Dr. Pross’s book shares a title (but not a subtitle) with the seminal work by the renowned physicist Erwin Schrödinger from 1944. While Schrödinger addresses a wide range of topics on how life might be explained in terms of physics and chemistry, Pross’s focus is narrower. Pross asks—and proposes an answer for—the straightforward (but thorny) question of how abiogenesis could occur. Abiogenesis is life from the non-living. Darwin did an excellent job of explaining how we could get from single-celled organisms to the great complexity we see in our own bodies, but Darwin didn’t touch the question of how that very first ancestor became animated.
The subtitle of this work, “How Chemistry Becomes Biology,” gives one insight into how Pross proceeds. There’ve been many ideas about how life came to be on planet Earth over the years. For a time, the idea of panspermia—life arriving from an extraterrestrial source—was popular. Of course, the most popular belief has been that there was a force of life (i.e. an “élan vital”) breathed into non-living matter by a, presumably, supernatural force / entity. While the awe-inspiring nature of life made this idea appealing / believable, it took a hit from the Urey-Miller experiments. Said experiment exposed the four materials believed to have been the most common in our pre-biologic atmosphere (hydrogen, ammonia, methane, and water vapor) to lightning, and the result included a range of organic materials—including amino acids–the building blocks of… well, us, among the other life forms of the planet. Of course, Urey-Miller didn’t make abiogenesis a foregone conclusion, but the production of ever more complex self-replicating molecules under laboratory conditions has made it easier to digest the notion that life developed without any intelligent or supernatural push.
While Pross’s ideas are at the stage of hypothesis, he develops a compelling explanation that revolves around the idea of dynamic kinetic stability. “Dynamic Kinetic Stability” is a mouthful, and so it’s necessary to break it down. The best place to start is with the “stability” part. This is because the biggest problem for an abiogenetical theory of life is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Second Law tells us that entropy increases. There are many ways of restating this, such as that chemical reactions move to states that are of lower free energy. However, the most intuitive way is to say that a beer mugs break but do not spontaneously pop into existence. So if everything is getting simpler by deteriorating, breaking, and decomposing, how does one get / maintain a stable state of complexity? First and foremost, the answer involves adding a lot of energy and resources, but there’s more to it than that–as the author explains. “Dynamic” can also be explained in complex terms, but it’s most easily thought of as being like a river in that the river’s existence is stable, but it’s always a different river—ever changing water molecules arranged differently. (Critically, our bodies are the same way. Except for neurons, our cells are constantly being replaced.) The term “kinetic” speaks to how said replacement takes place; replication must be fast and decay slow.
The appeal of the ideas put forth by Pross is that they’re conceptually consistent with Darwinian Evolution. That is, an entirely new set of principles isn’t necessary to make sense of the origins of life. Pross argues that the self-replicating molecules that can most effectively put resources to use succeed in doing so, and—in the process–they drive others into extinction.
I found this book interesting and readable. The author uses good analogies to make his points (which often deal in complex matter) as clearly as possible. I can’t disagree with the other reviewers who’ve pointed out that the book is a bit repetitive and drags out a relatively simple statement of the argument. It’s not so egregious that I could say that it’s necessarily the result of a desire to pad the book out to a length necessary to sell in hard-copy form. (But it might have been.) The understanding of this topic is in its infancy, but that doesn’t mean this book isn’t a valuable contribution to popular understanding of abiogenesis.
I’d recommend this book for anyone interested in reflecting on from whence we came in a fashion that is open-minded to explanations that eschew the supernatural.
When I saw this book’s title, I imagined a bloodied and battered Poindexter in a bow-tie–a professorial type dying in a puddle of his own bodily fluids as he calculated the Bayesian probability of winning given that initial beating. After all, physics is a highly cerebral activity, and being cerebral in a fight is a certain path to a beat down. However, Thalken makes a good point with his explanation of the title (and the book’s theme.) He’s suggesting that one use tactics and techniques that are supported by evidence and rooted in a sound understanding of the science of combat—as opposed to mindlessly doing whatever your sensei tells you or–worse yet–just muddling through on a combination of instinct and ignorance. In short, be skeptical, but inquiring. It turns out that there is a time for a fighter to be cerebral, but it’s when they are making decisions about how to train.
