Somewhere Somebody Sings Something

The Body Electric by Dr. Robert O. Becker and Gary Selden, first published in 1985, explores the human body's use of bioelectromagnetism. Dr. Becker directed Orthopedic Surgery at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Syracuse, New York, and was one of the pioneers investigating electric fields produced by living bodies.

Dr. Becker's concern with the injuries of veterans led him to a series of experiments using animals with known regenerative abilities such as salamanders and the tiny hydra. Whereas several lizard species can regrow lost tails, the hydra will regenerate in a myriad of ways: slice the tentacles off one, and they will regrow; cut a hydra in half, and two complete organisms will result. As long as a section of the trunk is preserved, any number of full creatures will regrow. Becker was not the person who discovered this. In the 1740s, a Swiss scientist named Abraham Trembley, a student of the great French naturalist Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur, shocked the world with his description of the powers of regrowth of the hydra.

With this as background, Becker and Selden embark on their exploration of the notion of the elan vital, the supposed anima or spirit that makes living things so vastly different from other substances. The authors inject the notion of electricity as that sizzle of life.

Though the science of The Body Electric seems a bit stiff compared to Ashcroft's The Spark of Life, the essence of both their presentations is the same: life generates electricity ... or maybe it's electricity that generates life. Or maybe it's that life and electricity are the same. Becker goes further than Ashcroft initially, however, by proposing a scenario of the emergence of life on earth from electro-chemical properties of the early environment. Whereas Ashcroft's argument degenerates into a denial of free will, Becker's spins off into cryptic warnings about the dangers of high-voltage power lines and the effects of electromagnetic radiation on health.

Whereas the first two-thirds of Becker and Selden's book reveals in fascinating detail how living bodies are defined by their application of electrical potentials, the last part loses a large measure of its scientific credibility due to its strong flavor of conspiracy theories. Although both The Body Electric and The Spark of Life make important major contributions to our understanding of life and consciousness, in the end, they both fall victim to philosophical musings better suited to methods of knowing other than science.

This article in the 25 November 2013 issue of The New Yorker gives an exhilarating look into the possible applications of cellular electronics and their benefits. More evidence that life is, after all, electrical in nature.

I Sing the Body Electric

Dame Frances Ashcroft

Frances Ashcroft's beautiful, beguiling, fascinating book, The Spark of Life, shows how everything that happens in our bodies -- from muscle movement to cognition -- is powered by electric signals leaping from cell to cell, produced by chemical reactions instigated by processes inside the cells themselves. The movement of chemical molecules through ion channels, a form of molecular gateway in the membranes of all living cells from amoebae to blue whales, induces the discharge of voltage which causes changes in the cells themselves. When cells fire in proper sequence, the propagation of the electric wave through nerves and muscles causes, for example, an arm to reach, fingers to close, a hand to grasp.

Ashcroft, a research fellow at Oxford University in England, specializes in ATP-sensitive potassium channels as they relate to insulin secretion, type II diabetes, and neonatal diabetes. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2015.

Like many another scientist, when Dame Ashcroft approaches the topic of self and free will, she concludes that "Free will, like so much else, is merely an illusion." (page 283) Brilliant researcher she may be, but a philosopher she isn't. She fails to realize that her acceptance of the ontological reality of the world is as much an act of faith as is belief in the Buddha's incarnation. She states that "most scientists would now agree that consciousness emerges from the electrical activity of the brain". What she doesn't realize is that the self is beyond linguistics; it uses language merely as a tool for communication -- it 'emerges' as its ability to transfer ideas matures.

The difference between 'will' and 'thought' corresponds to the difference between doing and thinking. I can think about moving my arm all day long, but until I actively will my muscles to contract or relax, nothing happens. In fact, in some cases, thinking results in inferior results. When I type, if I consciously try to think about which keys to press, my typing slows almost to a standstill; it's only when muscle-memory takes over, and I don't think about it, that typing occurs. Will power, not thinking, is the hallmark of the individual.

Dame Ashcroft's book does nothing to examine more finely tuned questions such as how I can know other minds exist, and that they experience the world and themselves in the same way I do. The fact that the subjective experience of self might merely hinge on the correct sequence of firing of neurons in the brain says nothing about a sub-lingual self.

