and rehydrate when it rains.

·         327ma during the Carboniferous, wings evolved (possibly as solar panels) and rapidly expanded. They were one of the great innovations that kept insects ahead.

·         In the late Carboniferous, wood roaches evolved a symbiotic relationship with their gut microorganisms and became the first macro-consumers of dead wood. Also plant-rotting fungi and other soil-creating and -recycling microorganisms steadily developed - hence we would never again see coal laid down in such abundance.

·         It appears that though the end-Permian extinction massacred life in the oceans, insects living in freshwater pools and streams found adequate sanctuary.

·         Great arthropod innovations during the Permian period included homopteran piercing-sucking mouthpart design; complete metamorphosis; and silk-spinning which let aquatic insects inhabit many diverse micro-habitats. They also learned to live in fast-moving streams.

·         The Triassic saw the rise of the wasp family with saw-like oviposters to place young deep inside plant tissues; which would also become the tool for parasitism and stings. This family would give rise to the social insects (bees, ants and social wasps – see below). The two largest wasp groups each contain more species than all the vertebrates combined!

·         During the Jurassic, wasps learnt to disable a hosts’ immune systems using viruses, so enabling them to parasitise live hosts; and saw the rise of termites, the first social insects.

·         The Cretaceous saw the development of angiosperms with flowers and fruit, pollen and nectar, and new symbiotic relationships and developments with the insect world. This enabled plant species to spread much further, faster.

·         In the late Cretaceous, moths and butterflies developed with their innovation of the caterpillar; and the bees, ants and social wasps arose.

Random evolution?

I am suspicious of the emphasis put on the necessity for randomness to be a key driver in biological evolutionary selection, by many scientists of a neo-Darwinist bent. It seems more likely that evolution will inherently favour any means to make more ‘successful’ selections, and therefore will favour more focussed or 'intelligent' selections which lead to quicker and more efficient evolutionary pathways. Therefore evolution will often favour the least random pathway available.

I suspect the subtext is modern science’s fear of theories that might suggest Intelligent Design / Creationism, bringing God in by the back door...

Survival & traditions

Complex living creatures develop 'traditions': complex forms of interaction with each other and their environment, that form the basis for their successful survival. These are generally embedded as instincts as well as taught/learnt behaviours.

Humans, being the supple, subtle creatures they are, transcend most instincts and have invented their own successful survival traditions over the millennia, in a multiplicity of ways. In each tribe or culture's case it truly has been a matter of life or death that these traditions were adhered to; so the  impulse has always been to reify their particular strategies into a religion.

It is easy for modern people to disrespect this. Our science/industrial-based development strategies have made it so easy for us to survive and flourish that we forget how marginal survival used to be, and how hard human groups had to work to literally ensure ‘the survival of the species’.

Levels & paradox

E O Wilson’s book ‘Sociobiology’ points out how all complex living creatures necessarily function at different levels – typically the individual, the family and group, and the wider world - and these levels are often not sympathetic to each other. There is contradiction inherent in everyday living, whether we be insect,  hyena or human, and there is no ideal unconflicted ‘natural’ way of being – even baboons suffer from depression. So it is with us: we try and thread our way through the conflicts between our desire to express ourselves as an individual, conform to the needs of family and society, and find some position in – and relationship to - the wider world.

Traditional societies often prioritise family/group needs above all others. Modern Western societies often prioritise the individual. Philosophical and spiritual traditions may ask people to look at the wider world – at the importance of other creations besides humanity, for instance, or the marvel of creation itself.

But every level has its value, every level has its issues. ‘Trust in Allah and tie your camel’. Respect other positions and strive for the biggest picture.

'Discipline' to display prowess

 It is well understood how animals use extremes of development to display their superiority in the mating game – biggest antlers, biggest peacock tail etc. - and that it's the very handicapping quality of these extremes that proves their superiority - only the best can function well while suffering such a physical disadvantage.

 It seems to me that  anthropologically, human clans have used similar tactics, but to display their group superiority to other clans; and psychologically, through the discipline of their members. Different cultures have imposed different disciplines; for instance, physical distortions and mutilations, or behavioural prescriptions and proscriptions. But the point is – make it extreme to show how superior you are!

Rarities

I only recently learned that some natural British beauties I had quite taken for granted, were in fact rare in a wider context. For instance, the wonder of a bluebell wood is only found in northern Europe, with Britain containing more than half of the world population of the Common Bluebell with its lightly-scented, hanging blue flowers that can create one continuous carpet in Spring woodlands. And the hedgerow vine Old man's Beard - our native clematis - grows in great abundance in the West Country limestone areas where I have lived most of my life, forming spectacular displays of glowing pearly seedheads in autumn and winter  But it doesn't thrive without lime, so is rare elsewhere.

