My Favorite Quotes - Entry #2

 “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”

Isaac Newton, Feb. 5, 1676.

          The quote above is from Isaac Newton.  I think it is important to learn what you can from the past.  Actually, the more I read what has been written in the past, the more I realize how many things have already been well-thought out by people much smarter than I am.  I can’t tell you how many times I think I have come up with a new idea or a new way of thinking, only to find that someone already thought it up decades, centuries, even millennia ago!

I don’t know if it is true that “the past repeats itself”.  I think it is just that we forgot what we learned before and have to re-learn it all over again.  There is no reason for us to repeat what has been done – if we can learn about it and learn from it, then we can build on it and go further.  That is the meaning of the quote above from Isaac Newton.  If we learn from what people have done in the past, we “stand on their shoulders” and therefore we can see farther.  The only way to make significant progress is to build on the past.

          I have found this principle to be true in my own personal and professional life.  In the late 90’s, I began embarking on a new area of research that was related to, but not directly in line, with my previous research.  Therefore I had a lot of learning to do.  Before I did anything else, I spent many many months reading the literature.  I spent many hours at the Allen Library at Case Western Reserve University, up in the dark creaky stacks (it is my favorite place on campus), searching through journal articles from the 1920’s and 30’s.  I read everything I could find, and then eventually went back and began categorizing the results to try to make sense of it all.  Eventually I began to understand what people had already discovered in the past and where they had left off.  I found that a lot of what I thought was unknown had actually been explored pretty extensively about 80 years earlier.  But I was able to understand their results even better because of the many other discoveries since that time.  I could put their work in the context of what we know now.  This allowed me to build directly on what they had discovered.  As a result of that fairly straightforward literature review, a whole new research area was jump-started for me.  It was truly “building on the shoulders of giants.” 

          One of my favorite writers, CS Lewis, talks about how we have a kind of modernity snobbery.  We think that we are smarter than those clueless ignorant people back in the Dark Ages, or the ancient Greeks, or the ancient Egyptians.  We consider them to be full of superstitions and not as smart as us.  That’s snobbery on our part.  Read what they wrote.  They were geniuses!  Learn from them.  We are not smarter than they were.  In fact, we prove ourselves to be much more foolish than any other generation if we think we can move forward without building directly on what they have done!  So…learn your history!  And for those of you who are in research like I am:  read the literature – even the ancient stuff.  Dust off those old journals, crack them open, and read.  Just because you can’t find an electronic copy of the article doesn’t mean that it isn’t important!  Read read read!

My Favorite Quotes - Entry #1

“Men go forth to marvel at the heights of mountains and the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the orbits of the stars, and yet they neglect to marvel at themselves.”

Confessions, Augustine, 398 AD

          The quote above is from Augustine, who was a very famous Christian theologian who lived 354 – 430AD in the Roman Empire.  The early part of his book “Confessions” is definitely worth reading – it tells the story of his early life.  I’m sure that will show up in a book review somewhere in the future.

The quote is about the uniqueness of human beings and how we sometimes forget how unique we really are.  I’ve always had a strong interest in the uniqueness of human beings, particularly the uniqueness of the human mind, so this statement by Augustine really stood out to me.

I love looking at huge snow-covered mountains.  I used to ride my bicycle in the mountains in Oregon and there was one particular place along the road in the Cascade mountains that was the most spectacular.  It was a winding road with big trees on either side, going uphill.  On a bicycle you were going pretty slow.  You really couldn’t see anything that was ahead except the next bend in the road, and the tops of trees.  But around one particular bend the trees and hills kind of opened up and all of a sudden you could see a huge mountain right in front of you.  As you rode slowly around the bend in the road, you just kept looking up and up.  And then, there it was, this huge mountain, snow covered, and just majestic!  It was almost like it snuck up and jumped in front of you.

I like the ocean too.  I could sit on the rocky coast in Oregon and just stare at the waves for hours.  There is just something fascinating about them.  I always tried to figure out if you could predict when the biggest waves were coming in by how they swelled up further out, but I never could.

I was never that much into astronomy, but the pictures of faraway galaxies are quite fascinating.  Just to try to imagine how huge they are.  How big is the sun really?  How big is a galaxy?