Further, Ashcroft's thesis assumes the existence of an external world. When you talk about the mind's place in the world, you presuppose both a mind and a world. Do our perceptions of the world in some way create that world, or is it that the world creates our perceptions? Are our perceptions contingent on the world, or is it the other way around? Is it possible to know things in a extra-linguistic way, in a way that language cannot express? What do we say when nothing can be said? How can sparks of bio-electricity be self-referencing? Does the mind arise from the scintillating brain or merely from its own invention, language? Is it possible to have knowledge that falls outside of language? Where does knowledge end and faith begin?

In developmental psychology, is the self created or is it unveiled? Does the learning of language create the mind, or does it merely supply a tool for the already existing mind to interact with the world? How can even neuroscience answer such a question?

Science can only make verifiable statements about the world; it cannot make value judgments. The scientific method can never be used to justify itself.

The Book Thief

Sometimes the most obvious answer isn't the right one. Sometimes questions are too complex for simple responses. Some questions go for generations with the wrong answer. How can we ever be certain we have the right one?

For instance, how much longer are we going to preach and shout and scream against the Nazis and their final solution, and yet not condemn the murder, rape, and pillage carried out against American Tribal peoples in the name of capitalism and progress?

I'm not trying to defend Nazism or the horrors perpetrated under the swastika. Kidnapping, torture, and murder should never be condoned or covered up. What I'm trying to do is understand people. Specifically, the German people. More specifically, the German people in the 1930's and 40's. The reason I'm thinking about them is because they could have been any of us. Any of us could have been them.

We've all heard the assessments and excuses. The end of World War One saw the complete demolition of German society. The Nazis promised renewed greatness. The economic predicament was staggering. The Nazis promised renewed fortune. Who wouldn't have raised the salute when promised a crust of bread in the new order to come?

Too often analysis focuses on the monsters and forgets about the average person. One of the strengths of The Book Thief is that it deals with a small girl living in Germany at the time of the rise of the Nazi party. One of its weaknesses is that it deals with the rise of the Nazi party in Germany.

A problem occurs when we examine a section of history so closely that we lose sight of its context in the broader picture. The horror of the Nazi experiment stains not just one or two generations of Germans, but the whole of the human race. Each and every one of us is culpable. Even a llama farmer in the Andes mountains five hundred years before Cristoforo Colombo. Just as all human beings can rejoice in the creation of the Mona Lisa, we all bear the guilt of the concentration camps.

Almost ...

On 17 November 2013, a new drama aired on Fox television network -- Almost Human. (Which is, unfortunately, also the name of what looks to be a very bad horror movie.) The premise behind the show rests on a run-of-the-mill science-fiction plot: a future dystopia -- in this case, a high-tech world where the crime rate has soared 400%. In order to battle the bad guys, the overwhelmed police force is augmented with androids. Fox cancelled the show after the first season, pulling the plug on 3 March 2014 after just 13 episodes.

Normally, police-based programs immediately provoke a channel-changing response from me. Because I grew up reading science-fiction, though, this one caught my attention. I watched the few episodes available on the Fox website; however, The CW Network recently began rebroadcasting the show, including the pilot.

Starring Karl Urban and Michael Ealy, the premise of the show revolves around human Detective John Kennex and his android partner, DRN-0167, aka Dorian. Created by J. H. Wyman, the basic premise seems a mash-up of Robocop and Terminator. Almost Human, however, maintains a much higher standard of quality than either film. Its main strength comes from the interpersonal back-and-forth of the two main characters, which at times can be surprisingly funny.

I applaud The CW for making this series available. With not even a hint of any new episodes, we can at least appreciate those we have.

Rafting Across the Sea

When I was growing up in the latter part of the 1950s, the name Thor Heyerdahl was a household word. Intrepid explorer, acute observer, man of nature, Heyerdahl had set out on 28 April 1947 at the age of 33 to substantiate his theory that the islands of the South Pacific could have been settled by adventurers from the Americas to the east instead of from Indochina to the west as contemporary theories held.