The book is divided into two parts. The first part explains how classical mechanics can help one to be a better fighter. There are four chapters in this section that deal with center of mass and its crucial role in a fight, the differences between high momentum and high energy strikes and how each is achieved, differences in circular versus linear paths and where the advantage in each lies, and what simple machines (i.e. levers and wedges) can do for a fighter. This section is what one would expect from such a book. Unlike the second section, which deals largely with sport fighters, the advice on offer in the first section is as applicable to those involved in self-defense or other real world combative situations as it is to fighters in the ring.
The second section examines the issue of concussions and brain damage in some detail, including consideration of the degree to which gloves and headgear do—or don’t—make one safer. The reader gains great insight into the mechanics and neuroscience of a knockout. While the majority of the section offers advice for those engaged in combative sports, the last two chapters take a bit of a turn. The first of these two deals with the myths perpetuated by Hollywood—which, let’s face it, is the source of most people’s information on what combat is. Debunking the notion that a person who gets shot is always and everywhere instantly incapacitated is a central theme this chapter. The last chapter deals with the issue of pseudoscience in the martial arts, and the insanity of believing one can defeat an opponent with chi (also qi, or—in Japanese Romanization–ki) or mind power alone. These last two chapters seem like a turn from the main theme of the book, but they do stay under the umbrella of the martial arts through a scientific lens.
While this is a book about science, it’s readable even for an educated non-scientist. All the math is put in boxes that the reader can opt to skip, or to follow, depending upon his or her comfort level with equations. There is no complex jargon, nor any incomprehensible concepts. The physics is largely high school level Newtonian mechanics.
Diehard believers in the supernatural or pseudo-scientific conceptions of the universe should be warned that this isn’t the book for you unless you like your sacred cows flame-broiled. You won’t learn about chi (qi) in this book except to be reminded that it’s a make-believe concept.
I’d recommend this book for those who are interested in how science can be applied to the martial arts or human movement more generally. It’s short, readable, and offers some interesting food for thought.
Sapolsky’s book examines why stress and stress-related illnesses are rampant in humans. As the title suggests, prey on the Serengeti Plain, animals that are chased by fierce and fast predators, aren’t nearly so likely to suffer the ill effects of stress—despite living in a harsher world than most of humanity. To oversimplify, this has a lot to do with the fact that one downside of our big brains is an ability to obsess about what has happened and what might happen, and our sympathetic nervous system (i.e. the fight or flight mechanism) can be triggered even when there is no immediate threat in reality. In short, humans can uniquely worry themselves to death. Sapolsky gets into much great detail and lets the reader know what is known and what remains to be uncovered with respect to stress.
In almost 600 pages, arranged into 18 chapters, Sapolsky covers human stress in fine detail. While it’s a book written for a lay audience, it’s not a quick and easy read. The book discusses topics like the action of neurotransmitters and hormones, and, while it assumes no particular science background, it does assume a broadly educated and curious reader.
The chapters begin by looking at the stress mechanism from a physiological perspective. It then considers stress with respect to specific illnesses, the relationship between stress and various other topics in human being (e.g. sleep, pain, and memory.) The final chapter offers insight into how one can reduce one’s bad stress and one’s risk of stress-related illness. Among the most interesting topics are what personalities are particularly prone to stress-related illness and why psychological stress (as opposed to stress based in immediate real world stressors) is stressful.
