REALM
Ponderment:
Life…we all delve and dwell in it and
when I say all I indeed do mean all…life. From the microorganism no larger than
1/10 the size of a human cell to the 30m/100ft blue whale, life has been going
about its business here on Earth for around 3.8 billion years. But immersed and
inundated in life every second of our life, do we truly know what it is? For
sure, as surrounded by it we take it for granted and perhaps do not fully appreciate
its essence, in particular in considering all its myriad forms.
Bacterial microbes ~ Life |
We do bestow our blessings on genetic
relations for sure, but a blade of grass is given no special attention or even
thought. Now why is that; should it not have any reserved respect for making it
into life’s fold?
Life as what we know is bound only on
this third stone from the sun we call Earth. We are stationed in one solar
system out of approximately 100 billion with our sun as one out of a collection
of 200 billion in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Further, the Milky Way is one of
upwards to 500 billion galaxies with their suns and solar systems in our
universe and that is only accounting for the ones that their emanated light has
finally reached us. The observable universe as a sphere has a radius of ~ 46
billion light years. One light year is just under 9.5 trillion kilometers or
around 6 trillion miles. Now that is much more than a hop, skip and a jump, but
throughout all that vastness, tiny Earth is the only place we know that supplies
and supports living existence.
Blue Whale ~ Life |
This is no doubt not to say life is
nowhere else, for that thinking is statistical foolish folly. It is just that
Earth so far is the only place we know of its presence.
With that said, now getting back to that
blade of grass. One blade of grass…what odds were in its favor to exist? What
odds were against it to prevail? We as an individual are much like the blade of
grass in life, for our being was in beating insurmountable odds. Let’s clarify.
For you to come into play as a part of
life, no Las Vegas gambler would have laid wager on you, for it would be a
losing venture from the start. No less though, you fooled the bettor, but here
is why he/she would have betted against you.
For you to have come into being, first
out of the billions of people, your parents had to meet and become intimate in
one particular romantic passage. Any other moment in time...to be…you would have
failed. From your father, out of the millions of sperm cell haploids competing,
only the precise one had to enter one particular egg gamete your mother had
dropped from the thousands in her ovaries onto her uterus. The two cells fused
into a zygote that later becomes uniquely you.
That is amazing in itself, but still,
considering that your mother’s parents and your father’s parents had to do the
same act at the right moment and so on with your great grandparents,
great-great grandparents and great-great-great grandparents on down the line
had to be punctilious as well. You are indeed an authentic prodigy in beating the
odds to exist in life and no less…here you are…
Perhaps with this in mind, the
commonality we are exposed to daily and what we perceive in our human environs,
we should take a little more note and not allow the mundane ever day thoughts
supersede the knowledge in knowing what each and every one of us are…true
miracles.
And yes, even that blade of grass is as
well, as the phenomenon of life transcends into all its myriad forms as a
rarity.
Evolutionary
My Dear Watson:
What makes us so special that we want to
exclude ourselves from the rest of life forms trumping us up as Mother
Superior? We came up with deities to stroke our superiority over the beasts of
the field, the feathered fowl of the air and swimming creatures from the deep.
We have tendencies to concentrate on the few differences rather than admitting
all the similarities between us and other animal clades.
In an environment, all animal species
possess unique strategies in surviving the conditions they’ve been offered by
Mama Nature. Where one group utilizes efficacies in stronger than average
senses such as sight and smell along with nimble swiftness, another goes for
brute strength. Examples are the gazelle and rhinoceros. Man does not possess
exceptional senses, nor is he powerfully built when compared to the rest of the
animal mass. No, for his continued survival, man’s conditioned strategies went
for intelligence.
Our brain is a true wonderment. Although
except for size when compared to the species’ size, our brain is not much
different from other mammal species and in particular other primates.
Our brain’s origins have a very
primitive source of 505 million years ago. We have coelenterates to be thankful
for our minds’ humble beginnings. The jellyfish has no true brain to speak of,
but it for the first time (in the fossil record anyway) was the animal to
develop a nervous system. Jelly fish possess a ‘nerve net’ agglomeration and
along with ganglion-like structures formed the first nervous system; a
precursor to a brain. This message system, though slow seemed to work, so it
was passed on and modified.
