The never-ending questions

The running theme in this blog, perhaps in my entire life, has been on reality, or what we think may be reality. What is reality?  Is that a valid question?

As author, literary agent, and 'thinker' John Brockman once proclaimed, he has had a lifelong obsession with asking questions, especially "the" question: "What is the last question?". 

Brockman's first book on pondering questions was By The Late John Brockman, published in 1969. In his own words, it was "about the idea of interrogating reality". Most would respond by declaring this is useless philosophy, thereby concluding it all meaningless. Yet each and every one of us plays apart in it, and without it. (As suggested in the movie, "The Matrix") Most of us just aren't aware of it. 

"Reality as a whole is unmeasurable except through effect. The unity is in the methodology, in the writing, reading, in the navigation. This system cannot provide us with ultimate answers, nor does it present the ultimate questions. There are none."*

This also precipitated his vision of the 'Third culture' consisting of "those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are." 

In 1988 Brockman and others created The Edge Foundation, an association of science and technology intellectuals. It was also an outgrowth of The Reality Club, a gathering (historically called a 'salon') of intellectuals based in NYC and held by a host. From 1981 through 1996 many well known scientists, authors, artists, technologists, and entrepreneurs met for presentations, 'round-table' discussions, seminars, etc. It retired to a virtual  presence on The Edge website in 1996. (A link on the sidebar has been posted when I created this blog in 2005.)

Despite frequently following the website after I first discovered The Edge (~1998), life became complicated and I lost track of it. An academic career sometimes consume the only existence in one's life, especially in LAC (Life After Children). I was busy "interrogating" small subsets of reality. 

It was with sadness (on my part) that Brockman ran out of questions and announced in 2018 the finale to The Edge project with the question, "WHAT IS THE LAST QUESTION?". 

"Ask 'The Last Question,' your last question, the question for which you will be remembered."

Possibly the best tribute to The Edge was in a ''moratorium'' by lecturer and writer Kenan Malik in The Guardian. The excerpt below gave me some private satisfaction in that I have always relayed similarly to students, children, colleagues, lab members, friends, relatives, and, many times, here on this blog: ask questions. (despite the frustrations of many).

"Asking questions is relatively easy. Asking good questions is surprisingly difficult. A bad question searches for an answer that confirms what we already know. A good question helps to reset our intellectual horizons. It has an answer that we can reach, yet unsettles what we already know."

 One response on the webpage, which may not really qualify as an answer for some, is one of my favorites. As we often say in the scientific fields, answers to a question may only be more questions.

"The final elegance: assuming, asking the question. No answers. No explanations. Why do you demand explanations? If they are given, you will once more be facing a terminus. They cannot get you any further than you are at present. The solution: not an explanation: a description and knowing how to consider it."**

Many people are unsettled by that, but it is the reality. Perhaps it is a very simple single question with no explanation. Just like reality.

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 * John Brockman, By The Late John Brockman, 1969, Macmillon. The Kindle format can be accessed on Amazon.com. Hard copies are >$70.

** Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zettel, eds. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans. G. E.

Borders and grids are Us

 With a long interest in how we as humans perceive our environment, I found this quote to be quite adequate:

"....the imposition of the gridded survey defines the lands as a uniform and monotonous mathematical space turns the lands into a trackless expanse viewed from above."

In many ways we see land as two-dimensional and existing with geometrical shapes. Look at any map, look down from a plane, and you will see this. In a recent issue of Nature NAS scientist John Holmes reviews a new book, "Liberty's Grid", by historian of science and mathematics Amir Alexander.

Alexander relates how the "rectilinear grid was imposed and how it has fed into the US consciousness."

"In Alexander’s telling, the grid is grand, ambitious and uniquely American. It is not only a blank, boundless canvas, but also a causal factor of different aspects of the United States’s trajectory and character."

A interesting book, but as Holmes rightly criticizes, Alexander often confuses cause and effect. Alexander tends to blame many events in our American history on the gridded map and ignore other elements at play in our American culture.

