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Thursday, December 5, 2013

DNA from ancient site in Spain reshapes human family tree

 

  
400,000-year-old keleton from Spain, from news.nationalgeographic.com
400,000-year-old hominid from Spain, news.nationalgeographic.com
Six weeks ago I suggested that 2013 was already the breakthrough year for molecular anthropology, but 2013 is ending with yet another highlight. Yesterday, Nature published a stop-you-in-your tracks piece that scrambles the scientific picture of our ancient relatives.  The world-leading Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany successfully sequenced the mitochondrial genome of a 400,000 year-old ancient human from Spain. The DNA suggests the specimen was maternally related to Denisovans, rather than Neanderthals, which leaves anthropologists puzzled and may be shifting branches around in the human family tree
Denisovan tooth
Denisovan tooth, from www.genographic.com
The term Denisovan, distinct to both modern humans and Neanderthals, was coined just three years ago based on some limited tooth morphology, but predominantly on the distinct DNA sequenced from a 41,000 year-old toe bone found in central Asia. Since then, anthropologists have theorized that Denisovans were contemporary Asian “cousins” to Neanderthals found in Europe and the Middle East, and to modern humans who were already living throughout Africa and were venturing out of the continent for the first time 10,000 years earlier.
Wilma the Neanderthal, by Becky Hale.
Wilma the Neanderthal, by Becky Hale.
That was the accepted story guiding anthropologists just last month.  Now the story has changed and we are scrambling to come up with a new narrative. Is this a different species ancestral to Denisovan, but not Neanderthals? Were there two movements out of Africa before the third and final migration that Homo sapiens took in the last 50,000 years? How many different species of hominids lived in Europe, Africa and Asia in the Pleistocene? And since these beings surely interbred, can we even call them separate species? When the dust settles, a new story of human ancestry will have surely emerged. What do you think was happening back then?
Our Universe Could be One Of Billions, Paper Explains
by on September 22, 2013
Scientists believe they have found the first evidence that other universes exist after analyzing the data gathered by the European Space Agency’s Planck spacecraft.
Theories that our universe could be just one of billions — perhaps an infinite number – have been discussed for decades but until now they have lacked any evidence.
However, a few weeks ago, scientists published a new map of the cosmic microwave background – the ‘radiation’ left behind after the Big Bang that created the universe 13.8 billion years ago.
The map, based on Planck data, showed anomalies in the background radiation that, some experts say, could only have been caused by the gravitational pull of other universes outside our own.
Planck and the cosmic microwave background
Planck spacecraft and the cosmic microwave background.
Credit: ESA
http://spaceinimages.esa.int/Images/2013/03/Planck_and_the_Cosmic_microwave_background
“These anomalies were caused by other universes pulling on our universe as it formed during the Big Bang,” said Laura Mersini-Houghton, a theoretical physicist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“They are the first hard evidence for the existence of other universes that we have seen,” she said.
Mersini-Houghton, and her colleague Professor Richard Holman, at Carnegie Mellon University, published a series of papers from 2005 predicting what Planck would see.
In particular, they predicted that the ancient radiation permeating our universe would show anomalies generated by the pull from other universes.
The scientists analysing the Planck data have now published a paper acknowledging the anomalies exist and cannot be explained by conventional means.
“It may be that the statistical anomalies described in this paper are a hint of more profound physical phenomena that are yet to be revealed,” it said.
Planck gathered radiation from when the universe was just 3,700,000 years old – still glowing from the Big Bang. It has been travelling across space for 13.8 billion years and so is remarkably faint but still detectable.
In theory, that radiation should vary a little on the scale of galaxies and clusters of galaxies, but at much larger scales it should be evenly distributed.
Planck’s data showed the radiation is stronger in one half of the sky than the other. There is also a large ‘cold’ spot where the temperature is below average.
George Efstathiou, professor of astrophysics at Cambridge, who co-authored the papers setting out the Planck findings, said the suggestion that the data offered evidence for other universes was speculative but “very interesting”.
“Such ideas may sound wacky now, just like the Big Bang theory did three generations ago. But then we got evidence and now it has changed the whole way we think about the universe,” he said.

Can Synesthesia in Autism Lead to Savantism?

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Can Synesthesia in Autism Lead to Savantism?