What Augustine is pointing out is that there are a lot of cool things all around us.  He is not saying that we should not be amazed by everything around us – just that we shouldn’t forget to marvel at how unique we humans are.  The sun is powerful beyond anything we can imagine.  If we got too close to it we would vaporize.  Yet, the sun doesn’t know anything.  The sun doesn’t even know it exists.  The sun can’t learn anything.  The sun can’t have plans.  The sun can’t dream up new ideas.  But we can do all of those things.  We are no match for the sun when it comes to pure power and energy, but in the end, the sun is just a big dumb rock – although a really hot rock - just like all the other big dumb rocks in the universe.  As far as we know, we are the only creatures in the universe who can think and reason and even marvel at the universe.  The universe can’t marvel back at us.  It doesn’t know anything.  We might be puny creatures compared to the vastness of the universe, but we are the most unique and, in many ways, the most powerful. 

This will be the primary theme of my blog (though I will certainly stray from my main topic).  I just think that human beings are more than just bags of chemicals.  We are not just really really really complex rocks (i.e. computers).  I believe there is more to us than that, and I think that any honest unbiased assessment of human beings will come to the same conclusion.  But that’s just my honest highly-biased opinion!  The key difference that I single out in my own observations is that we human beings can make choices about things and then carry them out.  We can get up in the morning and decide to go left or go right…or go back to bed.  The sun can’t do that.  The oceans can’t do that.  Mountains can’t do that.  They are all slaves to the laws of physics.  But we make decisions all the time.  We can create things that didn’t exist before.  For example, we can come up with an idea that has never been thought of before, or a new work of art or music.  To me, that is the real marvel in this universe that we find ourselves in.  The capacity of human beings to think, create, and make choices is something that no one has been able to adequately explain (more to come on that!).

So, go create some new idea that the universe has never heard of before – and don’t forget to marvel today at your own uniqueness! 

Top Five Crazy Things That Christians Believe - #5 to #2

Well, I’m probably about to offend almost all of my friends with this post.  I have friends who are strong fundamental Christians and I have friends who consider anything related to religion or spirituality as going back to the dark ages and only useful for Monty Python skits.  I think I’m about to offend all…but, hey, here it goes…

Let’s talk about the crazy things that Christians believe.  I’m talking about Christians who would call themselves “Evangelical” and would generally fit into the category of “Fundamentalists”.  If you like to apply stereotypes, here are some characteristics that come quickly to mind.  Christians in this category are likely to support at least some limits to the broad category of “gay rights”.  They are likely to be, at the very least, uncomfortable with the concept of evolution and, in most cases, opposed to at least some of its tenets.  They probably oppose abortion.  I could go on, but this should suffice to define the group.

I think that if the average person were to be asked “What are the five craziest things that Evangelical Christians believe?”, the list would include things like “opposition to evolution”, “rejection of science”, “overly conservative moral views”, and so on.  But to me, that really misses the whole point.  That’s like saying that the craziest thing that Extraterrestrialists[1] believe is that aliens are green and have big eyes and skinny arms.  Isn’t that completely skipping over the major issue?  The major issue in that case is this:  do aliens exist at all?  Discussing the lack of bulkiness in the arms of aliens (if they have arms!) is total trivia unless the more important discussion, regarding the existence of aliens at all, has already taken place and has reached the conclusion that they do exist.  Until that first discussion is complete, discussing those other issues is a waste of time.

The point is, what happened during in the universe prior to recorded history is way down on the list of crazy things that Christians believe.  Personally, I would not put it in the top five, and probably not even in the top twenty.  Here are my top five things (ok, I only list #2 - #5 here – I’ll put the #1 craziest belief in a separate entry):

#5 – Jesus was born of Mary, who was a virgin.  Further, when Jesus grew up he performed the 500+ miracles recorded about him in the Christian Bible, and those were real miracles in the commonly accepted use of the term “miracle” (i.e. not magical tricks or convenient coincidences).

#4 – There is life after death, and there is a judgement after death with eternal consequences.

#3 - Jesus died and rose again after three days to a real, though unique, body.  He was really dead and didn’t just “swoon”, and he was really alive afterwards, not just an apparition.

