Recently there was an article in the press, that at the origin of human sins, which are thought to be mortal, lie simple chemical processes in our organisms. Spanish biologist John Medina in the book “The Genetic Inferno: Inside the Seven Deadly Sins" explains the origin of human imperfections through the specifics of human nature and the presence of specific genes. For example, “each person has something like consciousness-alarm clock, which works like a clock and sends signals to our brain".
It's this inner "alarm clock" that structures the timetable according to which our bodies live. The program that turns this alarm clock on and off is written in our genes. They are also the ones to carry responsibility for our lack of desire to work, idleness and despondency. Greed - this obtrusive, but natural fight for property rights and this right being taken away from you. The center of stinginess has been found. It has also been explained, what section of the human brain is excited in the presence of money.
The list goes on. Accordingly, there is nothing bad about sloth or greed. They're natural. It is useless to try and resist these sins, because in our misdeeds are echoes of our animal instincts, which, even now live in the human consciousness.
What an excellent, all justifying, convenient theory!
However everything has its price. An excuse such as this also. It so happens that the person himself doesn't need to be accountable for anything. He is fully ruled by his genes: when he sees money, he becomes stupid from greed; his "alarm clock" doesn't go off, and he doesn't bother to get up and do something - resulting in boredom. A gene called caM-kII gets itchy, and a person gets a sudden boost of pride. And lets not even start on lust. So a human lives like an animal. Like an amoeba. I'll even go as far as to say that a human lives like the most ancient organic life form on Earth - the blue-green algae known as Cyanobacteria.
Well, almost everything fits! Cyanobacteria live on their own and together in groups, the can form balls, crusts and bushes reaching in size up to 10 cm (little villages, settlements and towns). Some of them are capable of movement similar to sliding (like a person skiing). They multiply. Men also. They live practically everywhere - on the surface of the earth, in hot springs where the water temperature can go up to 80℃, on the snow - in polar regions, and in the mountains. Their greatest numbers are found in fresh waters, where they destroy fish and everything else. Man also mastered entire earth's surface and is destroying everything, too.
The activity of Cyanobacteria led to the first global ecological catastrophe in the natural history and to the dramatic change in biosphere. It was “the creator” of what-we-know-now oxygen-containing atmosphere on Earth. Man also brought biosphere to the edge of catastrophe (or will bring in the very near future, since he has these genes for greed and envy). There are, of course, some differences, but they're insignificant. We shouldn't contain ourselves - after all, we only live once.
On the whole, everything in humans comes from nature, and "what's natural, cannot be ugly" (Rus. proverb). Except that there is no space left for man in this picture. There is a proud, lazily-idle, greedy, lustful, envious, voracious, somewhat psychotic animal.
Thank you, Spanish scientist! We no longer need to worry about our imperfections and can finally have a good nights' sleep. Especially seeing as there must also be a gene responsible for that. I'm wondering - is John Medina conducting any research into the existence of a gene for conscience?
A Russian version of this article can be found here.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Foretelling science
May 16 - day of science in Novosibirsk. This brings joy, and it is relevant. Usually the purpose of such a day is to remind us, that there is such a phenomenon, which this day is dedicated to, and to be glad that there are people who are somehow related to it. And, of course, to congratulate these people, with their professional holiday. In this case - scientists.
For 70 years we lived “scientifically”. Guided by the “most scientific world view” we built the best society where the division between mental and physical labour, between city and village, should have been erased. The government should have just died off by itself, and the freedom of each and everyone should have become a condition for freedom of everyone. And wealth should have reached unprecedented heights.
Reality was somewhat different - the divisions, although were partly erased, but not completely. What concerns government and freedom - here it somehow didn't happen: the government refused to die off, and freedom refused to become a condition. What concerns wealth... In any case everything needed to be changed. The price is known.
In the end science happened to be - clearly or implicitly - in the role of the accused, and those things that it was so much against, flooded from every gap onto the steep of somewhat confused public consciousness. Newspapers became gaudy with advertisements such as this: “Certified hereditary specialist in black magic will remove any dependence, free from curse, basilisk-glance and crown of celibacy, guards and hexes...” Television provides brilliant astrological forecasts regarding the time when it is best to invest extra funds into new business (this is especially relevant to all our rich pensioners), when to talk to our loved or not-so-loved ones... and I am not even talking about the oceans lashings of the mystical and mysterious.