Sapolsky has a sense of humor and knows how to convey information to a non-expert audience, but this isn’t the simplest book on the subject. It’s an investment of time and energy to complete reading this book, but it’s worth it if one’s interest in the subject is extensive enough. One of the strengths of the book is that it stays firmly in the realm of science. Because stress has been wrongly considered a fluff subject, many of the works on the topic—even those by individuals with MD or PhD after their names—have been new-agey or pseudo-scientific. This book stays firmly in the realm of science. Sapolsky explains what the studies have shown, and he tells the reader clearly when there is a dearth of evidence or contradictory findings.
If the reader has a deep interest in stress-related health problems, I’d highly recommend this book.
Dr. Francis’s book of essays takes one on a fascinating anatomical cook’s tour—literally from head to toe. The book uses patient case histories, tales from med school, great moments in medical history, and even references to art and pop culture to intrigue the reader with the awesome nature of the human body. This isn’t the kind of book that tries to tell one everything there is to know on a subject. Rather it drills deep on specific subjects, but with humor and readability. While the book examines specific issues pertaining to the body part under consideration, it gives the layman reader the necessary background to comprehend even the most complex topics, often through interesting factoids.
In 18 chapters divided into seven parts by regions of the body, one will learn about topics such as: electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), the almost ancient art of cataract surgery, botoxing of Bell’s Palsy patients, how the Epley manoeuver is used to seemingly miraculously cure vertigo through snappy head movements, why Renaissance thinkers thought the soul resided in the lips, why having one’s blood circulated pulselessly causes problems, how a “Brachial stun” immobilizes an arm, why suicidal wrist slashers rarely succeed, where the nail goes in a proper crucifixion, how kidneys became the gift that keeps giving, how a scratch on the hand almost cost a gardener her life and what her liver did to save her, why your bowel movements matter, how fetoliths (i.e. “stone babies”) come to reside in the abdomens of older women, why–in some cultures–it’s necessary to eat the afterbirth while others insist on burying it under the house, why the hip’s blood supply is lacking, and how the foot is really more specialized and consequential to human existence than our hands and their well-publicized opposable thumbs.
My wife got me this book after seeing it on the list of the best books of 2015 put out by “The Economist” magazine. It was an excellent choice and it moved it quickly to the front of my reading list. I’d highly recommend it for anyone interested in science, medicine, anatomy, physiology, or the human body.
This book is actually several different books woven together. It’s part autobiography of the author’s running life, it’s part a study of comparative biology between various creatures with an endurance bent and humans, it’s part an examination of the evolutionary biology of humanity’s proclivity to run, and it’s part guide to preparing to engage in ultramarathons. Often I pan such books as being unfocused, ill-planned, and—most often—attempts to whip an article’s worth of material into a book length piece. However, Heinrich keeps it interesting enough that I don’t feel it necessary to level these criticisms. Still, my first warning to readers is that one has to read on for quite a while before one gets to the book that one thought one bought—i.e. one that answers the title question of “why WE (i.e. people in general and not the author specifically) run.” In short, you’ll need to have an eclectic set of interests to get through the whole book, but some may find reading only part of it gives them all they wanted from the book.
It should be noted that the book is on its second title. The original title was: “Racing the Antelope: What Animals Can Teach Us about Running and Ourselves.” The author explains in the front matter why the original name was changed (apparently some loud and obnoxious writer had a similarly titled book on a different subject and whined about it.) Changing the title wasn’t required because: a.) titles cannot be copyrighted, and b.) it wasn’t exactly the same title anyway. Still the new, more succinct, title may lead one to expect a succinct book, which this isn’t so much.
Some readers will enjoy Heinrich’s writing style; others will find that it ventures too far into flowery territory on occasion. I did enjoy it. However, I can see how a reader might find some of the descriptive sequences to be excessive–particularly toward the beginning of the book.
