Day 1 of Mechanisms of Development class highlights:
-the professor said that very little is known about what happens during fertilization. How do sperm and eggs recognize each other, connect, and fuse? It’s a black box. Many papers have been published on the subject, with each author saying, “Yes, I have it!” They’ve all been shot down. Makes me think of quantum physics and the electron, like there might be an uncertainty that isn’t just not known, but is fundamentally “unknowable” within the framework of strict materialism. But that might just be my wishing, my desire for mystery to remain intact, my belief in the fundamental unknowability of life and its origins by strict materialism, my desperation for a paradigm shift in biology that would put the life back into it.
-what we do know is that post-fertilization, there’s a huge burst in oxygen consumption and ion channels open up and ions move across the cell membrane – in and out – like crazy. Before fertilization, there’s not all that much activity. But right after, it’s like it just takes a giant breath and says “I’m alive!”
-induction is a conversation between tissues, the professor said. There is a lot of signaling between cells and tissues that influences where things will go in the developing organisms, what will do what. The cells are chatting away, saying “how about you stand over there” and “i’ll make a liver, if you make a heart”. Needless to say, I really want to learn more about this.
-In the computer lab I tried to find out more about induction, but it’s all way over my head right now. Tried to find out more about the famous Speman and Mongold experiment my professor talked about, but I couldn’t really figure it out. We’ll see.
-Lunch. Grabbed lunch at the Refectory and read more in The Self-Aware Universe. Amit Goswami is amazing. Highlights:
-p.80-81: “Many physicists today hide behind the anti-metaphysical philosophy of logical positivsm when dealing with the paradox of Schrodinger’s cat. Logical positivism is the philosophy that grew out of the Viennese philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a work in which he argued, famously, that ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.’ Following this dictum, these physicists – we may call them neo-Copenhagenists – maintain that we should confine our discussion of reality to what is seen instead of trying to assert the reality of something that we cannot observe. For them, the point is that we never see the [cat as either half-dead and half-alive]. Is the unobserved cat half-dead and half-alive? You cannot ask that question, they would say, because it cannot be answered. This, of course, is sophistry. A question that cannot be answered directly can nonetheless be approached circuitously, and its answer can be calculated on the grounds of consistency with what we can directly know. Moreover, avoiding metaphysical questions entirely is not consistent with the spirit of the original Copenhagen interpretation and the way in which Bohr and Heisenberg saw things.”
-p. 82: “Paul Dirac, one of the pioneers of quantum physics, once said that great breakthroughs in physics always involve giving up some great prejudice. Perhaps the time has come to give up the prejudice of strong objectivity. Bernard d’Espagna suggests that the objectivity permitted by quantum mechanics is weak objectivity. Instead of the observer-independence of events demanded by strong objectivity, quantum mechanics allows a certain meddling by the observer – but in such a way that the interpretation of the events does not depend on any particular observer. Thus weak objectivity is observer-invariance of events: Irrespective of who the observer is, the event remains the same.”
-Seminar on “Brotherly Love”, which dealt with male-male bonding among wild turkeys which “jointly breed with and defend females”. Highlights:
-the lecture was very interesting, well-researched, and well-presented but among my notes is written, in angry, deeply-inscribed, large capital letters, “I HATE BIOLOGY!!!” I was feeling angry, betrayed, in a sense. It’s not that I didn’t see it coming, but I was still impacted by it. “Why do males help each other” was one of the major questions of the research. It’s a fine research question within the current paradigm of social and behavioral biology. But it just makes me think that we must live in a really sick culture when cooperation is seen as the great puzzle and the great mystery, but competition is totally natural and explicable. Then there’s the question of language. From whom are females being “defended”? From other males? Sounds familiar, yes? Why is the mating male the “dominant” male?
-I just don’t know that I’m going to last long in “biology-the-modern-academic-discipline”. I’m too concerned with language and values, and I feel that my concerns are so readily dismissed, not able to be heard or taken seriously by people so steeped in their notions that they are “objective” and “neutral” that they scoff at the implication that their research expresses bias and subjectivity and culture and VALUES.
-So then I went back to the McShea lab, sat at my desk, and tried to work out this great tangle in my head that won’t let go of me. The common pathway to knowledge in science is described like this:
what is –> what we perceive –> what we know –> what we believe
The problem is – what we believe informs what we perceive. And Goswami would argue that what we perceive informs what is. And the whole idea that we assume an objective reality “out there” that can be known through our senses is a belief that defines “what is”.
another way to state it is to say that physical reality (matter, nature, what’s “out there”) helps shape humans and their experiences (since, by my assumptions, humans are a part of nature), and how we are “built” by nature to think (ooh, another big assumption) shapes our perception and our description of nature, which in turn affects our values, cultures, paradigms, and beliefs. Thing is that every one of these relationships goes the other way too (e.g. values shape perception, humans shape physical reality, etc.)
-I remembered something that Sam said to me last night: “It’s one thing to be intrigued by life, but you love it.” I can’t let it go. I refuse to let that love go.
-I’m seeing my limits within this institution, the limits put upon me, the systematic construction of ignorance that is going hand in hand with the systematic construction of knowledge. It’s not so bad, I just have to acknowledge it and be sure to get what I need from the experience.
-talked with SJ about a tutorial. I’m excited about it, and very daunted. He said, “Some people come in here and they have very specific ideas about what they want to do, and others are more general. You’re the most general I’ve had.” He also said that it would really help me to learn more about “what’s actually out there” since I haven’t taken much biology in the past. For some reason, these comments made me feel really dumb. And they were totally accurate, totally well-intentioned, absolutely free of condescension, kind-spirited, and really helpful. I guess I just have a feeling that I’m supposed to know it all already. I felt silly, naive, dumb, behind. That’s my own shit that I’ve dealt with forever. I’ll work it out.
-I went to get an invertebrate biology text book from the library, and stumbled upon an absolute treasure – a slim little hardcover called Instinctive Living by Theodore Savory, written in 1959. It really picked me up. I felt such warmth and kinship with this student of spiders. I got all teary, and felt hope and relief.
-Finished off with a DM-Lab meeting that was incredibly interesting, and provocative, and totally over-my-head all at once. And to think – if I can finally get all these ideas out of my head and just get to sleep, I get to do it all tomorrow. Goody. (I’m only being half-sarcastic. Well, maybe three-quarters.)