He pursued this validation by building a replica of the aboriginal balsa rafts of ancient Peruvians, and sailing west from Peru. The craft, named Kon-Tiki in honor of the Inca sun god, had a six-man crew -- five Norwegians and one Swede -- and a parrot.

Thor Heyerdahl

Heyerdahl's book details the 101 days of the voyage across 4300 miles of largely uncharted ocean. Although DNA analysis done in 2011 reveals that most of the genetic material of contemporary Polynesians supports a western origin, a small but significant portion does come from South America. Whatever the voyage shows about migration and population, the adventure still stands as a testimony to human ingenuity and endurance, highlighting the courage and gumption of our species. As Heyerdahl says, "There is greater strength in the human mechanism than that of muscle alone."

A Rose By Any Other Name

I prefer reading without distractions, so I never bother with jacket blurbs or anything that would skew my appreciation of the work of art. That being the case, I didn't realize until just a few minutes ago that the author of Rose is the writer of the detective series set in Soviet Russia which begins with Gorky Park. Well. What a surprise.

In the dim recesses of my mind, I seem to recall having either read Gorky Park or watched the movie. So my smattering of familiarity acts more as a distraction than an illumination in this case.

Martin Cruz Smith

At any rate, whatever Martin Cruz Smith's umpteen other novels have going for them, Rose shares much with Dante's description of Inferno. Published in 1996 and set in the 1800's, the book's action takes place in Wigan, a coal-mining town in Victorian England. A missing-person mystery/more-than-likely homicide, the book probes the different classes of English Victorian society, contrasting the gentry's life above ground with that of the miners' beneath. Smith's depiction of the brutal life engendered/required by the occupation of coal mining evokes the hot, dark, claustrophobic world a mile below the blooming flowers and cool breezes of the sunlit surface. Heat, darkness, and explosive gases comprise the world underground; Smith makes sure his reader feels the discomfort and the knife-edge of danger.

The resolution of the story, though twisting back on itself in a way that is almost too clever, satisfies by staying true to the established characteristics of the people. Though the most obvious clue (after reading) is more confusing than mystifying (while reading), the final wrap-up is at least adequate, with just deserts meted out to all.

Chimes at Midnight

Serendipity gives life an interesting tang. In the chaotic vibrations of subatomic particles which make up the universe as we know it, all kinds of improbable coincidences occur. One hit me this past week -- the intersection of a front-page news story with a book I had just finished reading.

The news story: The Supreme Court legalized same-gender marriage. I, like the rest of the country, had been watching for several weeks as headlines grew more frenzied with the approach of the Court's decision in regards to gay rights.

The book: Midnight Cowboy. This bittersweet novel from 1965 follows the career of Joe Buck, a naive young man who moves from Texas to New York City, planning to survive by hiring his services out to rich women.

The intersection: my complete and total surprise at finding out that the book's author, James Leo Herlihy, was gay.

James Leo Herlihy

As I read the book, it simply didn't occur to me that Cowboy was a gay novel. Sure, Joe sometimes had sex with men, but that was just for money. His friendship with Rizzo never struck me as anything but platonic. (I admit that sometimes a story's too-subtle undercurrents may elude me.)

So here again we have the question coming into play about how much outside knowledge we should bring to our reading. Does the fact that the author is gay mean the work is? Even when the wording never suggests anything even remotely romantic in the male-to-male friendship? Another author/work pair that comes to mind is Tennessee Williams and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Is that merely a "gay" drama? (Herlihy and Williams used to swim together at twilight in Key West, Florida.) How about Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's? Can't that be looked at as a fine story without seeing it as the work of a gay man? How much should the reader infuse into the book? When does a book stop being the author's and become the reader's? How different would my reading of the book have been had I known Herlihy's sexual orientation beforehand?

Another point: On 21 October 1993, Herlihy overdosed on sleeping pills. The next day, the New York Times reported that the cause of death was revealed by Joe Frazier, "a friend." Although understanding human motivation remains nothing but guesswork, one cannot help wondering if Herlihy would still have killed himself after this week's Court decision.