While there’s some overlapping and interweaving, one can think of the book in three sections. It’s written in twenty chapters. The first six tell the author’s story of getting into running and his youth. The next eight chapters deal in comparative and evolutionary biology. In general, these chapters look at the biology of other creatures as they pertain to said animals’ ability to engage in running (or activities that are like running in that they involve endurance of muscles and the cardiovascular system.) Also included in this section is the evolutionary biology of humans as it relates to becoming a species of runners. This is the core of the book and was the most interesting section for me. In it, Heinrich considers the endurance activities of insects, birds, antelopes, camels, and frogs. Each of these has a particular relevance. For example, camels are masters of endurance under harsh conditions. Frogs tell the story of the difference between fast and slow twitch musculature (relevant to sprinters versus distance runners.) Antelopes are, of course, the exemplars running in the animal kingdom, but the nature of their running is so different from that of humans (i.e. making quick escapes versus pursuing wounded prey.) The last six chapters can be seen as a guide to preparing for ultramarathon races, but it’s also a continuation of the author’s self-examination of his running life from the time he began ultramarathoning.
I’d recommend this book for readers who are interested in the science of human performance. It’s well written, and the insights it offers into the biology of other animals are fascinating. Whether you read the whole book or just the part that pertains to your interests, you’ll take something away from this book.
A study by researchers at the University of Alberta found that while mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters are more likely to suffer minor injuries, boxers are more likely to suffer severe injuries like concussions or detached retinas. The study, to appear in the print edition of the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine, involved 1181 mixed martial artists and 550 boxers who’d fought in Edmonton between 2003 and 2013. This was all fighters who fought professionally in that city in those two sports.
This finding seems counter-intuitive, given that so many more methods of delivering mayhem are allowed in MMA and the protection is less at least with respect to gloves.
Gloves may be an important factor. This isn’t a result from the aforementioned study, but it’s an idea put forth by MMA boosters. It goes like this, “Yes, the lightweight MMA glove offers less protection to the one being hit, but it also offers less protection to the hand of the one delivering the hit, and, ergo, an MMA fighter is more likely to moderate his / her punches to avoid the (in this case ironically-named) ‘boxer’s break’ to the bones of said fighter’s hand.”
MMA style gloves on the left and 16oz. boxing gloves on the right (the same hand fits inside.)
I haven’t seen any rigorous scientific studies of whether the argument above has merit. There was a National GeographicFight Science episode that made a comparison of gloves, but it was looking at a little different question. It studied how much force barehand, MMA glove, and boxing glove delivered to a heavy bag. Incidentally, it found minimal difference in force delivered between the two types of gloves, which at least might help to hush those who make a big deal about MMA’s “thin gloves.” However, this doesn’t tell us whether fighters put the same level of force into hitting a bony target when wearing the two types of gloves. Still a YouTube clip of the test is below for your information.
There are other explanations for why MMA fights might be less prone to cause concussions and severe head injuries. For example, there’s less time spent at an optimal distance to deliver strikes with maximal force. Once fighters are in close, there’s less room to get strikes up to speed. Once fighters are on the ground, putting a lot of body weight into a strike may be impossible. While submissions, whether chokes or joint locks, may seem brutal to the home viewing audience, it’s not clear that they result in major injuries to anything but the fighter’s self-esteem. (Though this might be an area that needs to be factored into studies.)
I’d like to see how muay thai compares to the two sports covered in the aforementioned study. I suspect it’s the only combative sport that might beat out these two. (All the nastiness of boxing, none of the close range grappling, plus elbows and shins to the side of the head.) Though, who knows? Judoka do seem to land on their heads an unfortunate percentage of the time.
I’m curious about what you think about which combative sport is most damaging, and why?
The title says it all. This is a book about all that can go wrong with the human body when it’s exposed to the most extreme conditions possible—including places where no human can survive without the benefit of modern technology. The medical science provides plenty of tidbits of fascinating food for thought, but it’s the stories of survival (or, sometimes, the lack thereof)—many of which the author, Kenneth Kamler, M.D., was present for—that make this a gripping non-fiction read.