Credit: Flickr/Andy Maguire
Daniel Tammet has memorized Pi to the 22,514th digit. He speaks ten different languages, including one of his own invention, and he can multiply enormous sums in his head within a matter of seconds. However, he is unable to hold down a standard 9-to-5 job, in part due to his obsessive adherence to ritual, down to the precise times he has his tea every day.
Daniel is a savant. He is also autistic. And he is a synesthete.
Daniel experiences numbers as having color, as well as shape and texture. This helps him perform amazing mathematical feats seemingly without effort, the answer simply materializing to him rather than having to calculate it out.
In an interview he gave with The Guardian, Daniel explained, “When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges. That’s the answer. It’s mental imagery. It’s like maths without having to think.”
Clearly this man has an extraordinary brain. However, Daniel is perhaps not entirely unique, and it appears that the link between autism and synesthesia is more common than originally thought. This suggests that there is a potential common mechanism between these two conditions, which may even help to explain some of Daniel’s special savant abilities.
A new study published in the journal Molecular Autism from a team of researchers at the University of Cambridge now empirically shows that there is an almost three-fold higher occurrence of synesthesia in individuals with autism (18.9%), compared with that of the general population (7.2%). This increased prevalence implies that there is indeed a significant link between autism and synesthesia.
Synesthesia can be thought of as a crossing of the senses, where one perceptual experience is accompanied by another unrelated one. For example, individuals with sound-color synesthesia experience visions and sensations of color in harmony with hearing music. In a similar (and the most common) rendition, grapheme-color, letters and numbers are perceived as having their own unique shade.
While at first seemingly unrelated, if you look closer at what is happening in the brain in both autism and synesthesia this overlap is not so surprising. Each condition is thought to at least partly stem from abnormalities in the way the brain is wired.  For example, white matter tracts connecting different parts of the brain – shooting signals across regions and hemispheres – have been shown to be increased in both conditions.
While some of these connections traverse the entire brain, traveling from the frontal cortex back to the occipital lobe, others work more locally, connecting adjacent regions and sending information quickly back and forth. In autism, there is an increased volume of these short-distance white matter connections, either due to a proliferation of synaptogenesis (the creation of new connections), or a failure in the pruning out of these synaptic connections during childhood. Individuals with synesthesia also show a greater density of white matter, particularly in sensory regions implicated in the condition. In individuals with grapheme-color synesthesia, for instance, there is greater connection between visual area four, the region responsible for color perception, and the eponymous visual word-form area.
It has also been suggested that this increased white matter integrity and synesthetic ability may be behind the extraordinary faculty of individuals like Daniel who show signs of autistic savantism. One theory that has been proposed is that synesthesia may help people to better recall memories as they can tap into an automatic mnemonic device via their multiple sensory experiences – i.e. being able to rely on both visual and numeric memory when trying to remember a string of numbers.
However, while there is already an established link between autism and savantism, no such studies have been conducted on superior memory in people with synesthesia. Also, it should be noted that many savants do not report any presence of synesthesia, and certainly there are many synesthetes without any hint of superior memory or savantism. In fact, even I have traces of synesthesia, experiencing sensations of color in combination with days of the week, and I’ve certainly yet to experience any hint of enhanced cognitive ability.
So it looks like Daniel Tammet’s crown as the European champion for reciting Pi is safe for now. And certainly his method is unique – the current world leader, Chinese student Lu Chao, recited 67,890 digits of the number relying solely on ancient Chinese rote memorization techniques.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Carbon-dioxide levels are at their highest point in at least 800,000 years

Posted by Brad Plumer on May 8, 2013 at 11:21 am


Since 1956, the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii has been gathering data on how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere — a very basic measure of how humans are transforming the planet and setting the stage for future climate change.
The so-called Keeling Curve is attracting even more attention than usual this month, as the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is on the verge of hitting 400 parts per million, a new milestone (the readings hit 399.71 on Tuesday):
mlo_full_record
Notice that the curve is jagged. As humans keep burning fossil fuels, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has trended upward over time. But there are still seasonal fluctuations. When trees in the Northern Hemisphere bloom in the spring and summer, they absorb some of that carbon. When the leaves wilt in the winter, carbon returns to the air and readings spike. The curve is a record of the planet's breathing.
As such, even if Mauna Loa does register levels above 400 parts per million this May, it will prove temporary. The readings will drop again this summer by a few parts per million, and it will likely be a few years before levels remain above 400 ppm all year.
But in an important sense, this year's milestone is beside the point. For decades now, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have higher than at any point in the last 800,000 years — a fact scientists discovered by analyzing ancient air bubbles trapped in ice cores:
co2_800k
In fact, even that's probably an understatement. Recent studies have estimated that current levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are at their highest levels since the Pliocene, the geologic era between five million and three million years ago. Here's a description of that era from the University of California, San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography:
Recent estimates suggest CO2 levels reached as much as 415 parts per million (ppm) during the Pliocene. With that came global average temperatures that eventually reached 3 or 4 degrees C (5.4-7.2 degrees F) higher than today’s and as much as 10 degrees C (18 degrees F) warmer at the poles. Sea level ranged between five and 40 meters (16 to 131 feet) higher than today.
The Pliocene is not strictly comparable to our current era, and there are still questions about why that period was as warm as it was, but it's thought to be a useful historical guide. Here's a little more detail about what conditions were like at the time:
As for what life was like then, scientists rely on fossil records to recreate where plants and animals lived and in what quantity. Pliocene fossil records show that the climate was generally warmer and wetter than today. ...
The absence of significant ocean upwelling in the warmest part of the Pliocene would have suppressed fisheries along the west coasts of the Americas, and deprived seabirds and marine mammals of food supplies.  Reef corals suffered a major extinction during the peak of Pliocene warmth but reefs themselves did not disappear.
Keep in mind, too, that the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide during the Pliocene era was a very gradual process over many thousands of years, caused by subtle changes in the Earth's orbit. Today, carbon dioxide is rising much more rapidly, largely due to fossil-fuel burning and land-use changes. Climatologists argue that speed will make a big difference:
Richard Norris, a geologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, said the concentration of CO2 is one means of comparison, but what is not comparable, and more significant, is the speed at which 400 ppm is being surpassed today.
“I think it is likely that all these ecosystem changes could recur, even though the time scales for the Pliocene warmth are different than the present,” Norris said.  “The main lagging indicator is likely to be sea level just because it takes a long time to heat the ocean and a long time to melt ice. But our dumping of heat and CO2 into the ocean is like making investments in a pollution ‘bank,’ since we can put heat and CO2 in the ocean, but we will only extract the results (more sea-level rise from thermal expansion and more acidification) over the next several thousand years.  And we cannot easily withdraw either the heat or the CO2 from the ocean if we actually get our act together and try to limit our industrial pollution–the ocean keeps what we put in it.”
One final point: Humanity is all but certain to zoom past 400 parts per million. The big question is, how far past?
For a long time, many climate experts thought we should aim to stabilize atmospheric carbon to about 450 parts per million. That goal looks daunting now. At the current rate, the world will pass that mark within a few decades. Indeed, even the most optimistic analyses of current trends, like this one from the International Energy Agency, which predicts that natural gas will displace coal, see us hitting at least 650 parts per million without drastic changes.
Further reading:
--There are a bunch of great resources about the Keeling Curve over at the Scripps Institution website, including a chart that is updated daily. There's also a Twitter account reporting daily readings as soon as they come in.
--Back in 2010, Justin Gillis of the New York Times wrote a nice profile of the Mauna Loa Observatory and Charles David Keeling, the scientist who first began measuring atmospheric carbon. (His son, Ralph Keeling, now runs the measurement program.)
--Here's a more detailed look, from the International Energy Agency, of the changes the world would need to make to its energy system to stay under 450 parts per million. (And some scientists, like NASA's James Hansen, have argued that we need to go even further and get back down to 350 parts per million.)