#2 - Jesus claimed to be God and really was God, and his death provides a payment for the sins of the whole world, directly impacting the events that might transpire in crazy item #4.

There are libraries full of books on the four topics I have listed.  There are specific theological words for all of these topics, but I will not bring those up now.  The point is, these issues have been debated and discussed and codified and written about for a couple millennia.  But just because they have been around for a long time doesn’t diminish their importance.  These topics are still the pertinent issues for discussion.  They are still the foundation for Christian beliefs.  Everything else grows out of these issues.  To pick at outcomes of some of these beliefs is, in my opinion, pretty much a waste of time.  If the foundational issues are false, then the ideas built on those foundational issues don’t matter and never did.  If the foundational issues are true, then the ideas built on them follow naturally and there’s usually not much discussion required.

Let me give a simple example before I move on, in hopes that it will clarify the point.  Take the first aspect of crazy belief #5 – the virgin birth of Christ.  Can we agree that a virgin birth of a human being is surely more of a complete affront to scientific biological principles than the concept that some things might have been created, not evolved?  Seriously – Christians believe that Jesus stood outside of Lazarus’ tomb and called out to him after he had been dead for about three days, and Lazarus came up alive, was unwrapped from the grave cloths, and went back to being a normal, living human being.  Now that is crazy, and that’s just one part of item #5!

The point is, if the four items I listed above are false, there’s no reason to argue further.  In fact, even the Apostle Paul, clearly a staunch Christian, admitted this and went a bit further, saying that if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead then Christians “are to be pitied” because their whole set of beliefs would be based on a big falsehood.  However, if the four items I listed above are true, then their importance to every human being swamps the discussion regarding anything else.  For example, if there really is some kind of judgement with eternal consequences after you die, then you better get ready for that quickly and not waste time discussing anything else!

Why do we argue about creation vs evolution when there are much bigger issues to tackle?  The reason is simple, but does not invalidate my point.  The reason we argue about these kinds of side issues is because we cannot come to an agreement on the four issues I outlined above.  That split has happened long ago and has only widened over time.  Those discussions have been conducted long ago, without reaching a conclusion.  But that doesn’t invalidate my point:  it is still pointless to give up discussing those fundamental issues and argue over side issues.  That doesn’t solve anything and it is essentially arguing trivia and ignoring the real foundations.  It’s like trying to build a house on thin air because you couldn’t figure out how to build a foundation. 

To my Christian brothers and sisters I say: stop getting drawn into arguments about the side issues!  Or, worse yet, starting such arguments.  It is a waste of time.  If you want to argue your beliefs, argue the beliefs that your patriarchs grappled with, such as the four listed above.  There is a good reason that the early Church Fathers wrote about these things. You can’t accept or reject Christian beliefs based on issues such as the origin of the universe or abortion or gay rights.  If you are going to accept or reject Christian beliefs, it should be on the basis of the big issues above (and maybe a few others).

In light of this, I have no interest in discussing creation vs. evolution or similar topics.  Well, at least not until the four issues above have been addressed and we have all come to a conclusion regarding the truth or falseness of these foundational issues.  And…since a few millennia of discussion hasn’t resulted in a globally accepted conclusion, I don’t anticipate getting past those anytime soon!

OK – there will obviously be many more entries on this topic…including the #1 craziest thing that Christians believe.  Any guesses?

---

[1] Extraterrestrialists = those who believe in aliens among us. Yes, I made that word up, but no, I’m not proud of it.

Written Communication - Part II

Previously, I wrote about the importance of writing because, among other things, it allows us to learn from the past.  The great thing about learning from the past is that it allows you to escape from having to learn everything by experience (i.e. the hard way).  I’ve decided that, at least in my life, I prefer to maximize the number of things I learn the easy way (by listening to or reading about others)!

My thought for today is about the somewhat precarious nature of our written record in the 21^st century and beyond.  I might be off-base, but here it goes.  I wonder if our written record might get lost over time.  Specifically, I am talking about the written record of the world that increasingly exists only in an electronic form.  We are encouraged to go paperless in many things, which is great for trees, but maybe not for posterity.  I am one of the last people to adopt new technologies or new ways of doing things, but even in my own life I find that much of what I do and write only exists in an electronic form.  For example, the text in this blog only exists electronically.  Ideas encoded in electrons are hardly the most enduring method of recording history.