"Fly over the United States or walk its city streets and you can’t help but notice the country’s seemingly endless patchwork of rectangular blocks of land. The origins of this ‘grid’ lie in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the early US early leaders sent surveyors out to carve up vast tracts of land acquired under treaties and to expand settlement westwards to the Pacific coast."

In other words, dividing up this country was a rushed job without real thought to the landforms. Not that they mattered anyway, except as resources to exploit. Ask the Native Americans about that.

Good points here:

"“Written not on parchment but into the mountains, valleys, and plains of North America, the Great American Grid embodies an ideal of America as a land of unconstrained freedom and infinite opportunity,” Alexander writes. His central thesis is that, although dividing up much of the United States into a geometric grid might seem like a convenient solution to a difficult problem, when viewed from a historian’s perspective it becomes an expression of American exceptionalism and a means to fulfil the idea of the country as an “empire of liberty”."

It is in the last explanation of criticism by Holmes that I agree. Simply because Alexander either ignores or circumvents the psychology and sociology of creating borders, visible and invisible. In basic philosophical perspective, it's creating and outlining territories, just as wild cats and canids do by urinating on the edges of their territories. And those borders are dynamic, not static. This has been a main foundation of human war since civilization. Except for traditionally nomadic peoples, where land borders are blurred or don't exist.

We could hypothesize that borders are a human construct, but other species prove otherwise. The real mystery is how we add layers of human culture and society on and in those human-drawn lines. Or perhaps that is our default subconscious way of looking at reality. What is the global traditional shape of most structures? Walls with straight lines and 45 degree corners.

AI R Us

This should not be surprising.* AI models are a mirror to human behavior. So shit that goes in results in exporting shit. 

AI models are trained to learn, consolidate, collate, and regurgitate. We don't like what we get, so we change it afterwards. But that doesn't change the mirror effect. It's a Band-Aid approach: Cover the abscess so we don't have to see it. Or, as Nikhil Garg, a computer scientist, eloquently puts it, “simply paper over the rot”.

This brings to mind a sci-fi series I'm watching on TV, "Beacon 23". AI, a common component of most sci-fi, is represented as two important components in the series, and are almost complete opposites: "Bart" and "Harmony". The latter is a logical Spock attached to an individual human and created by a major company that controls almost everything.

Bart is an AI developed hundreds of years prior to the primary time event of the series and serves the structure, Beacon 23, in space (it's a 'lighthouse' stationed near a flux of dark matter.  The Beacons guide space craft away from detected nearby dark matter 'clusters', like a lighthouse.) 

Bart learns and adopts human nature/behavior from all the beacon "keepers" and those who visit. He also controls all the communication and mechanics of the Beacon station. As such, Bart is just like a human, with all the messiness, assumptions, errors, etc: he lies, whines, plots, complains, quotes Shakespeare, and often acts like a child.  But Bart also significantly sets the course for what occurs on the Beacon. Whereas Harmony is logical and attuned only to her individual human, but also capable of Beacon control, including Bart (she scolds Bard many times).

Humans created AI, and in its current state in our world is like a young Bart. That we can't see that is human blindness. AI is not, and won't be our savior. We can't even save ourselves. 

"Even though human feedback seems to be able to effectively steer the model away from overt stereotypes, the fact that the base model was trained on Internet data that includes highly racist text means that models will continue to exhibit such patterns."

* "Chatbot AI makes racist judgements on the basis of dialect," Elizabeth Gibney. Nature, March 13, 2024.

Which Reality is Real?

What is 'reality'? Ask 10 people that question and you'll likely hear 10 different answers, including "I don't know." The question may be as old as human consciousness. However, it may not be a realized 'thing' [1] that all humans ponder. 

A quick summary in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia present reality as..

"Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within the universe, as opposed to that which is only imaginary, nonexistent or nonactual. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, reality is the totality of a system, known and unknown."

Is reality a thing? Or is a way of looking at 'things'? 