There are only six chapters, addressing survival in the jungle, on the high seas, in the desert, underwater (diving), high in the mountains, and in space. There’s also a prologue that sets up the book with examples from Dr. Kamler’s experiences at high elevation (specifically Mount Everest.) Each chapter is full of illuminating stories about the threats to human life that exist in all of the aforementioned environments. The author is a hand surgeon who made a secondary specialization through expeditions to extreme environments to deal with the maladies that are largely unknown to the average person’s day-to-day existence—from pulmonary edema to exotic Amazonian parasites. A few of the chapters feature mostly stories of Kamler’s own experiences. These include the chapters on the jungle, deep-sea diving, and high altitude climbing. For other chapters Dr. Kamler draws together fascinating cases of survival and perishment in extreme environments such as living in a life raft on the high seas.
Besides considering what might kill you in extreme places, this book also reflects upon a couple of other interesting tangential questions. First, what adaptations (cultural or physical/genetic) do the locals have who live at or near these extremes that allow them to live? A fascinating example of this seen in the explanation of how Sherpas of the Himalayas differ from the Andean Indians who live at high elevations in terms of their biological adaptations to elevation. These two peoples living under similar conditions share some common adaptations, but other adaptations are quite different. On a related subject, Kamler also looks at what adaptations other species have developed to allow them to be so much more successful in some extreme environments (e.g. seals in water.)
Second, the role that x-factors like belief and will to survive play are never shunted aside as irrelevant anomalies by the author. Kamler devotes an epilogue to the subject of will to survive. Dr. Kamler was at one of the camps above base camp on the day of the 1996 Everest tragedy in which 12 perished. Kamler saw and advised on the treatments of Beck Wethers and other severely frostbitten climbers. Wethers’s story is particularly fascinating as he lay freezing in the snow overnight in a blizzard, apparently snow blind—though it later turned out to be an altitude related problem with an eye surgery (radial keratotomy)—before climbing to his feet and shambling into the wind (his only guide to where the camp might be.) Kamler considers the science of how Wethers neurons might have fired to get him to his feet against what seems like impossible odds, but concedes there’s much we don’t understand about what separates survivors from those who succumb.
I found this book to be fascinating and would recommend it to anyone interested questions of what a human is ultimately capable of. If you’re interested in medicine, biology, or survival, you’ll likely find this book engaging.
Every once in a while, one stumbles onto a book that one feels desperately needed writing but which one thought didn’t yet exist. In the case of The Secrets of Judo, the book has been around for almost 60 years. First off, a more telling title for this book would be “The Science of Judo” or “The Physics of Judo.” It’s not a book that deals in arcane knowledge, as its title might suggest, but rather applies science to the skills of throwing, pinning, and submitting seen in judo.
While there’s a brief discussion of the nervous system as it pertains to reaction times, the bulk of the book is classic mechanics applied to judo techniques. The first six chapters (which constitute a little over half the book) provide a background of the relevant principles of both physics (e.g. force, momentum, and center of gravity) and judo (e.g. kuzushi [unbalancing], seiryoken zenyo [maximum efficiency], and ukemi [breakfalls].) The last two chapters provide explanations of how forces are applied to achieve successful throws (ch. 7) and grappling techniques—i.e. pins, chokes, and locks (ch. 8.)
I found this book to be invaluable and would recommend it for anyone who’s interested in grappling arts generally (whether judo or not) or even the science of human movement. The writing is clear. There are some mathematical equations, but just the algebraic formulas seen in basic physics. The graphics (mostly line drawings with a few photos) are useful, especially the drawings of the sequences of techniques which have letter labeled arrows to clarify the lines of force.
I should note that I read the original (1960) edition. Tuttle put out a 2011 edition that is probably what you will get–unless you stumble onto a copy in the used bookstore as I did. From a quick glance at the table of contents of the new edition, it doesn’t look like a major change and I suspect the new edition is at least as good.