From the jellyfish’s ‘nerve net,’ placoderms
were the first fish to expound on it 430 million years ago by developing a brainstem
and a telencephalon which is the embryonic stage from which the mature
cerebellum develops. By the time the first amphibians arose 370 million years
ago, a collective brain composed of a forebrain, midbrain, hindbrain, cerebellum,
and cerebrum, had made an appearance.
When reptiles arose 312 million years
ago, the amphibian brain came along with the package, but was festooned and
broadened. The reptile brain is called the ‘triune brain’ and in evolution is
the model of all mammalian brains. In mammals the reptile’s paleomammalian and
neomammalian regions were improved upon with a neocortex, along with the
enhancement of the amygdala, occipital condyles and temporal lobe. Further in
primates, complex social characteristics were added to the function of the
brain.
Essentially the lizard brain is our old
brain. However, though mammalian brains are an improved version of the reptiles,
since the basal ganglia are found in the forebrains of all vertebrates, the
evolutionary ancestor to all reptile and mammal brains dates back to a common
ancestor of around 500 million years ago.
For the reptile, everything is recorded
pretty much in black and white in the ‘triune brain’ and never is the situation
the fault of the brain’s owner. The reptile is capable of primal judgment in
which our brain inherited. A lizard can determine to be aware of an event or to
trust or not trust another species encounter. Humans borrowed from the reptilian brainstem the ‘fight or flight’ experience with no conscious effort involved.
That is why we jump when we’re suddenly scared. No mindful thought came into
play; it was merely a response reaction to survival.
Central
Intelligence:
In going the intelligent route, there
were and are consequences. With face to face encounters, our primitive ancestors
had no advantage when confronted with a predator. He/she could not run as fast,
climb as fast and was not stronger. There are a few hominid fossil remains that
bear this out with predator teeth scrapings and punctures on the fossilized
bones. But with the pursuance of intelligence, once man learned to fashion
tools then weaponry, the odds turned more favorable.
This intelligence thing seemed to be
working out as various hominin species (the human clade) in the Australopithecus,
Homo habilis, Homo ergaster and Homo erectus began radiating out. But alas,
there were physiological disadvantages in further developing intelligence.
In order to have increased intelligence,
the size of the brain accordingly had to be increased. With a larger brain, the
housing had to be enlarged that led to a bigger head and skull. To support that
big head, a broader shoulder base had to evolve.
With all these enlarged head and
shoulder girth adaptations to increase intelligence, it played havoc on the
female in childbirth. Her body had to commit to some serious sexual dimorphism
if she and her infant were going to survive birth. By the time Homo habilis
showed up, the pubic area was rearranged being lowered with refashioned pelvic
bones ushering in the ability to unhinge during delivery. The birth canal had
changed from a shallow bony ring to a deep curved tube. In addition, once a
successful birth occurred, the infant’s brain was still in a fetal state so needed far more time to mature, causing the mother to devote more time to the
helpless infant and toddler’s needs.
This was a dangerous circumstance living
in the wilds. So to ensure her mate stuck around to provide and defend while
she nurtured the hapless child, along with other strategies, she also developed
breasts and gave up estrus cycles to be receptive year round enticing the male
to stay.
We may think that with all those long
legs and neck, a giraffe birth would be far more difficult, but not so…human
birth is the most difficult of all mammalian births. The human female body
cannot forgo much more dimorphism to accommodate a still enlarging brain.
Many elements came into play to nurture
our intelligence such as a taller slender upright frame and opposable thumbs as
genetically induced, while the taming of fire was a learned behavior. But once
again greater intelligent premiums were at a cost, for our brain consumes 20%
of our entire caloric intake.
In the human brain’s evolved development
and current architecture, as simplified but explained above, in using Charles
Darwin’s phrase, our brain is a classic case of, “descent with modification.”
B’have
Yoreself Ya Hear:
As ya see, our brain is not so special a
deified gift after all, for the main components have been borrowed from older animal
life lineages and simply embellished upon.
Most mammals feel emotion and pain,
something we thought scientifically was not so just a little over a hundred
years ago. Some arrogant individuals today still insist this is so…the ignoramuses.
Other animals besides ourselves not only feel, they can reason to cause and
effect, exhibit cognitive thinking, show empathy/remorse behaviors and utilize
conscious decision making. About the only thing our brain affords us that other
animal brains do not afford them is the faculty of conceptualization, or in
simpler terms…imagination.