In similar fashion it has only slowly dawned on me that some animal behaviours that many of us probably assume are fairly common  (mostly because they associated with our commonest pets), are in fact extraordinarily rare. For instance:

- Cats purring: Apparently only the feline family purrs, and purring is a deeply physically therapeutic action which aids body healing and does lots of other wonderful things. Us cat lovers partake of this by proxy, lounging about with our feline friends and letting their purrs resonate through us. But how odd that no other species or family came up with this fabulous trait!

- Dogs hunting in packs: We are so used to the idea of wolves and other dog family members hunting in packs, that it's a shock to find out that it is a very rare adaptation in nature.

Why is falling funny?

 Watch 'You've been framed' and  you'll see that almost every clip involves someone falling. So why is that so hilarious to us?

Watch a dog or cat if it has unintentionally tripped or fallen – it will give a furtive look round - as though embarrassed (in an anthropomorphic view)...

My theory is that in sociobiological terms, tripping reveals weakness – you're the one the predator may be looking to pick out from the herd. So the animal looks round nervously in case it has been spotted. And even  us humans subconsciously find that a fall is loaded with similar connotations, and  perhaps bolster ourselves with laughter...

Serial killer sadism in popular thrillers

There's a horrific movement in modern thrillers, to construct the plot around sadistic violence (almost inevitably towards young women) by a serial killer/psychopath, and to keep jacking up the levels of sadism book by book. The message is clear: sadistic violence in modern society is caused by psychopaths, one-off deranged personalities outside the law.

 But what is the reality? It is that a huge percentage of modern nations have governments which routinely authorise torture. Let's put a name and a face to this: all over the world are civil servants paid and employed to go into a cell every day and torture the inmate; and then leave in the afternoon to go home to the wife and kids, eat supper and chat – 'How was your day at the office, dear?'. Far from being rogue elements, they are paid, authorised and protected by their own legal and social systems, and compared with their numbers, the numbers of active psychopaths is minute.

Does this reality ever appear in fiction or even non-fiction? Not to my knowledge. Which seems to indicate that it is a deeply shaming to us, and that we need to invent a fiction to protect us from the knowledge...

'What is Life?'

Life is the true exponent of that modern word, ‘proactive’. It is not just active as the inorganic world is: life has to create, to force, to will. Therefore one of the first things even the most basic unicellular organism must do is forecast. It can’t be passive or purely reactive. Its system must have the ability to anticipate the need to eat, for instance: hence a means of registering hunger, and a drive to search for food. This surely must include a mechanism that can (in however an abstract or mechanical way) model what might happen or needs to happen. A creature without these abilities would firstly be hungry and not register it, or secondly feel or be hungry but have no will to remedy the situation - would sit there passively till it perished.   

Science seems to gloss over or underestimate how fundamental and how extraordinary – how unlikely - these forces are. Games like ‘Life’ which have been used to try and demonstrate that life is ‘...just this’ or ‘...only that’, obscure the reality that it is the game’s inventors themselves who are supplying this necessary proactive will, behind the scenes.

Animal grooming   

We humans sometimes carry on as if we alone invented the ideas of cleanliness and hygiene, fastidiousness and disgust. But it’s deeply embedded in animal behaviour for very good reasons – keeping coats and feathers in top condition, spreading waterproofing, and especially getting rid of those pests! Almost all animals groom – you can even watch flies and bees wiping down their antennae in a most endearing fashion. And if they can’t do it themselves they get someone else to do it for them, whether of their species or another. Except of course the poor swifts who are on the wing at all times except nesting with no chance to groom, and who carry a permanent load of specialised lice which get passed on to the youngsters...

Each species will have its own version of fastidiousness and disgust/avoidance according to what it has evolved to feed on and live in, what is dangerous or toxic to it or not. When we are babies with no bowel control and no ability to avoid our own faeces, we aren’t disgusted by them! But as we get older a disgust mechanism kicks in to help us avoid this substance that can hold diseases. And then, being humans, of course we turn this emotion from its pragmatic source to all sorts or moralistic high  grounds, while the instincts surely fuel much obsessive compulsive behaviour...

The food industry, bad eating habits and obesity  
(In response to The Telegraph’s feature article, 'A poor diet is the national disease', 28.8.13) People need to 'do the maths' to understand the drivers of that sinister giant, the food industry. Nowadays it is common for morbidly obese people to be eating twice or even three times the recommended amount of food every day; of this the great majority will be unhealthy processed food and drink which has has been tailored to have addictive qualities. The younger that people start eating this type of food the stronger a grip it has on them, the more it has distorted their body's natural growth and self-regulatory abilities, and the harder it is to return to a healthier way of eating long term. Over the last 40-plus years the food industry has worked relentlessly to get individuals and families hooked on such food - emphasising convenience, increasing portion sizes and encouraging continuous snacking and grazing. The payoff is selling double or treble the amount of processed food to an individual for life - without needing to be troubled that this life may therefore be considerably shortened, and cost society a huge amount in health support. When one obese person dies prematurely, there is now an endless supply of other primed victims growing up to take their place.