1.) 10%: As this story goes, we humans only use about 10 percent of our brain’s capacity. This long-debunked myth is so well ensconced that there was a film built around the premise as recently as 2014. That movie, “Lucy”, features a titular character who accidentally ingests an overdose of a drug that allows one to exploit increased levels of one’s mental capacity. Admittedly, by the movie’s end the 10% myth is one of the lesser violations of reality because as Lucy gets closer to 100% of mental capacity all the laws of physics dissolve in her presence.
I’ll give a reference at the bottom of this paragraph from which one can learn about all the evidence of the folly of this belief. I’ll just lay out part of the evolutionary argument. The fundamental rule of the biological world is that mother nature doesn’t over-engineer. Once there is no longer any benefit to be gained in terms of enhanced likelihood of survival, we don’t evolve new and costly capacities. We don’t see people who can run 500 miles per hour or jump 50 feet vertically from a standstill. Those capacities weren’t necessary to survive the beasts that preyed upon us. Our brains are very costly, they consume 20 to 25% of our energy intake. [For the science, see: Beyerstein, Barry L.1999. “Whence Cometh the Myth that We Only Use 10% of our Brains?”. in Mind Myths: Exploring Popular Assumptions About the Mind and Brain. ed. by Sergio Della Sala. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. pp. 3–24.]
Why does this myth get so much play? There are two likely reasons. One is wishful thinking. We’d all like to think there is much more available to us. And lucid moments of meditation or flow, we may even feel that we have tapped into a vast dormant capability. (In both the aforementioned cases, it’s interesting that the enhanced performance we may experience is a function of parts of the brain shutting down and not increased capacity ramping up.) The other reason is that people see savants of various sorts, but they don’t account for the full picture. There are people who can carry out activities with their brains that seem supernatural. However, it should also be noted that savants who can memorize phone books or tell you the day of the week for a random date hundreds of years ago [or in the future] often suffer corresponding downsides with respect to their brain activity. Of course, there are people who are just geniuses. Geniuses are endowed with more intelligence than most of us. They have a bigger pie; they aren’t just eating a bigger slice.
2.) Left and Right Brained: The myth is that some people use one of the hemispheres of their brain much more than the other, and that this explains why some people are creative and artsy and others are logical and mathematical. We must be careful about the nature of the myth and separating it from reality. The science is NOT saying that there aren’t some people inclined to be “artsy” and some inclined to Spock-like rationality. Clearly, these personality types exist. The science is also not suggesting that there aren’t some functions that are carried out exclusively in one hemisphere–e.g. language is a left brain function. The myth says that predominant use of one hemisphere is the cause of these extremes of personality type. This myth has had–and continues to have–a great following, but it’s not supported by the studies that use the latest brain imaging technology to see exactly where the brain is being active.
For the science, see: Nielsen JA, Zielinski BA, Ferguson MA, Lainhart JE, Anderson JS. 2013. “An Evaluation of the Left-Brain vs. Right-Brain Hypothesis with Resting State Functional Connectivity Magnetic Resonance Imaging.” PLoS ONE. 8(8): e71275.
Why is this a persistent myth? First of all, we all know people who fit neatly into one of the boxes, either “artsy” or “logical.” The left-brained / right-brained explanation is as good a way as any to explain these differences in the absence of evidence. It may have also been a way for people to attribute their weaknesses to an uncontrollable cause (always a popular endeavor among humans.) Secondly, once this idea caught on, a lot of people built the idea into their teachings, businesses, and academic ideas. Yogis used the notion to support ideas about imbalances in the “nadi” (channels.) Psychologists used it in their personality testing and profiles. In short, many people had a vested notion continuing false belief. Thirdly (maybe), there could be something to the issue of how we notice differences versus similarities. (e.g. A person says, “Hey, look Jimi Hendrix is playing a left-handed guitar. Lefties are creative.” The next thing one knows people are disproportionately noticing the left-handed individuals in the arts [and failing to notice the many (more) righties.])