Reality may be both. No one may have understood this more than physicist Erwin Schrödinger, famously known for his thought experiment (1935) in quantum mechanics, Schrödinger's cat, . It was as an argumentum ad absurdum (reductive argument to absurdity) intended for questioning the then proposed behavior of atoms and larger manifestations as being one or the other, as in "dead or alive", and which depends on the observer. Or, simply put, it suggests that reality is relative to the organism that observes or experiences it in one way or another.

Recalling an old platitude: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is looking or hearing it, did it really fall?

 Yet, Schrödinger's paradox legitimately questioned, 

"When does a quantum system stop existing as a superposition of states and become one or the other?" (More technically, when does the actual quantum state stop being a non-trivial linear combination of states, each of which resembles different classical states, and instead begin to have a unique classical description?"[2]

More simply put, 

"Our intuition says that no observer can be in more than one state simultaneously—yet the cat, it seems from the thought experiment, can be in such a condition. Is the cat required to be an observer, or does its existence in a single well-defined classical state require another external observer?" [2]

This may bring to mind Einstein's "Theory of Relativity," which is associated with quantum mechanics. Indeed, Einstein considered each alternative as absurd. He wrote to Schrödinger,

"You are the only contemporary physicist, besides Laue, who sees that one cannot get around the assumption of reality, if only one is honest. Most of them simply do not see what sort of risky game they are playing with reality—reality as something independent of what is experimentally established. Their interpretation is, however, refuted most elegantly by your system of radioactive atom + amplifier + charge of gun powder + cat in a box, in which the psi-function of the system contains both the cat alive and blown to bits. Nobody really doubts that the presence or absence of the cat is something independent of the act of observation."[3]

Many interpretations, both technical and popularized,  provide explanations and answers to Schrödinger's paradox. However, the quantum world is full of counterintuitive ideas, which was strongly implied in Schrödinger's thought experiment. Several physicists contemporary with Schrödinger and after his passing proposed their own perspectives. 

Of note, American physicist, Hugh Everett who  proposed (in his 1957 PhD thesis) what is now known as the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. I'm sure most readers here are familiar with the popular "multi-verse' of science fiction genre and even modern physics. Everett's idea of quantum mechanics does not single out observation as a special process. His many-worlds interpretation of Schrödinger's paradox explains that, 

"...both alive and dead states of the cat persist after the box is opened, but are decoherent[4] from each other. In other words, when the box is opened, the observer and the possibly-dead cat split into an observer looking at a box with a dead cat and an observer looking at a box with a live cat. But since the dead and alive states are decoherent, there is no effective communication or interaction between them. 

When opening the box, the observer becomes entangled with the cat, so "observer states" corresponding to the cat's being alive and dead are formed; each observer state is entangled, or linked, with the cat so that the observation of the cat's state and the cat's state correspond with each other. Quantum decoherence ensures that the different outcomes have no interaction with each other. The same mechanism of quantum decoherence is also important for the interpretation in terms of consistent histories. Only the "dead cat" or the "live cat" can be a part of a consistent history in this interpretation. Decoherence is generally considered to prevent simultaneous observation of multiple states."[5]

Quantum mechanics is often used in contextual explanations of reality. One could possibly, and loosely, refer to Everett's hypothesis as 'alternate' realities. Is this a real 'thing'? Or just another thought experiment or interpretation of reality?

This all begs the question, is there just one reality? If so, then what is it? Afterall, a 'real' reality could exist for non-living things (we know they exist, but the non-living have no consciousness), and another for living things (because we have consciousness and are aware). Which suggests that an infinite number of personal realities may exist. A shared reality may be then be overlapping personal realities like many flexing Venn 4-dimensional boxes that overlap, constantly shifting, temporally and spatially. 

As mentioned earlier, reality is the the totality of a system with known and unknown existences.

