Brains and Beliefs
From an interview by Kerry O'Brien (ABC TV's 7.30 Report with Dr Norman Doidge).
From the interview:
Moving beyond a 2,450-year-old era
The Art and Science of Blinking
Around 2,450 years ago the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea was perhaps the first to methodically question a simple fact of life - how do we physically move, such as when blinking an eye, running, or simply falling down?
Culturally we are about to fall off a philosophical cliff. Fortunately, a safe landing in a far more compassionate, sane and exciting world awaits those who come to the edge with the understanding of how to fly.
His questions and arguments, which have become widely known as Zeno's Paradoxes, pointed to the seemingly logical impossibility of the everyday experience of physical movement.
His considerations have perplexed and troubled philosophers and scientists even since. Various assumptions that underpin our modern technologies and sciences were taken for granted. We take for granted that there is always a physical cause for every physical effect - as exemplified by scientists researching to find physical cures for disease, cancer and viruses; and to find the physical genes or brain cells responsible for thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and the experience of love, creativity and joy.
Now, with the advances in the field of quantum physics, we know that a 2,450 year era is nearing its end .. an era in which it has been assumed that our physical brains, bodies and the entire physical universe is continuously existent. An era in which each part (atom, virus, cell, organ, person, planet) was assumed to be continuously existent and functional, with every part contributing to the running of, or dysfunction of, the machinery of life.
We stand at the edge of a grand new understanding of our universe, and ourselves. As Visa International founder Dee Hock foretells, a new era
is struggling to be born -- a shifting of culture, science, society, and institutions enormously greater than the world has ever experienced. Ahead, the possibility of the regeneration of individuality, liberty, community, and ethics such as the world has never known, and a harmony with nature, with one another, and with the divine intelligence such as the world has never dreamed."
The Evidence for Lamarck
In QUADRANT March 2000 No. 364 Vol XLIV Number 3 pages 47 - 56. © Quadrant and E.J. Steele1
Is it possible for an active scientist to communicate esoteric research findings in plain everyday language? The short answer is no. This may only be possible for stories on more popular topics such as dinosaurs, the "Big Bang" and extraterrestrial life - they readily capture the public's attention and numerous definitions and qualifications are not necessary. Nevertheless I have agreed to do so following a kind request from the editor for a "plain language version of our work re Lamarckianism". While this is difficult, we have already tried to do just this in our recent book Lamarck's Signature .
The proposition that characteristics, both physical and mental, acquired during an individual's lifetime may be passed on genetically to offspring is no doubt part of the popular imagination. As such it should be easily communicable to a wider non-scientific audience. However, such knowledge is often rudimentary and distorted ("the sins of the father" and such) or contaminated with a vague feeling that it does not "smell right" scientifically. One can also hear the more erudite utterances: "Does this not smack of that discredited fellow Lamarck who Darwin showed was wrong?".. and .. "Samuel Butler, George Bernard Shaw and Arthur Koestler were delusional romantics, all brilliant humanists but hopeless scientists." Here I will show that these hopeless romantics were probably right. I will attempt to condense the main features of our work to encourage those interested in the topic to delve further and confront the large body of evidence.
After two decades of research my colleagues and I now have good evidence that the tell-tale signs of "soma-to-germline genetic impact events" have been etched into the very fabric of our chromosomes. This conclusion is quite the opposite to that expected under the ruling neo-Darwinian genetic paradigm based on Weismann's Doctrine. The data have arisen from our research on the molecular genetics of the immune system, the system which allows our body to produce disease-fighting antibodies in the bloodstream. The quality of this evidence is now as strong as our confidence that the origin of craters on the surface of the moon or earth are the impact sites of large cosmic bolides such as comets and asteroids. Thus the molecular genetic evidence derived from the immune systems of higher animals point to "Lamarck's Signature", identified as the imprint of numerous soma-to-germline genetic impact events written into the DNA of our chromosomes encoding antibody genes. Such events which have repeatedly occurred over 400-million years of evolutionary time.
Before I get into this story let me express a special debt of gratitude to my colleague and active collaborator Professor Bob Blanden (of the ANU's John Curtin School of Medical Research) whose scientific support and friendship has been unstinting over almost three decades. In recent years Blanden's intellectual input has been both incisive and decisive in the development of our current ideas on how somatic cell-to-germ cell flow of genetic information may be effected.
- 1. This article was posted by Stephen Pirie 9.10am, 5th October, 2008 with permission and content provided by E.J. Steele.
- 2. E.J. Steele, Robert Blanden and Robyn Lindley's book Lamarck's Signature is published by Perseus Books.
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