Let me give you an example from my own life.  When I wrote my dissertation back in 1991, I wrote it on a “word processor” – I think it was on a DEC Rainbow computer.  It was one of the first things I wrote that was not written entirely on paper and then typed up at the end.  The file for that document was stored on the hard drive of that computer and backed up on a 3.5” floppy disk.  That hard drive is loooong gone, and if I still have the floppy disk (which I doubt), I’d have a hard time finding an old floppy drive that still works so that I could read it.  But, that doesn’t really matter that much, because there are printed hardcopies that still exist of my dissertation – for example there is a copy in the basement of the Kelvin Smith library at CWRU (unless someone checked it out!).  Also, I have a printed copy as well.  But what I find happening more and more is that, even with a student’s dissertation, I am sent an electronic copy after their defense, and not a hardcopy.  I don’t know if a hardcopy exists in the library anymore of the more recent dissertations.  Certainly, it is not unreasonable to think that at some point in the future, people will never print out a copy of their dissertation – it will only exist in electronic versions.  So, I just wonder – how enduring is that?  If I don’t take the time to copy all of my past work onto my next computer and save it to the latest media, eventually it will all probably be lost.  If I store it on the internet, then who knows where it is or how durable that record is.  If Google disappears tomorrow – something I have no control over – then I’m pretty sure all the content of this blog disappears with it.  That’s probably not a great loss!  The point is not about my meaningless drivel – the point is about important documents related to knowledge and history.  For example, is it reasonable to think that there might come a time where scientific journals are never actually published in any physical form, but only published electronically?  I think that time has come already for some journals.  If the journal’s servers and backups go down, what is left of that record?

It’s probably all fine until there is some much larger disaster.  What if someone develops the equivalent of an atomic bomb, but is directed towards electronic storage and communication?  That’s surely a “humane” way to destroy a whole country.  The point is, if all of our electronic information was suddenly wiped out and permanently unavailable to us, what history would we have left?  It seems to me that the loss of knowledge could be much bigger than what was lost by the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in Egypt.  The complete loss of the electronic record is probably not a huge loss right now, in 2015, but what about 50 or 100 years from now when our reliance on electronic storage must surely be complete.  Will there even be libraries with hardcopies of books?

So, I will leave you with this thought.  Maybe someday, after the human race has been wiped out, someone will come upon earth and seek to uncover the history of man.  They will find a few bits of well-preserved hieroglyphics carved in stone, some broken bits of pottery with writing inscribed on it, maybe a chance bit of papyrus and some random stacks of old books.  But they will notice that the history of man seems to end around 2000 AD and they might wonder – what ever happened to them all?  They built all sorts of machines and buildings after that time, but they seemed to have stopped recording their own history!!

Book Reviews and Recommendations - Entry #1

I’ve always loved to read.  I remember really looking forward to first grade because I would be able to learn to read.  Even though I grew up in the 60s and 70s, my family didn’t have a television!  Instead of watching TV, I did other things, which included lots of reading.  I enjoyed the fact that when you read a story, you enter into that world for a time.  The story becomes part of your life for a while.  It’s like entering another dimension – it’s exciting.

When I was younger, I read mostly fiction.  Now I almost never read fiction – I can’t remember the last book I’ve read that wasn’t supposed to be real (I’ve been annoyingly tricked a few times, but that’s for a future entry).  Also, most of my reading is actually listening – I listen to lots of books in the car while I am driving to work or on long trips.  There’ve been a few really good books where I couldn’t wait to get back into my car to listen to the book again.  I figured I would occasionally review and recommend books here.  I’m also looking for good books to read myself, so I’d be interested in any of your recommendations.

I read pretty much any genre outside of fiction.  I am partial to science and philosophy, so I’ll frequently listen to whole courses on specific topics in that area (I’ve spent a lot of money at places like “The Great Courses”).  But I am also very interested in history and I really like to read biographies.  I do some broad reading in religion, but I generally stick to Christian apologetics if I’m going to read something in that genre.  I read at least a bit of the Bible every day, and occasionally I read some from other religious texts (yes, I know some of you would classify some or all of those in the “fictional” category – yet another topic for some future entry!).  I hardly ever read books more than once.  In fact, as far as I recall, there are only three books that I’ve read multiple times:  the Bible, the Lord of the Rings, and Pensees. 