Or perhaps reality is like the smile of the Cheshire cat: it remains even when the cat becomes invisible.
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[1] I'm compelled to explain my use of 'thing' as in it's most recent etymological context: used colloquially since 1600 AD, as a word to substitute for what a person cannot think of it's meaningful name. However, this ubiquitous word 'thing' has an interesting history back to the Vikings. 
[2] "Schrödinger's cat," Wikipedia
[3] Letter to Schrödinger in 1950.
[4] In quantum physics, decoherence is the process in which a system's behavior changes from that which can be explained by quantum mechanics to that which can be explained by classical mechanics.
[5] Hugh Everette III, Wikipedia. As an aside, both Hugh and his son, Mark Oliver Everett, are thought by many to be Asperger's (on the autism spectrum).

Quantum evolution

To fully understand evolution, and life itself, one must be able to grasp quantum theory (quantum mechanics is mostly mathematical equations at the microscopic level and not at all required to conceptually understand quantum systems). General relativity is also a quantum system. 

Seeing time only through clocks and calendars will never give us any kind of appreciation of time on a larger scale. Those are metrics, but are not really time itself. Same with evolution: it exists at many points and flows back and forth. It really can't fit into what we consider as 'time'.  

Biophysicist Werner Loewenstein succinctly presents evolution as a quantum system of information.*  Rather than thinking of evolution following a linear path in time, it is information in the quantum realm, constantly shifting places like tiny sand particles on an ocean beach. 

Thus, evolution is chunks of information existing in the future and the past. What we see is how it manifests only at any point within that realm. There is no moment of 'creation' just as there is no moment of 'end'. Species don't magically appear; they evolve, and devolve. 

"It is difficult to even talk about an instant of time, because we can’t even say with certainty which “chunks” of space-time lie in the future and which in the past." -physicist Jonathan Oppenheim 

Evolution requires us to jump off that restrictive scale and think in terms of shifting sands.

* The Touchstone of Life. Werner Loewenstein, 1998.

Quantum time, quantum people

It's unnerving, and rather irritating, when someone you reconnect with after 4+ decades tries to pin you to a point on a linear time scale, expecting you not to move from that point.

Change is the only certainty in life, perhaps in all reality. Some people box their memories of another on a point in time and expect them to permanently reside there, existing only within the two points on a timeline, their timeline. Then ask many years, timelines, later why we aren't still sitting on that stretch of time. It's worse when that stretch of time is relatively short.

Same could be said of history. History is not just one recollection or explanation of a point or stretch of time. It's multiple recollections, even interpretations. Any narrative of history should always be considered in that way. Partly because of the quantum nature of time, where past, present and future are the same (time flows back and forth, it never stands still). Even if we were present in a point of historical time, our recollection is within the frame of our own mind. And our recollections are biased.

What I eventually realized was that person has pinned his or herself to that point in time, and thus the image of another person occupying that same point never moves on. And neither does the image of his or herself. Those people are prisoners of their own minds, stuck on a small point or stretch of time, refusing (or afraid) to move forward. And expecting other people to be the same. 

                                    Henrik Sorensen/Getty

Whose afraid of Virginia Woolf?

While reading this post about Virginia Woolf,  I was reminded of an internal and eternal dialogue pondering the question of how we perceive 'alone' and 'lonely'. The problem is that the two are not synonymous, although the wide perception often is. 'Alone' is not always 'lonely'. Yet, we are conditioned to think that anyone that is alone is 'lonely'. 

Semantically, 'alone' can mean 'solitude'. A person can be literally alone: by one's self away from other people. It may feel comfortable or uncomfortable. I can be alone, the only human on a mountain top, and not lonely; I feel solitude and connected to all life round me. Likewise, a person can be 'alone' and unconnected in a crowd of people, but comfortable with it. It's usually a choice. It's less about our circumstance, but how we react to them.*

But 'loneliness' is less ambiguous: it's a feeling of being alone, unconnected, and not liking it. Both are internal states, but loneliness is less related to what is going on around us. It's a fear of solitude. 