Certified practitioners of black magic are becoming respected citizens and almost more interesting than serious scientists. All this is happening in a country, where journals such as “Science and Life”, “Chemistry and Life “, “Knowledge is strength” and “Young Scientist” were very popular. However now against the background of growing illiteracy (to be more precise, what is still worse, growing half-literacy - when people still kind-of know something, but all of it is so sketchy and vague, that it's not really different from ignorance) it became possible to seriously discuss concepts alternative to science, the ideological pluralism, etc. As if all opinions were equal. And that, which is built on the age-old traditions and enlightenments of brilliant people, who discovered amazing laws of nature, and taken from nowhere.
If science doesn't know all, it doesn't mean, that any witchdoctor happens to be on the same level with science. Science, in fact, differs from non-science because it clearly recognises the boundaries of what it still doesn't know. Because it is a system that works according to specific laws. It can make mistakes. As it is made by people. But that in no way justifies those, who never make mistakes.
Yes, mysterious exists. And that's fantastic. But it became mysterious only because, thanks to science, accustomed-to, rationally substantiated non-mysterious appeared. People became illiterate only after grammar appeared. If the timid enamored nervous young women find help in charms and spells, let them go to hereditary fortune tellers. But this abolishes neither the periodic table nor the theory of relativity.
A Russian version of this article can be found here.
For 70 years we lived “scientifically”. Guided by the “most scientific world view” we built the best society where the division between mental and physical labour, between city and village, should have been erased. The government should have just died off by itself, and the freedom of each and everyone should have become a condition for freedom of everyone. And wealth should have reached unprecedented heights.
Reality was somewhat different - the divisions, although were partly erased, but not completely. What concerns government and freedom - here it somehow didn't happen: the government refused to die off, and freedom refused to become a condition. What concerns wealth... In any case everything needed to be changed. The price is known.
In the end science happened to be - clearly or implicitly - in the role of the accused, and those things that it was so much against, flooded from every gap onto the steep of somewhat confused public consciousness. Newspapers became gaudy with advertisements such as this: “Certified hereditary specialist in black magic will remove any dependence, free from curse, basilisk-glance and crown of celibacy, guards and hexes...” Television provides brilliant astrological forecasts regarding the time when it is best to invest extra funds into new business (this is especially relevant to all our rich pensioners), when to talk to our loved or not-so-loved ones... and I am not even talking about the oceans lashings of the mystical and mysterious.
Certified practitioners of black magic are becoming respected citizens and almost more interesting than serious scientists. All this is happening in a country, where journals such as “Science and Life”, “Chemistry and Life “, “Knowledge is strength” and “Young Scientist” were very popular. However now against the background of growing illiteracy (to be more precise, what is still worse, growing half-literacy - when people still kind-of know something, but all of it is so sketchy and vague, that it's not really different from ignorance) it became possible to seriously discuss concepts alternative to science, the ideological pluralism, etc. As if all opinions were equal. And that, which is built on the age-old traditions and enlightenments of brilliant people, who discovered amazing laws of nature, and taken from nowhere.
If science doesn't know all, it doesn't mean, that any witchdoctor happens to be on the same level with science. Science, in fact, differs from non-science because it clearly recognises the boundaries of what it still doesn't know. Because it is a system that works according to specific laws. It can make mistakes. As it is made by people. But that in no way justifies those, who never make mistakes.
Yes, mysterious exists. And that's fantastic. But it became mysterious only because, thanks to science, accustomed-to, rationally substantiated non-mysterious appeared. People became illiterate only after grammar appeared. If the timid enamored nervous young women find help in charms and spells, let them go to hereditary fortune tellers. But this abolishes neither the periodic table nor the theory of relativity.
A Russian version of this article can be found here.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Education - it's a treasure
Earlier education was considered to be of great value. Because it was accessible to only a few.
This is how valued was the job of a scribe (back then only scribes were educated) in Ancient Egypt: "Be a scribe! It will free you, this post, from taxes, protect you from works. It will remove you from a mattock and you will not have to carry a basket. It will separate you from rowing and oar, it will remove you from efforts. You won't be under numerous lords and numerous chiefs". Two points: 1) education liberates a person from hard physical labour and 2) it makes a person more free. Education was a rarity, it gave one a respected position in society and because of that, it was highly valued.