Anyway, I thought I’d start this series of entries with a “recommendation”.  The book is “Finding Me” by Michelle Knight.  Actually, it’s hard to recommend this book – it’s more like suggesting that it is our duty to read it.  Michelle was one of the three girls who were held captive in a home in Cleveland for ten years.  I do not say that it is a story that you will enjoy.  It is sickening and shocking and impossible to imagine.  I still wonder – did it really happen? – but it did.  I actually used to drive within 500 ft of that house almost every day during the entire time those three girls were held there.  Michelle’s story makes you wonder how an individual can be so entirely evil.  But even more shocking and – to me – soul searching is the fact that her captor lived an average everyday life, interacting with society and neighbors and family as if there was nothing wrong.  He went to cookouts.  He was in a band.  He had family.  And no one ever seriously suspected him of anything except being a bit odd.  The capacity of human beings to put on a façade and hide our ugly inner selves is almost beyond belief.  That’s why I recommend this book – I feel it is our duty as human beings to understand how ugly we can be and how well we can hide it from everyone else.  So, the book is more like awful-tasting medicine – you will mostly learn dark things – but it reflects the reality of our situation.  The only positive from the story is Michelle’s resilience.

I haven’t read the recently published book written by the other two girls, but I will.  I’ll probably get it as an audio book.

So, there you go:  book recommendation #1.

The "Magic" of Written Communication - Part I

I consider written communication to be the greatest invention in the history of mankind.  The ability to communicate with other human beings in "non real time" is, to me, "magical."  Spoken communication is, of course, critically important for the progress of humanity.  But spoken words, as soon as they are spoken, are immediately gone and all we have left is our recollections of them.  When something is written, you can go back to it again and again and get exactly the same information.  It is as close as we will ever get to time travel:  through writing, I can communicate with people in the future; through writing, I can hear directly from those who lived in the past.  That all seems pretty remarkable.

I've always wanted to write.  I remember trying to write books when I was in third grade.  In high school, I used to sit with my friends and we would compose fictional stories.  The stories were terrible and poorly written, of course, but we had fun.  I think I always had in the back of my mind that I would become a world-famous author.  Hah!  Then I majored in Biomedical Engineering and spent the next 12 years immersed in moving up the ladder of degrees until I finished my PhD.  During those 12 years, I took one - yes one - semester of English (and that was more speech than writing).

But here I am - writing.  One great thing about the internet is that it gives you the opportunity to write things that go out to the world.  Whether anyone reads them...who knows?  But still, it's kind of fun.

For me, writing is the perfect communication platform.  I am not a quick thinker - never have been.  I have a terrible memory.  But when you write, you can take as long as you want thinking through how to phrase your thoughts.  For example, I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what word to use to describe writing for the title of this blog entry.  I settled on "magic" even though, as a scientist, I'm not really excited about that word.  I thought about "miracle", but that word has some pretty specific meaning to me and I wanted to reserve it for future blogs.  I thought about "excellence of writing" or "greatness of writing", but those words just seemed lacking in terms of what I wanted to express.  In the end, I felt "magic" was the best word to describe how I felt about writing.

When you write, you also have a chance to research your material, check sources, etc.  As a researcher, I really appreciate that.  I want to write things that are factual, correct, true.  When you're talking and you want to make a point, you may not be totally confident of your sources.  If you have a bad memory like me, you're never even confident if you remembered some of the basic principles correctly.  Since I hate looking stupid, it is often safer to keep my mouth shut!  But writing gives you the chance to run to the reference library (or the internet!) and check everything out first.  I know that isn't always true - Facebook is based on writing and it is full of unchecked foolishness!  

The funny thing is that after all those years in college without a class on writing, my entire career in research is dependent on my ability to write.  If I don't write high-quality manuscripts for scientific publication and if I don't write clear and cohesive grant applications, then my career will end quickly!  It was a painful process to learn to write in a manner that allowed me to be successful (so far)...