French Kids Do Have ADHD: An Interview

French kids do have ADHD. An interview with Elias Sarkis M.D.
Marilyn Wedge, Ph.D.
This post is a response to Why French Kids Don't Have ADHD by Marilyn Wedge, Ph.D.
 
 
 
Toby et Lucy: Deux Enfants Hyperactifs by Charles-Antoine Haenggeli
Moliere described ADHD in his play L'Étourdi ou Les Contretemps (The Blunderer) in 1655.  However, the concept of ADHD, or "Trouble déficit de l’attention/hyperactivité"(TDAH), as a serious disorder is still not fully accepted in France.  However, ADHD impacts the functioning of 3.5% of the population of France (Lecendreux, et al. 2011).  In addition, ADHD is just as prevalent in other countries as it is in the U.S. (Faraone, et al. 2003).
I interviewed Elias Sarkis MD, a board-certified child and adolescent psychiatrist and Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Assocation, to learn more about the prevalence of ADHD in France.  Dr. Sarkis lived in France for 10 years, and graduated from medical school at Universite de Lille in Lille, France.  He is now the medical director of Sarkis Family Psychiatry and Sarkis Clinical Trials in Gainesville, Florida.  His website is www.sarkisfamilypsychiatry.com
Dr. Sarkis returns to France on a regular basis.  He said that ADHD does most certainly exist in France.  Not only are there clinical studies showing the prevalence of ADHD in France, but Dr. Sarkis also has a friend, a psychiatrist, whose child has ADHD.  His friend's daughter had lifelong difficulties in school, had an unplanned pregnancy, and then dropped out of school.  Her mother is now watching her child so she can return to school.
Dr. Sarkis said that in France there is a "strong negative cultural belief against medication" for children with psychiatric disorders.  However, he said, children with ADHD continue to suffer the consequences of the disorder.  Regarding the impact of undiagnosed and unmedicated ADHD in France, Dr. Sarkis said, "the reality is that there are French kids in prison, a high rate of tobacco use, and kids dropping out of school".
Dr. Sarkis said said that if a French child with ADHD receives "excellent parenting, high structure, and clear expectations from parents" it can mitigate behaviors, However, it is "at the price of the child experiencing increased anxiety and internalizing problems". For those children who are not able to receive excellent parenting and high structure, ADHD behaviors can be extremely impairing.
In France it is difficult for parents to get an evaluation and treatment for their ADHD child.  It takes 8 months for a child to get an appointment with a specialist, and it can take another 8 months before a child is prescribed medication (Getin, 2011).
Fortunately, Dr. Sarkis said, the concept of ADHD as a serious, treatable disorder is gaining strength in France.  Parents are learning more about ADHD via the Internet, and there are more centers being established to help treat this debiliating disorder.