Individually there is a wide area-under-the-curve for each on what is comfortable and what is not. Yet, the cultural definition and expectations for everyone, including children, are quite narrow and contradictory. We are expected to know ourselves, but to always be 'social', e.g. with other people. Unfortunately, too many people don't know themselves, or are uncomfortable being alone with themselves. They fear it.

So it's an illusion, created by ourselves and society. 

In the medical community and the public mindset people are expected to always be surrounded by other people. Those that prefer to be alone are almost always considered 'unwell' or 'abnormal' because, culturally, 'alone' = 'lonely'. Then comes the judgement deluge.

Those two terms don't take into consideration the time element: always, occasionally, mostly, etc. Those adverbs are important because they quantify the the amount of alone time. Or even when feeling lonely. 

Some people feel they have to be with another person, or amongst other people, all the time. I've known a few people (mostly women, but a few men, too) who almost have panic attacks when they are alone. Their loneliness is overwhelming, usually because they don't know themselves, or they fear being alone with themselves. Perhaps they even fear not knowing themselves; they lack self-esteem.

There's also a gender bias: women are expected to always be surrounded by people, and in a personal relationship with another (usually a man, but that's another topic...). Men.... not so much, if at all. In a few countries, cultural acceptance of a woman alone in public, especially without a male, is prohibitive. It's like requiring your dog on a leash when in public. 

Alternatively, because I'm a woman that prefers solitude most of the time and lives alone the all too-common perception is that I'm lonely. I've had to fend off questions and comments from others implying judgement, such as pity or concern of unwellness. Especially, 'You don't have a man so you must be lonely and helpless'. Or, 'There's something wrong with you.' That's the expectation associated with perceptions of 'alone' and 'loneliness' of many women.

'Alone' and 'lonely' are illusions we create about ourselves and others (Virginia Woolf refers to it as 'a reality', which is partly correct). And with those illusions, we place judgement and expectations on ourselves and others. We celebrate self-esteem. But we stigmatize spending time with the person we should know, and like, the best: ourselves.

Woolf's writings exemplified the strong pervasive feelings of loneliness and the illusions of it. In a diary entry she wrote of this as being a 'reality': 

"That is one of the experiences I have had...and got then to a consciousness of what I call “reality”: a thing I see before me: something abstract; but residing in the downs or sky; beside which nothing matters; in which I shall rest and continue to exist. Reality I call it."

Woolf's angst (she was bipolar) with what was 'real' for her, and the societal illusions and expectations about being alone and lonely (especially as a woman), ultimately influenced her choice to end her life. Ironically, over a century later, that societal perception still exists. 

In her post, author Maria Popova writes,

"There is a kind of loneliness that lodges itself in the psyche and never fully leaves, a loneliness most anguishing not in solitude but in companionship and amid the crowd. If solitude fertilizes the imagination, loneliness vacuums it of vitality and sands the baseboards of the spirit with the scratchy restlessness of longing — for connection, for communion, for escape. And yet it is out of this restlessness that so many great works of art are born."

On the other hand, solitude lacks an illusion, or sense of loneliness, and it also feeds imagination and creativity. Journalist and Buddhist Zat Rana writes, 

"When you surround yourself with moments of solitude and stillness, you become intimately familiar with your environment in a way that forced stimulation doesn’t allow.

The world becomes richer, the layers start to peel back, and you see things for what they really are, in all their wholeness, in all their contradictions, and in all their unfamiliarity. You learn that there are other things you are capable of paying attention to than just what makes the most noise on the surface."

Being alone does not always have to mean 'loneliness'. Not all of us are afraid of Virginia Woolf, of living life free of illusion.

* Some people like feeling lonely, but that is more of a pathological issue and I'm not delving into that except for my reference to Virginia Woolf. 

My Third Law: It Depends!

Should burns take place in spring
Or wait for autumn rain?
Would baiting help or hinder?
Can owl chicks live through flame?
‘I dunno,’ we had to answer.
‘Not sure, can’t really say.
Needs further replication
Might vary day-to-day.’
PhDs require devotion,
Long days with no weekends
But the ultimate conclusion seems
‘Umm, well, it depends.’
- excerpt from post, 'My Grand Conclusion', on zoologist Bron's blog, Working on the Wild Side

The two of us answered in unision..... "It depends." And looked at each other with a knowing smile.