I hope you find the things I've written on this page interesting and thought-provoking.  I hope it spurs you to start writing your own blog.  It is the most "magical" form of communication!

Free Will #1

I am fascinated by the problem of free will.  I can't think of anything more obvious to every human being: the sense that we can make decisions and that we are, at least to some extent, able to make choices about what we do and how we respond.  And yet, from a fundamental scientific perspective, there is really no room for free will and no reasonable explanation for it.  Many scientists now say that our senses deceive us and that we really don't have free will - we just feel like we do.

Free will is hard to define.  For the purposes of discussion here, I'm going to define it by simply stating one of free will's key outcomes:

Human beings, as individuals, are responsible for their own actions in a way that is distinct from every other living and non-living material thing.

This means that rewarding people when they do good, and punishing them when they do bad, is a valid thing to do.  Also, rewards and punishment carry importance beyond just as a "training exercise" (i.e. there is something fundamentally different about these actions when applied to a human as opposed to when they are applied to a dog).

There will be a lot more to come on this topic, but I wanted to start by putting up a poll about the most spectacular living thing in the known material universe:  the neuron.  They are the fundamental working unit of actions, sensations, and, as far as I can tell, all thought.  If a neuron doesn't fire an action potential, did it really happen???

Try this "experiment".  Put your arm out in front of you.  Now, move your hand either to the left or the right and hold it.  Which way did you move?  Why?  Where did the decision (left or right) arise?

[Note:  since I wrote this, I've realized that this is a pretty lame example and isn't a good argument for free will.  But I leave it here just because.  When it comes to my view of free will, you have to use examples that involve moral decisions that are deeply human and deeply personal.  Frankly, in the experiment above, which way you move is probably random chance and has nothing to do with your free will.  For more in-depth discussions, see later entries on free will and my series on the Theory of the Soul.]

Ultimately, the movement of your hand, either right or left, is fully encoded in the neural signals delivered through the motor neurons in your arm and upper torso.  And maybe some sensory neurons are involved too.  But the point is, I could reproduce that same movement in your arm by carefully stimulating the right neurons with the right patterns (actually, that's what I do for a living!).  My question is this:  how did the neurons in your motor cortex decide to move your hand either right or left?  Who told them what to do?  If you are a staunch materialist, then neurons can only respond based on the inputs they receive, so they must receive input from other neurons, which in turn must receive inputs from other neurons, and so on.  In that scenario, nobody decides, it just happens based on what has happened in the brain before and the environment around the person (the mass of sensory inputs coming in to the brain).

I say that can't be the whole story.  I believe there are at least some neurons...at least one neuron...that is influenced (not fully controlled, just influenced) by the "mind".  We can come back to the mind, but for now, suffice it to say that the mind (as I define it) is not a material object in any currently-understood composition.

So, try out the poll and add any comments you wish.  This is just a start to get you thinking!

Most Influential Inventor Poll

When my kids took Freshman history at our local high school, they had to memorize the "100 Most Influential People" list.  This is the list compiled by Michael Hart in the late 70's.  Always good to start a big discussion!  The top three were, as I recall:  1.  Mohammad;  2. Isaac Newton;  3. Jesus Christ.  Well, maybe I'll come back to that specific list someday.  But I think the term "influential" is probably a poor one.  Also, it's really impossible to combine the various disciplines like religious leaders, political leaders, and scientists all in one list.  Mr. Hart claimed Mohammed was at the top of the list because he was both a religious and military leader.  Well, I don't know about that.

Anyway, I put up a poll on the Most Influential Inventor.  I suppose it is really more of a poll of the most influential invention.  But go ahead and vote.  Is the invention of paper more important than the printing press?  Writing more important than the wheel?  Should the invention of the World Wide Web even be a choice?  We'll see what the masses have to say...

Welcome!

I've always been fascinated by the intersection between science and the spiritual.  I thought it would be fun to write out my ideas here and there.  Maybe it will spark some discussion.  If nothing else, I find it a good exercise to try to write out my thoughts in a coherent manner - it really forces you to think through things more clearly.  Maybe, if you're reading this, you'll find something of interest or something that makes you think.

Sorry...I'm still working on that entry!

 Back to Table of Contents