Faraone, S.V., Sergeant, J., Gillberg, C., & Biederman, J. (2003).  The worldwide prevalence of ADHD: Is it an American condition?  World Psychiatry 2(2):104-113.
Getin, C. (2011).  Déficit de l'attention/hyperactivité: Le point de vue des familles.  L'Information Psychiatrique 87(5):375-378.
Lencendreux, M., Konofal, E., & Faraone, S.V. (2011).  Prevalence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and associated features among children in France.  Journal of Attention Disorders 15(6):516-524.
www.stephaniesarkis.com
Australia just scrapped its debt ceiling. America should, too.
Mature countries just walk away from a fight
Should the U.S. Treasury, like Australia's, get an unlimited borrowing limit? 
Should the U.S. Treasury, like Australia's, get an unlimited borrowing limit?  (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
D
ebt ceiling fights, it seems, have become a permanent fixture in American politics. Twice in the last couple of years, the United States has been days away from potentially irrevocable economic damage because Congress refused to raise the debt ceiling and let the Treasury issue more debt. The next debt ceiling fight is slated for March 2014.
But isn't there a better way to increase a borrowing limit — and one that doesn't freak out markets, investors, and, well, just about everyone every few months?
The federal government will be able to borrow as much money as it wants after Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey cut a deal with the Greens to dispense with the debt ceiling completely...
It means the government will not have to ask the Parliament for permission whenever it wants to borrow money above a certain limit. [Sydney Morning Herald]
Some may be extremely concerned by this possibility. If the government can borrow all the money it wants, then won't that lead to the government making extremely irresponsible decisions, such as spending huge amounts of money it doesn't have building bridges to nowhere?
But it's actually a brilliant idea — and one that America and the rest of the world would do well to implement as soon as possible — because it would eliminate the uncertainty and confusion of debt ceiling fights. And there is no reason — absolutely no reason — to believe that it will lead to excessive government spending. Why? Because there already exists a natural debt ceiling called interest rates — the cost at which investors in the market will lend the government money.
The U.S. government is legally bound to pay its debts, and as the issuer of currency it has the means to do so. This means that U.S. government debt is considered by the market to be a very safe asset. And, as Frances Coppola argues, that means that it is a critically important part of the global financial system, because it is used around the world as collateral for lending and as a store of purchasing power. Right now interest rates are very low by historical standards, even after adjusting for inflation. This means that the government is not producing sufficient debt to satisfy the market demand. The main reason for that is the debt ceiling.
If the Treasury became extremely profligate and started borrowing much, much more — say, increasing borrowing from just over half a trillion dollars a year to ten trillion dollars a year — interest rates would rise significantly, making it unaffordable for the government to do so. That is the only debt ceiling we need.
The debt ceiling today is particularly badly designed. Why? Because it's denominated in an arbitrary number of dollars. Let's say you are a government with $1,000 of debt. Can you repay it? It depends what your tax base is. If the whole economy is generating $10 of activity per year, you have no chance. At a 30 percent tax rate, that would yield just $3 per year in tax. But let's say you have a $10,000 economy. Then, a 30 percent tax rate yields $3,000, meaning that $1,000 of debt would be easy to repay. So the sustainability of your debt is dependent on the size of the economy, and the size of your debt is much more meaningful if it is expressed in terms of the amount of activity taking place in the economy (GDP).
So should the current debt ceiling be replaced by a ceiling expressed as a percentage of GDP? While that is slightly less stupid than the current system, it is still not the best idea because it would be very hard to agree on what constitutes a sustainable level of debt. For example, Harvard economists Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart published a well-received paper suggesting that 90 percent of GDP was the level at which government debt becomes damaging to economic growth. But their 90 percent limit has been completely debunked since. Great Britain, for example, had a debt over 250 percent of GDP in the 19th century, and successfully paid it down without defaulting.
Essentially, then, the only sensible way to determine how much the government can borrow is whether or not people are willing to lend the government more money. Australia has made a very smart move, and the U.S. should follow suit as soon as possible.

A Medley of Potpourri: Oldest known human DNA reveals we're 'complete mongrels' | PBS NewsHour

A Medley of Potpourri: Oldest known human DNA reveals we're 'complete mongrels' | PBS NewsHour
I am testing something, but the following from OMGFacts I interesting and something I didn't know:

The Eisenhower interstate system requires 1 mile in every 5 must be straight. These straight sections are airstrips in times of emergency.

A neuroscientist's radical theory of how networks become conscious (Wired UK)

A neuroscientist's radical theory of how networks become conscious (Wired UK)

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

I Wrote a Book!

Believe it or not, I really did. It's titled

Wondering About

Curiosity, Imagination and Science: A Personal Journey by an Unusual Mind

The book's web site is: www.amazon.com/Wondering-About-Curiosity-Imagination-Personal/dp/product-description/1450018491/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

To give you a flavor of what Wondering About is about, read the following press release:

Philadelphia, PA (Vocus/PRWEB ) February 28, 2010 -- Xlibris, the leading print-on-demand self-publishing services provider, announced today the release of Wondering About: Curiosity, Imagination, and Science: A Personal Journey, a new book of tremendous insight authored by David Strumfels.

Wondering About is a comprehensive guide that discusses the natural sciences and man’s everlasting struggle to learn what his place in the universe is, where he fits in, and what the true purpose of his existence is all about. By dealing with the many forms of science and philosophy, this release also serves as an intellectual autobiography – an expedition through Strumfels’ mind and his life as a human being. Through the author’s views and life experience as an individual who has spent his life struggling with Asperger’s Syndrome and how, despite these struggles, how it has also helped him retain his childlike curiosity, sense of wonder, and imagination; characteristics he hopes to inspire in others, and which never should be satisfied, and much more.

With its detailed narrative and numerous references, Wondering About: Curiosity, Imagination, and Science: A Personal Journey is specially written for the pleasure of gratifying curiosity and wonder. Readers who wish to order a copy are encouraged to visit Amazon.com.



Monday, December 2, 2013

Wondering About Our Place


Wondering About Our Place

To be, or not to be, — that is the question: —
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? — To die, to sleep, —
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, — 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; —
To sleep, perchance to dream: — ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death, —
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, — puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know naught of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.



William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act 3, scene 1, 19–28, circa.1600



Bolero by Ravel. An der schönen blauen Donau by Strauss. Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin. Yesterday I listened to these three pieces of music, among the most beautiful and thrilling that I know of. Each has its own peculiar emotional impact, quite different from each other and yet all calling to me in ways that I am quite sure I could never put words to. I would give anything to know exactly what they have done to my brain and nervous system, which neurons they fire in which sequence, which neurotransmitters – serotonin? dopamine? – they released or absorbed in exactly the right structures and cells of my limbic system and cerebral cortex. There any many other wondrous pieces, from Beethoven to Mozart, to Benny Goodman, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan, and more which provoke the same questions.

There is more. Today I spent several hours driving along River Road in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The road curvingly parallels the Delaware river in many places, in others the old Delaware Canal. It is carved out of the ancient rock which lines the river, and after several days of rainfall there are numerous small and medium rivulets and waterfalls cascading from the rocks, onto the road surface, and then across it to join the river and its way to the sea. Even without these added splendors, there are the carved, ancient rocks themselves, the trees and other wild flora of May, and the occasional animal, although I did not see any deer, or wild turkey, or any of the other wild animals that inhabit the woodlands on this particular day.