3.) The Conscious Mind Makes All Our Decisions: We all have a conscious mind that we think is our ultimate decision-maker. The evidence, on the other hand, suggest that this is wrong. It turns out that it’s entirely possible for an entity to think it has decision-making authority, when–in fact–it’s finding out about the done deal decisions after the fact. Like the left / right brain myth, this is an idea that was firmly affixed right up until brain imaging technology became sufficiently sophisticated to see what parts of our brain were firing and when. In the wake of such imaging studies, we could see that the subconscious mind does its work first, and this has led to the widespread (though perhaps not consensus view) that decisions are made subconsciously before they filter up to our conscious minds.
There are many sources of information on this idea, but one popular book that is built around the idea is David Eagleman’s “Incognito“, a book that devotes itself to the part of our neural load iceberg that goes on below the waterline (i.e. subconsciously.) Scientists often compare consciousness to the CEO of a large and complex corporation. The CEO doesn’t personally make every decision. Instead, the CEO sets an agenda and the strategy, and–if all goes as planned–the decisions that are made are consistent with those overarching ideas.
It’s easy to see why this myth is persistent. First, if part of a process is buried from view, as subconscious thought has been (and–to a large extent–continues to be) then it’s easy to see how humanity would develop a story that excludes it and fills in from the visible parts. Second, there is immense vested interest in protecting all sorts of views of consciousness that are embedded in religions and quasi-scientific undertakings.
Thirdly, people have a deep-seated need to feel in control, and reducing the role of consciousness to long-term strategist and rationalizer of decisions would seem to make free will illusory. A number of scientists and scholars (e.g. Sam Harris) do argue that free will is an illusion. However, it should be noted that there are others who suggest otherwise (e.g. Daniel Dennett and Michael Gazziniga.) These “compatibilist” scholars aren’t necessarily arguing that the conscious mind is the immediate decision maker in contradiction of the scientific evidence. What they are arguing is that through learning, thinking, and agenda-setting, people can influence the course of future decisions–perhaps imperfectly, as when one eats a sleeve of Oreos after contemplating what one has learned about how that’s not good for you. (This goes back to mother nature not over-engineering. The conscious mind must have some role in facilitating survival or it–being incredibly costly–wouldn’t have evolved. If it can’t influence our path, it can’t enhance or likelihood of survival.)
I’ll attach this video by Alfred Mele that contradicts the notion that free will has been proven an illusion. This isn’t to suggest that I’m convinced Mele is right, but he does lay out the issues nicely and more clearly than most.
4.) The Sleeping Brain Shuts Down: I won’t spend a lot of time on this one because: a.) in a sense it’s a continuation of the consciousness myth (i.e. we lose track of this time as far as our conscious mind goes, and so we think nothing is happening because our conscious experience = what we believe our world to be.) and, b.) it’s not as ingrained a myth as some of the others. Perhaps this is because it began to be debunked with electroencephalogram (EEG) studies which began decades ago–in the 1950’s–well before the functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) that has been providing many of our most recent insights into the brain. (The EEG measures brainwaves and the fMRI blood flow.)
The NIH (National Institutes of Health) offers a quick and clear overview of this science that can be viewed here.
Our bodies go from a very relaxed to completely paralyzed state over the course of a night’s sleep. The paralyzed state occurs with Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep and may be an adaptation that kept our ancestors from fleeing out of trees or cliff-side caves during their dreams. If the body is essentially immobile, it’s not a far stretch to imagine the brain is as well. However, the brain is like a refrigerator–always humming in the background (part of the reason it uses between 1/5th to 1/4th of our energy.)
5.) Adults Can’t Generate New Brain Cells: This was the prevailing thought until quite recently. It was believed that one’s endowment of cells–at least as far as the Central Nervous System (CNS) is concerned–didn’t change / replenish once one reached adulthood. It turns out that, at least for the hippocampus, there is now evidence to support the idea of CNS neurogenesis (the production of new nerve cells.)