Through all this intelligence
evolvement, it is the ability to wholly cycle image formation that makes us
stand out from the rest of the animal world. Although on the point that one
considers dreaming as a form of imagining, one could give a credible argument
that other animals indeed do exhibit imagination as all mammals dream, even the
little mouse.
With dreaming aside, in the ability to
form new images in the mind that have not been previously expressed or
experienced as au courant cognizance, imagination has aided us in our wits,
which has been a huge and successful survival tactic.
Most other animals cannot adapt to
sudden change and is one of the major concerns in climate change. A yak with
small ears, a heavy long coat of hair covering dense wooly fur underneath is
specially adapted for the extremely cold climate of the Himalayans where it
makes its home. Put the yak in the desert and it dies. The same goes for the Gila
monster. Put this lizard away from his desert home into the Himalayans and it
dies.
Man is a naked animal with virtually no
protection from climatic elements, but our wits have allowed us to adapt to
virtually any environment. This is not a genetic solution, but an imaginative learned
one. Where it is cold, through wit, we clothed ourselves. Where it is hot, we
stayed cool by stripping off clothing. In both climates we built shelters to
accommodate.
Without the imaginative wit edge, we
could not accomplish this. Still though, sometimes our wits elude us. Captain Sir
John Franklin’s 1845 expedition to seek the Northwest Passage in the Arctic ended
in despair with all crewmen eventually perishing. They could not gather their
wits and survive the hostile environmental conditions. Ironically, only a few
miles from one of the doomed crew’s camping sites, there was an Inuit village
that did quite well in the same environment due to learned wits.
Man also seems at times to want to leave
his valuable imaginative knowledge behind and instead resort to a more
primitive urging in aggression. There assuredly are isolated cases of animal
species killing other species or their own kind without provocation or need of
food, but not to the extent of man in his endless warfare endeavors. What other
animal do you know of that declares war?
Any human society harbors a lurid and
sordid few individuals that actually enjoy killing. Although there are
exceptions in other animal species to wantonly kill such as a male lion killing
a lioness’ cubs to make her receive him sexually, or sanguinary ants enslaving
other ant species to perform work, no other species, except for man and the
common chimp kill for pleasure. Yes on rare instances, it has been observed in
the wilds of chimpanzees gaining up on one they don’t like and killing him, but
that appears to be an everyday occurrence with man.
America, God bless her, likes to portray herself as a peaceful nation, but yet its military firepower budget costs more
than the next ten other countries’ defense budgets combined.
Currently, Russia has no business
intervening militarily into sovereign Ukraine, but then again America has no
business in issuing threats to Russia if it does. Ukraine is Russia’s neighbor.
If the inverse were occurring in Mexico, a U.S. neighbor, would we receive
warmly, Russia’s demands that we stay out of Mexico?
Let’s get back to imagining how we can
all get along.
The
Final Slack:
What came first…matter or energy? Just
like the chicken and egg scenario this is an easy one; it is energy that came
first. In the beginning, energy was the universe until mass energy equivalence
allowed the Higgs boson, a sub-atomic but scalar particle to endow energy with
mass converting it into matter. This makes energy and matter intimately
related. In fact as explained by E=mc2,
anyone adding 25 kilowatt hours of energy to an object (matter) that matter
increases its mass (weight) by one microgram. This role can also be reversed as
again explained in Einstein’s famous equation where units of mass from matter
can be converted back to energy states.
The Higgs field is made up of Higgs
bosons and even though Higgs bosons have mass, even heavy mass as far as
sub-atomic particles go, the Higgs field is massless. But, this field is
continuous as the bosons rapidly decay. We along with the rest of the universe
all live inside the Higgs field for it is the quality of physical existence. As
such, the colloquial name tag for the Higgs boson is the ‘God particle.’
There we have it; the physical existence
of all is only due to the Higgs boson, but there’s a conundrum that belies this
exotic manifest; at least for me anyway.
Encoded information…what is that…its effects are physical and it certainly isn’t spiritual although its results
remarkably are. What I’m speaking of here is the encoded information in that
tiny seed that when conditions are right the tiny seed’s info carried out will
result in one magnificent tall tree.
That encoded information is not matter,
it is not energy whether potential or kinetic and it is certainly not some
spirit directing the construction of the tree. Yet that info resurrects energy, mass and matter from seed to tree.
I’ll let ya figure that one out and once
ya do, get back to me ya hear…
P.S. Just to let ya know, the egg came
first.
BJA
Philosophical
Notion
03/01/2014
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