I know – I know as a scientist and as a rational human being – that what I have experienced these last two days would not be possible without millions of years of Darwinian evolution sculpting senses and a nervous system and brain to allow me to experience them. If I were but a rock, I would know none of them. Even if I were a cockroach, perhaps even a fairly evolved organism such a mouse … but because I am human – a sentient being – I experience all of it; all of what gives my life so much of its meaning.

And yet I am missing something.

It is a conundrum that has been known for centuries. One that philosophers have spun and spiraled in their minds to resolve, one that scientists in the relevant fields have grappled with to this day. Some think they have solved it. Yet I beg to differ. Some very straightforward thought experiments show how perplexing it is, how much it defies simple solutions. Theists and other religious pundits think that they solved it long ago, but I believe they are just as deluded. It is the problem of the soul.

What’s this? A scientist speaking of the soul?

Soul is perhaps a bad term. It conjures up the supernatural and the religious, and that, above all, is precisely what we are trying to avoid here too, as in all the previous chapters of this book. Better words are sentience and consciousness. Sentience is somewhat the better of these two because consciousness can refer to the mind and its workings, and what we want to grab hold of is that, however our bodies and minds work, there is an indisputable “we” inside, somewhere, that experiences those workings. This we has a more or less continuous existence, minus deep sleep and any periods of anesthesia or coma we might have had, going back to as far as … well, as far as we have memories of being.

We must concede an undeniable connection to mind and body, for, as I have been emphasizing, without these things there is nothing to experience, and sentience, the experiencer, must have something to experience if it is to exist. At the same time, however, as strong as this connection is, its strength does not reach to identity. Or at least I believe I have good reason for thinking it does not. Naturally, this only deepens the mystery; how can mind / body and sentience be at the same time the same thing and yet two separate things? The answer is that it cannot, yet we struggle mightily to resolve this seeming contradiction.

Don’t think there really are contradictory aspects to it? A few thought experiments should illustrate them nicely. Here’s one: imagine we have a machine, a lá science fiction, into which you step into one booth and out pops in a different booth, by some magical technology we shall in all probability never have, an atom-by-atom exact duplicate of yourself. This, of course, is the basic idea behind matter / energy beaming devices in Star Trek, and though I heartily doubt it will ever be accomplished, it seems at least possible in theory.

Well, what would you expect? Would you still be you? I expect all of you would agree that you would be. But how about this other “person” (I put this in quotes for a specific reason), stepping forth from the other booth? Would you be him / her as well? The answer to this question would seem to have to be an unqualified no, if only for the reason that there are no neural or any other connections between the two brains, which we are quite certain is absolutely necessary for you to experience being two bodies / brains at the same time. On the other hand, if you aren’t both you, then clearly you are the original you and the duplicate, although it would have all your memories, thoughts, and feelings, and be utterly convinced it was the real you, is just as clearly someone else. All this assumes, of course, that they are anyone at all and not a non-sentient simulacrum of you – which can only be true if making at atom-by-atom-duplicate of you is still missing something, something that we have no conception of as of yet. Either way, it isn’t the real you, however identical from a known science point of view it is.

Let me illustrate the problem a different way. I often read by those working in the fields of neurology, psychology, philosophy, and all the ways these fields can be conjoined (neuropsychology, cognitive science, etc.), that sentience is a consequence of brain action, an emergent phenomenon or epiphenomenon, one deriving from brain structure from the macroscopic to the microscopic, from the whole down to neurons and axons and dendrites and neurotransmitters and synapses and, well, and the laws of physics and chemistry as we know them. But there is something wrong with this picture, something, I think, that is actually quite obvious. It is that the Me (hereafter capitalized) that experiences being me does so now in a brain that is different from the brain it experienced being me yesterday, and even more different from the brain it experienced being me a year ago, and ten years ago, twenty, forty, fifty years … all the way back as far as I can remember being sentient.

All I know is this: Richard Dawkins’ statement in his preface to his most inspirational book The Blind Watchmaker, that “Our existence once presented the greatest of mysteries, but it is a mystery no longer because it has been solved,” is both true and false. It is true in the sense that Darwinian evolution, combined with the laws of physics and chemistry in this universe, neatly explains why at this moment some six point seven billion of us humans are running around on the surface of this planet, trying to survive and more, toward what consequences we are both uncertain and afraid of. But it is false in the sense of explaining why we billions experience ourselves doing so – assuming all of us do. Yes, yes, our highly complex and massive brains are part of the solution to this part of the mystery, but – well, is it enough?

* * *

This book being largely composed of scientific ideas and arguments, I wish like anything that I could present some for this most defiant of all mysteries. Alas, I find that after half a century’s worth of reading, exploring, thinking, and probing I cannot. Which leaves me in the position of wishing it would go away, so that it might not torment me, but it refuses to do that either. It is not, mind you, that I am afraid of dying and there being nothing left of either me or Me at all, perplexing and somewhat despairing I find that prospect to be; no, it is a true intellectual riddle, one that has defied all attempts not merely to solve it but even to adequately frame it. At least the reason for this can be stated in a straightforward way. The scientific method is an objective approach to reality, combining observation with hypothesis formation and testing, using both reductionism and holism when appropriate, in the never ending quest to determine just what is out there, all around us, to the ends of the universe. And it is a noble and even, dare I use the word, holy endeavor. But how and in what ways can this method be applied to the subjective reality of experience? How can it explain Me, or You, or any of Us? The answer I keep coming up with is that it cannot, cannot explain Me, You, or any of Us, solely because these are not objective phenomenon “out there” for us to explore and dissect. We can and should dissect and explore brains, and how they work, yes. But in the end, no matter how much we discover doing so I fear we will still not have solved the problem.