A retired couple asked for information on where to go to see this bird and that bird. Husband asked for specific details: what species, what location, what time. He was dissatisfied with my answers, including "They were seen here yesterday morning, and there yesterday afternoon, and at this location this morning, but they may be anywhere. They don't send us memos on when or where they go."

When asking for exact details on how to get to 'Point A' from 'Point B' (a distance of 125 miles), my explanation of various options of traveling from Point A to Point B resulted in some visible upset. His wife gently reminded him that they aren't in a hurry and he might enjoy experiencing different things along the way. Her comment was met with a hand wave, pointing at a map, and listing what he expected to see, do, encounter, etc. He wanted no surprises.

"If something changes, if we stray from the map, it will be an adventure!", said his wife.

"No! No surprises, and I don't like adventures. Adventures mean poor planning," Husband responded. "How long will it take to get to 'Point B'?"

Wife and I replied simultaneously, "It depends!"

I looked at them both and then asked Husband, "Are you a mathematician?"
Eyebrows went up and he said, "Why, yes! How did you know?".

"A strong aversion of risk and uncertainty," I responded. Wife returned my smile.
"Oh my God, are you a biologist, too?!" Husband asked with raised eyebrows and looking like he was stuck in between two conspirators.  By that time, all three of us were laughing.

Third Law: It Depends!

My First Law, unapologetically borrowed from The First Law of Thermodynamics (aka 'You can't win'), states that where there's a positive, there is a negative. And this is related to My Second Law: 'Everything is relative'. 'Positive' and 'negative' are relative to the perspective of that which observes or experiences the action/reaction, which depends on time, place and being. (Note that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is 'You can't break even'. See blog post linked above.)

I think you can see where I'm going.

My Third Law is 'It Depends'. If anything I have learned in biology and ecology (and life itself) remains constant, it is: It depends. For the person who demands or insists on a life or reality of 'Yes' or 'No', you will either be disappointed or live in perpetual denial. For life is not simply black and white. A vast area of gray reside in between.

Evolution of......

As an undergraduate back in the early 1980's, and in the 'backward' state of Maine, specialization was not the norm. To specialize meant the same fate as an organism that is specific to a very narrow habitat and diet. It could mean death in a drastically changing environment. As most biologists will recognize the analogy, plasticity in lifestyle, education and thinking meant adaptability and survival.

Thrust into the rapidly evolving culture and society of rampant specialization in grad school (Oregon) was somewhat traumatic for me. But that did not deter me from learning and cultivating both professionally and in my own culture, plasticity. It has been ironically amusing to see a reverse in the trend of specialization the last six years, albeit at a slow rate in academia. Several life science disciplines still resist recognition and acceptance of integrated sciences and practice. Even in my beloved field of biology.

An exception is ecology. Perhaps because the very concept and foundation of ecology is based in dynamic and complex relationships. No longer can only one variable be 'the' determinist'. In ecology, models are not equated with 'laws', but serve as bases for probabilities and predictions. With a good dose of 'it depends'.

Evolution itself operates on 'It depends'. Nearly all phenotypic traits are based on the expression of multiple genes interacting within the context of a dynamic relationship with their environment. A trait will evolve and remain as long as it confers fitness within a set of environmental conditions.

Changing one note in a symphony is sometimes drowned out by the rest of the music. Except for rare diseases, one single gene is not responsible for obesity and/or diabetes. Ernst Mayr commented, "The idea that a few people have about the gene being the target of selection is completely impractical; a gene is never visible to natural selection, and in the genotype, it is always in the context with other genes, and the interaction with those other genes make a particular gene either more favorable or less favorable."

