GHOST WRITING
What do you see when you look at yourself in the mirror? Just another person or the result of millions of years of intelligent evolution? It’s somewhat easy to gloss over the present and take it for granted, but your true nature is in your biology. It is the collection of cells and tissues and organs in your body that are the ‘real’ expressions of your existence, since your consciousness needs a physical system to exist and interact with the universe around.
The study of life is a relatively ‘new’ discipline among the sciences – with the realization that all biological organisms functioned along fundamentally similar concepts. Although scientists have been intrigued by the human body and its complex and intricate nature for millennia, it wasn’t till more recently, in the past few hundred years, that true scientific investigation into the nature of life was rigorously done.
In the earliest days of Biology, however, the body was too sacred to even explore. It was all ‘hands‐off,’ leading most people to rely on religious dogma to explain the mystery that is the human body and ultimately, life. You going to the doctor’s would’ve been an entirely different affair in this period, with examinations of stool samples and perhaps an exploration into what ‘sins’ you had committed that were causing you to feel guilt and shame in the form of physical ailments.
LIKE COGS IN A MACHINE, CELLS IN A BODY
Thankfully, with the advent of the scientific revolution, the body increasingly became another mode of inquiry into what makes us tick. Relying on early surgical techniques and the invention of the microscope, scientists could ‘see’ that organisms were all aggregates of cells forming tissues forming organs forming bodies – as well as microorganisms such as bacteria and viruses that remain as simple cellular organisms. It was these cells that the classical biologists attributed as the building blocks of all life, in using the commonly classical approach of reductionism – break it all down to the smallest details and then you can begin to understand the whole of the organism.
Cell Theory: All living organisms are made of at least one cell – the basic unit of function among all organisms – where the basic mechanism and chemistry of the different types of cells found is similar. Cells can only arise from previous cells through a process of cell division.
With the microscope, Cells were initially seen as fairly independent units of life, mostly existing to create ‘bulk’ or be present in billions and trillions in order to create the overall organism.
Early investigations saw some functions that were indicative of ‘processes’ going on inside, however the mechanisms were unclear and biologists didn’t think the cells was truly independent on its own and needed the overall organism’s body and ‘direction’ in order to exist.
You may think you’re a static creature, with all the cells forming your body like bricks going towards making a building. Think again – your body is actually destroying and re‐creating itself every 6‐7 years. So your body is at any time that old, since cells are constantly being replenished and replaced. From our previous lesson, you learnt that your body was inherently a collection of chemicals, biomolecules to be more specific, that come together in a ‘vessel’ of sorts to create your experience. Your experience then is your consciousness navigating and experiencing reality in the physical form that it inhabits.
(Continued in the Book)