The conundrum is very real, and very serious, because we know of no method but science that can reliably reveal truths about reality to us. Mysticism and religion have no chance, in fact don’t even pretend to have a chance however many pseudo-arguments their proponents hurl at us. Yet science and reason can’t will or doubletalk the issue away, either, however.

* * *

Still, I have invited you to read a chapter about this subject, and merely repeating how dumbfounded I am about it is going to wear thin very quickly. So I must make some attempt(s), some approach(es), that have a plausible chance of leading us somewhere toward understanding.

And yet, I must proceed carefully. For example, certain writers, notably Roger Penrose (The Emperor’s New Mind) have suggested that sentience emerges from some of the properties of quantum mechanics. He has apparently even identified structures in the brain, known as neural microtubules, which he claims account for consciousness / sentience in a quantum mechanical brain; part of his argument, as I understand it, is that the human mind is able to solve problems in a non-algorithmic way. While I do not claim to fully understand his arguments, other writers, notably Daniel Dennett and Stephen Pinker, have challenged Penrose, saying that in fact all the things the human mind can do can be reduced to algorithms, albeit highly complex ones, without any consideration of the physical hardware (brains, computers, etc.) that these algorithms are executed in.

Personally, I find both approaches inadequate. We really don’t have any good reason to think that a sufficiently complex computer, one that can fully emulate all the properties of a human brain, will actually be sentient. On the other hand, the mysteriousness of much of quantum mechanics shouldn’t seduce us into thinking it has anything to do with the mysteriousness of our own awareness. That is an argument that sounds powerful on first hearing, but is really quite feeble. Lots of things in this universe are still mysteries, at least to some extent, but that is no reason to assume that they are interrelated simply because they are mysterious.

Of course, this doesn’t prove that quantum processes don’t have anything to do with sentience either, so I don’t want to grind my heel into any such speculations. It’s just that there are so many other mysteries as well. For example, why do so many of the natural constants of nature happen to have the value they have – the “fine-tuning” problem that vexes so many scientists? Why are there four fundamental forces, and why do they have the relationships they have? Why is the speed of light in a vacuum what it is? Why does Planck’s constant have the value it has? And so on. Some people, even scientists, note that all these, and other, constants, have values that are absolutely necessary for intelligent beings like us to exist, so perhaps there is some kind of higher intelligence or will that has ordained them so. Other scientists shake their heads at this kind of semi-mysticism and insist that, as we understand the cosmos and the laws of physics better, we will see how they had no choice to be what they are. Or perhaps there are many, many universes – perhaps an infinite of universes – so some simply had to turn out to have the right conditions; and of course we must be living inside one of those universes, or we would not be here to ask the questions and debate the answers.

* * *

My own personal feeling – and personal feeling is exactly what it is – suggests something else to me. A hundred years ago, at the beginning of the twentieth century, there were certain phenomena that stubbornly defied explanation by the then known existing laws of nature. The structure of the atom, as I have already mentioned, is probably the most famous. The conflict between Maxwell’s laws of electrodynamics and Newton’s laws of motion were another. As was the spectrum of blackbody radiation. The heat capacity of multiatomic gasses, and the photoelectric effect were a third and a fourth.

The solutions to these vexing problems involved, not merely new theories based on the existing laws of physics, but new paradigms, new ways of thinking, which opened up a new universe of laws and theories and hypotheses. These new paradigms were so challenging that many scientists have had a hard time accepting them even to this day, while those who do still sometimes puzzle and scratch their heads at what they really mean. Quantum mechanics. Special and General Relativity. Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) and Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). The expanding universe and the notion of a beginning to everything, the Big Bang (though this is being challenged today in some quarters), and perhaps an end to all things, including time. The idea that space and time, matter and energy, are related in ways that you cannot treat them as separate phenomena. The use of mathematical group theory to explain the plethora of mass-bearing and force-bearing particles in nature, and the relationships between those particles. The idea of inflation in the very early universe, and how it might have led to many universes forming. And now of strings and supersymmetry.

Standing here, at the opening of the twenty-first century, I can envision a similar revolution in paradigms arising to answer the questions I address in this chapter. But as I said in chapter seven, looking at it now, it is science fiction. Perhaps even fantasy. For example, here’s one possibility: perhaps we will create a “super” brain, one composed of electronics and neuronics, that we can all interface with or even become part of. This brain might eventually spread throughout the solar system and then beyond, perhaps to ultimately fill the entire universe. Perhaps this is when humanity learns its meaning and destiny, and all questions are answered. Even those billions who have lived and died may be reincarnated into this star-spanning mind, and not just humans but every other sentient race that has lived and died, here and elsewhere in the universe.

Following this line of prognostication, maybe sentience is something like another property of the universe, one which requires certain conditions, such as those that occur in our brains, to manifest itself. But if it is that, a property, then what kind of property is it? It isn’t a force, or a kind of particle. Something interwoven into the fabric of spacetime itself? But how? And in what way?

* * *

Sometimes I wonder if the Buddhist concept of Maya and Enlightenment can help us here. Maya is the illusion we all experience, that of being separate beings, apart from each other and the rest of the universe, struggling to find our way through life, and ultimately dying in this illusion. The experience of Enlightenment is supposed to be one in which all Maya drops away and you are fully aware of being one with everyone and everything – an experience regarded as impossible to capture in words or any other physical medium. Yes, I wonder if Buddhism is on to something here. It would have to defy explanation by language or any other form of normal communication. One would have to either experience it, or have no idea what it is. That does sound like it has a sporting chance of being right, or at least it does to me.