Mass education appears in ancient Greek towns-states together with the birth of democracy. Citizens could actually govern the country, as the supreme body was a national assembly where any citizen could participate. He needed to have understanding in the affairs of the state and that demanded education. The main subjects in private schools (in Ancient Greece there were no state schools) were gymnastics, grammar and mathematics. Education was valued as a right and as a condition of being a responsible citizen.
Here is a fragment from a famous Chinese book "Tao Te Ching": "In antiquity, those who followed tao, didn't educate the people, but made them ignorant. It is difficult to rule people who have knowledge". The wise book is undoubtedly correct: educated, thinking people are uncontrollable. They can criticize decisions of authorities, they can begin to show initiative, they can start to write books, they begin to think... all of this cannot be controlled. Of course, harm from books can be huge. It is not a coincidence that antidemocratic regimes burned and forbade books. It is much easier to deal with uneducated masses.
Thus the first value of education — it makes the person vigilant, responsible member of society.
However when in modern times education became a mass phenomenon, something we're used to, its value diminished. It seems almost as given to us by nature. Along with that came a belief, that education is needed in order to become a professional and make money. In the old days father would teach his son a profession, a mother would teach her daughter. This has been passed onto the state, and the state, however it can, continues what once was a family responsibility. Education began to be treated utilitarianly, from the point of view of material gain. Certainly education is useful. But not in respect that it gives one a trade.
Education, and this is where it's primary value lies, opens up the world to the person beyond his limited horizon. It makes life more interesting and the person who lives that life, richer. That's why broader, more general education is more valuable than narrow. The broader is actually more practical, too. Any employer who needs real specialists knows that narrow specialists are only good in the beginning, while the broader ones are getting the hang of the profession. But in a couple of months, the broader professionals are further ahead, and especially if the business is changing, narrow specialists find themselves in the shadow because they are not capable of changing with it.
There is only one life, and education makes it much more meaningful and interesting.
A Russian version of this article can be found here.
This is how valued was the job of a scribe (back then only scribes were educated) in Ancient Egypt: "Be a scribe! It will free you, this post, from taxes, protect you from works. It will remove you from a mattock and you will not have to carry a basket. It will separate you from rowing and oar, it will remove you from efforts. You won't be under numerous lords and numerous chiefs". Two points: 1) education liberates a person from hard physical labour and 2) it makes a person more free. Education was a rarity, it gave one a respected position in society and because of that, it was highly valued.
Mass education appears in ancient Greek towns-states together with the birth of democracy. Citizens could actually govern the country, as the supreme body was a national assembly where any citizen could participate. He needed to have understanding in the affairs of the state and that demanded education. The main subjects in private schools (in Ancient Greece there were no state schools) were gymnastics, grammar and mathematics. Education was valued as a right and as a condition of being a responsible citizen.
Here is a fragment from a famous Chinese book "Tao Te Ching": "In antiquity, those who followed tao, didn't educate the people, but made them ignorant. It is difficult to rule people who have knowledge". The wise book is undoubtedly correct: educated, thinking people are uncontrollable. They can criticize decisions of authorities, they can begin to show initiative, they can start to write books, they begin to think... all of this cannot be controlled. Of course, harm from books can be huge. It is not a coincidence that antidemocratic regimes burned and forbade books. It is much easier to deal with uneducated masses.
Thus the first value of education — it makes the person vigilant, responsible member of society.
However when in modern times education became a mass phenomenon, something we're used to, its value diminished. It seems almost as given to us by nature. Along with that came a belief, that education is needed in order to become a professional and make money. In the old days father would teach his son a profession, a mother would teach her daughter. This has been passed onto the state, and the state, however it can, continues what once was a family responsibility. Education began to be treated utilitarianly, from the point of view of material gain. Certainly education is useful. But not in respect that it gives one a trade.
Education, and this is where it's primary value lies, opens up the world to the person beyond his limited horizon. It makes life more interesting and the person who lives that life, richer. That's why broader, more general education is more valuable than narrow. The broader is actually more practical, too. Any employer who needs real specialists knows that narrow specialists are only good in the beginning, while the broader ones are getting the hang of the profession. But in a couple of months, the broader professionals are further ahead, and especially if the business is changing, narrow specialists find themselves in the shadow because they are not capable of changing with it.
There is only one life, and education makes it much more meaningful and interesting.
A Russian version of this article can be found here.
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