There’s a Ted Talk by Sandrine Thuret that explains the current state of understanding on this topic, including what activities and behaviors facilitate neurogenesis. (Long-story short: Exercise and certain healthy foods are good, and stress and sleep deprivation are bad.)
What is the basis of this myth? First, one must recognize that the studies don’t show that any and all CNS nerve cells are regenerated. That means there is an element of truth to this myth, or–alternatively stated–a more precise way of stating the idea would produce a statement of the best current understanding of medical science. Of course, telling teenagers that every beer they drink kills 20,000 brain cells irrevocably has probably proved a popular–if ineffective–reason for the continuation of this myth. (Note: at least heavy drinking is definitely damaging to the brain, though by damaging / interfering with dendrites and not by “killing brain cells.” It’s also not believed to be irreversible.)
6.) Emotion and Reason Are Forever at Odds: Most people have had the experience of boiling over with emotion. That is, they’ve experienced instances during which they believed a particular emotion didn’t serve them and they didn’t want to be caught up in it, and yet they couldn’t help themselves. It’s clear that there’s an ability to inhibit or suppress emotions; recent findings have suggest that the neural pathways involved with voluntary suppression are different from those used when one is persuaded to suppress the emotion.
Of course, there’s also evidence that continually suppressing emotion can have a downside. While it remains an unclear correlation, it’s commonly believed that suppression of emotion is related to untimely deaths from certain diseases–e.g. cancer, and there has been some evidence to support this.
Still other evidence supports the notion that there are healthy ways of regulating one’s emotional life rather than the ineffective and counterproductive process of just suppressing emotions. The key may lie in changing one’s way of perceiving events rather than telling oneself to not show emotions. Rather than one’s conscious mind wrestling with the emotion, activities like breath control have shown effective in regulating exposure to stressful situations.
The brain is an organ we all possess, and we intuitively think we’ve got a grasp of it. Yet brain science is one of the scientific disciplines in which we have the most to learn.
University of Chicago paleontologist / anatomist, Neil Shubin, charts the progression of life that ultimately leads to the human body. Professor Shubin’s discovery of one of the earliest fish (the Tiktaalik) to survive at the fringes of land makes him well placed to delve into this topic. The book does tell the paleontological detective story involved in tracking down the Tiktaalik. Shubin also uses his experiences in cadaver dissection to elucidate some of his points. However, the book goes beyond these stories to unshroud the development of the arms, hands, heads, and sense organs that lead to our own structure.
Along the way, the author does an excellent job of clearly presenting the overwhelming evidence in support of Darwinian evolution. A fine example of this can be seen in the quote, “If digging in 600 year-old rocks, we found the earliest jellyfish lying next to the skeleton of a woodchuck, then we would have to rewrite our texts.” Needless to say, no such discovery has been made, and the layers of rock remain an orderly record of the progress of life from simple to increasingly complex. Shubin spends more of his time talking about the evidence in terms of specific anatomical detail. For example, “All creatures with limbs, whether those limbs are wings, flippers, or hands, have a common design. One bone,… two bones,… a series of small blobs…”
The book is arranged in eleven chapters. The first chapter provides an overview and tells the story of the search for and discovery of the Tiktaalik. Then the book goes on to explain the development of limbs, genes, teeth, heads, anatomical plans, and the various sense organs. A final chapter looks at what our evolutionary history means for our present-day lives (particularly what systematic problems the process has left us, from hernias to heart disease.) The book covers many of the structures that define us as human, but notably excludes the ultimate defining factor: our relatively gigantic brains. That’s alright; the evolution of the brain is surely a book or more unto itself. There are line drawings throughout to help clarify the subject, many of these show analogous structures between various creatures.
I found this book to be readable and informative. It’s both concise and clear. It’s approachable to readers without scientific backgrounds. I’d recommend it for anyone interested in learning how the human body got to its present shape.
What Is Life?: How Chemistry Becomes Biology by Addy Pross
Tiger Riding for Beginners 