But if so, then this does imply that there are laws and properties of reality that we do not, and perhaps can never, understand intellectually, because they are not susceptible to scientific analysis? That they work beneath, or above, the radar of our intellects, however hard we try?

If all this is true, however, then what should we do? What can we do?

What we must do, I maintain yet again, is not give in to despair simply because we don’t know the solution to the puzzle, and may never know the solution to it. Also, remember that many mysteries have resisted solution for centuries, only to finally be solved by an application of new paradigms and ways of looking at things. Above all, we must not give up, even if things appear hopeless. A hundred years from now, we may find ourselves shaking our collective heads at our current confusion. I am tempted, however, to call this question – the question of sentience – the ultimate question, to which all others are sublimated. I really do believe that if and when we solve it, there will be a collective sigh of satisfaction greater than the solution to any question that has proceeded it.

* * *

Somehow or other, whether by luck or design or an intermingling of the two, we find ourselves where and when we are. We inhabit a planet orbiting a yellow dwarf star at the edge of a rather typical spiral galaxy. The star is but one among billions in the galaxy it has found itself in, and the galaxy may be one of trillions in a universe many billions of years old and perhaps far, far older. In all that, our individual lives occupy only a few decades of time, a century if we are fortunate. There seems to be nothing particularly special about this where and when we exist, except that is one of the few places we could be in the universe, perhaps the only even, and perhaps one of the few universes we could be in. Maybe the only one. Moreover, we do not know what will happen, not merely to ourselves as individuals, but to us as a species over the next few centuries.

We have spent thousands of years beating our heads against an invincible wall, wondering what the answer to all this is, and for all our pounding still pretty much have no idea. Of course, the answer may well be that “this is all there is”, that once our bodies cease to function that is the end of both us and Us, and no beliefs, religions, philosophies, or wishful thinking can change that. Sad though that is in one respect, even if it is true I believe we should be grateful, grateful for the opportunity to have existed at all and had the opportunity to marvel at this universe we have manifested in. It is even really not so sad either, when you think about it; after all, in the billions or trillions or infinity of years before we existed we suffered not one iota for not being, so certainly after we are gone we will not suffer at all then either. It is only sad, to me at least, in that We will cease to exist with so many wonderful questions unanswered. That, I have to admit, is a bitter pill to force down.

But let us assume that this is not the case. Let us imagine that sentience, while inactive without a brain to model the universe about it, nonetheless still exists in some potential form. I use the word potential with a very specific meaning. We speak of potential energy, as when an object is raised to a certain height, or an elastic material stretched, or as a chemical potential that can lead to an energetic reaction. The energy does not exist in any active form, yet it is still there, waiting to be manifested. Quite possibly, sentience without a brain with which to experience some kind of reality, can be held in an analogous potential form. What would that mean? One possibility is the repeated incarnations of the “soul” as claimed by many Eastern religions, although I am not certain I can believe in that.

I have difficulties with this, because in Eastern religions, the soul can reincarnate as almost anything: another person, an animal, a plant, or even a rock. Yet rocks and plants, and probably even most animals, do not possess the capacity for sentience, as they lack a sufficiently complex brain and nervous system. There are other practical problems as well. Even if we reincarnate as human beings, since the number of human beings on this planet has been exponentially increasing over thousands of years, where are all the new souls to come from to inhabit all these new bodies? There is a disparity here that is hard to reconcile.

There is another tack I would like to try. I am an aficionado of the television series House, which, if you aren’t (fie on you!), is about the brilliant but renegade and rather misanthropic Dr. Gregory House and the characters and cases which spin around him in a mythical teaching hospital between Princeton and Plainsboro, NJ. One of the episodes involves Dr. House temporarily reviving a patient who has been in a coma for ten years, for the purpose of extracting family background in order to save the coma patient’s son’s life (it ends with the coma patient committing suicide in order to donate his heart to his dying son – now you know why I say fie on you if you don’t watch it). Before I begin, I have to say I find the premises of this episode highly dubious at the least: someone who has been in a coma for ten years will have undergone so much muscle atrophy and coordination loss that I doubt he could walk, let alone drive a car to Atlantic City and basically act like someone who has just woken from a short nap. But that is beside the point I want to make.

No, my question is: is the sentience that results from the coma awakening, and spends his last day in a quest for the perfect hoagie then ends by sacrificing his life for his son’s, the same sentience that ended ten years earlier? An even better question might be, does this question even make any sense? The re-awakened father would of course insist that he his in every way conceivable the same person, but how much does that utterly sincere insistence count for? And what possible tests and / or measurements could we make to settle the issue?

I have to confess to something. This is not a mere academic issue to me. I was once in a coma, from which I fortunately awoke after several days. But does that make any difference? Like that father in House, I absolutely insist that I am the same Me that fell into that coma, but how can I, or anyone, really know? And again I ask, does the question even make sense?

Maybe it is an absurd question. Or, not so much absurd as worded incorrectly. Perhaps what seems to happen to Us in those moments, or days, or years, when we still exist but We do not is that time ceases to exist for Us. Just like, according to Einstein’s Special and General Theories of Relativity, time ceases to exist under certain conditions – if we were to ride on a beam of light or (if I understand what I have read correctly) fall into an infinitely deep gravity well – time comes to a complete stop for Us whenever the conditions needed to manifest Us ceases to exist. The question then is, do those conditions exist only within our own brains, for if so, then our current lives are the only ones We can ever manifest in?

* * *

I suspect that I have frustrated and dissatisfied you, dear reader, for I keep promising answers to this deepest of questions, but invariably find myself only circling about and finding myself at my own beginnings, my own head-shaking ignorance and failure of my own imagination and curiosity to solve this most impenetrable of puzzles

Will I give up then? No, first of all because I see no way of letting go of my curiosity and wonder and imagination, without letting go of what it means to be a living, sentient mind in a universe we still have so much to explore within. If there are places and times I have no concept of how to reach, then I am simply going to accept them for the time being, and hope that at some point in the future my eyes will start to open about them. Nor will I relinquish the scientific approach to thinking about reality, for it has served us so well, and has provided answers to what appeared to be impenetrable mysteries, and so I cannot give up hope on it, certainly not at this time and place in humanity’s evolution. Perhaps, of course, these things will lead to my death with so many important questions unanswered, and, yes, as I have admitted, that disturbs me. But, as I said, to stop now and lay down all of the weapons and tools of the mind and surrender to ignorance; that is something I cannot even conceive of doing. I would certainly die of despair if I even so much as tried.

So we have come around and around, and it the end must still admit that this greatest of mysteries has not yielded to science, at least not yet. And yet, that is all right. Mysteries are the lifeblood of science, and indeed of all our wonderings and imaginative escapades. Maybe, like the character in the Monty Python sketch I mentioned early in this book, we even need them, need these challenges to our curiosity, as though they are part of what gives our lives meaning. I know that they have given my life at least a healthy part of its meaning.

* * *

"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."



Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)



"Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."



JBS Haldane, Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927), p. 286



As I said at the beginning, a large part of this book is about what it means to be human, with curiosity, wonder, and imagination being fundamental parts of the answer. I also stressed the special importance of imagination, supplemented by technology, along with the warning that if we really wish to understand the universe we live in, we must not limit ourselves to our sensory experiences and our intuitions about them. We saw how important that became once we started deviating from the norms of our existence, whether in space or time. When we are dwelling in the world of the ultra-small or large, slow or fast, the laws of physics deviate from common sense in ways we would never have predicted. Phenomena such as the uncertainty principle and the depths of geologic time, time dilation and the bending of spacetime become increasingly important as we move further and further away from the norms of our everyday existence. We found that if we allowed those deviations to take us logically wherever they went then, however strange our discoveries, they could be integrated into the whole of understanding.

We also came to understand that the paths we took were our personal ones, each unique to us even if, ultimately, we all found ourselves in the same place in the end, that end being still finding ourselves facing the same ages old mysteries of our own existence. This is one of the crucial paradoxes of the human condition, I believe; that we all experience our lives as infinitely separated individuals, while underneath we are all tied together by the same laws, the same processes, the same foundations. It is as though each of us perceives ourselves as alone in a tiny boat on the open ocean, winds whipping and waves constantly washing water into the boat, forcing us to bale with all our strength and persistence just to stay afloat, while in fact, ironically, we are all collectively in one huge boat, with each of us making our tiny contribution to keeping the boat afloat and headed for – what land we are uncertain, but whatever it is we shall all arrive there together, in the end.

In the end, maybe this is our place in the scheme(s) of things. I am not the first person to speculate that we may be nothing more than reality’s attempt to comprehend itself. If so however, then we are faced with another mystery, that of how reality can have intentions or goals at all instead of being nothing more than the blind working out of physical laws. A mystery which only becomes deeper if we assume that intelligence, in some form, is itself part of that reality.

I stated at the outset of this book that I do not intend to give in to nihilism or despair, and I will take the time to reaffirm this promise again. Somehow we reasoning, questioning, imagining animals have found ourselves in this universe, and that alone should provoke our minds to keep trying to discover how and why. Indeed it is my view that we are probably still closer to the beginning of our quest than the end. I will also take the time to state my personal gratitude that we are in the middle of it.

We are born as, and grow up into, creatures of curiosity, wonderment, imagination, and rational thought. I do not care what nation or culture you were raised into, what you were taught, or what experiences you have had. Merely by being human, you still have all these traits within you, each one waiting to boil up to the surface at any time. I know that I have been astonishingly fortunate in this respect, in one sense more than most in this world, but at the same time I can’t believe that I have been any more gifted in these things than anyone else. I have just had the good fortune to have these things nurtured and encouraged.

I remember being a child with all these things within me, and nothing gives me more pleasure than today, at fifty-three years of age, to discover that same child just as strong. Though I have spent a half-century’s worth of growing, experiencing, maturing; though I have married, raised children, and known “The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” including pain I thought I would never recover from or survive; though I have stared into space and wondered what the point of those pains were … that part of me has never been diminished or defeated in any way.

And so there is nothing more for me to do except present myself as an inspiration, and as a hope. If you have any doubts, then go somewhere where the lights and pollution of the city cannot find you. Wait until the sun goes down, and then lie on the grass, staring skywards at the stars. Stare, and remember that for each one you see, there are trillions beyond your sight, beyond the sight of the most powerful telescopes for that matter. Gaze at the fierce beacons pouring their fires down upon you, and wonder. Though this universe we live in is far vaster than our imaginations can even begin to encompass, I believe you will know what I mean. Though we are but the most mortal of beings, barely eking a century’s worth of experience of the billions of years those beacons have shown, each of us has still our own meaning, our own purpose, whether we know it or not. I believe this will dispel all those doubts.

Natural science

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