Frankly, I feel more comfortable with a world of 'it depends' than dictates of 'The Theory of Everything', the 'Gene for Everything', and 'Models are Laws'. A world of Venn Cubes (a more complex 3-D model of Venn Diagrams ;) makes more sense to me; it's more representative of life and reality. Perhaps I can handle the uncertainty and risk.

So, according to my Third Law, there is a caveat to my First and Second Laws. It depends.


Interview  with the late biologist, Ernst Mayr on  Edge.org:

MAYR: "One of the surprising things that I discovered in my work on the philosophy of biology is that when it comes to the physical sciences, any new theory is based on a law, on a natural law. Yet as several leading philosophers have stated, and I agree with them, there are no laws in biology like those of physics. Biologists often use the word law, but for something to be a law, it has to have no exceptions. A law must be beyond space and time, and therefore it cannot be specific. Every general truth in biology though is specific. Biological "laws" are restricted to certain parts of the living world, or certain localized situations, and they are restricted in time. So we can say that there are no laws in biology, except in functional biology which, as I claim, is much closer to the physical sciences, than the historical science of evolution."

 

EDGE: "Let's call this Mayr's Law."

Further reading:
"The typical ecological answer – it depends", blog post by oikosasa. Website: Oikos: Synthesizing Ecology.

"Which species is best for their host marsh cordgrass? Fiddler crab or mussel? The answer is – it depends"

"Ecological processes depend on …", blog post by CJA Bradshaw. Website: ConservationBytes.com.

"In real ‘ecological’ life, things are vastly different. It’s never as straightforward as ‘yes’ or ‘no’, because ecology is complex. There are times that I forget this important aspect when testing a new hypothesis with what seem like unequivocal data, but then reality always hits."

A-Z Challenge. Wonder and Wisdom

"Wisdom begins with wonder." - Socrates

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." - Socrates

"Socrates liked to tease his interlocutors by saying that the only thing he knew was that he knew nothing. There is a deep insight in this, for the one thing that is more dangerous than true ignorance is the illusion of knowledge and understanding. Such illusion abounds, and one of the first tasks of philosophy – as wonderfully demonstrated by Socrates in Plato's "Meno" – is to explore our claims to know things about ourselves and the world, and to expose them if they are false or muddled. It does so by beginning with the questions we ask, to ensure that we understand what we are asking; and even when answers remain elusive, we at least grasp what it is that we do not know. This in itself is a huge gain. One of the most valuable things philosophy has given me is an appreciation of this fact." - Anonymous quote

To wonder is to keep alive and fresh the child's curiosity. For, indeed, there lies the beginnings of wonder and wisdom. And the beauty of life.

A-Z Challenge. T is for Toponyms

Edward Abbey once wrote about the human propensity to ascribe everything with a name:

“Unless we can name things, they remain for us only half-real. A man’s name can become more important than his person. A plant, an animal, a thing without a name is no thing – nothing. No wonder we humans like to think that in the beginning was – the Word. What word? Any word at all, anything rather than the silence and terror of the nameless.”

Having shared that viewpoint all my life, I often make up names for things already named. Sometimes things remain nameless. Even people. 

I live in a place where many things clash, including names. It is the desert. 

This area of the southern Big Bend country encompasses a state and national park, a wildlife refuge, small scattered human communities, and a river. All collectively called many names, such as “The Big Empty”. Or “God’s Country”, “Paradise”, “Devil’s Playground”. I recall perusing topo maps before my first trip down there, smirking at some of the names given to landmarks: Dealer’s Gap, Mule Ears, Dog Canyon, Elephant Mountain, and more. Some quite entertaining, some named after a long-dead person, others with religious names, many with assigned descriptive names, such as ‘The Window’.

But when you are there, you sometimes invent your own personal name for a landmark. I christened a peak in Black Gap as “Randy’s Monolith” because my friend Randy was enthralled with its presence. I’m sure it probably has an accepted toponym decreed by someone long ago and propagated over time without dissent, eventually being recorded on a map and copied over and over again.

But if you are truly in the desert, and a part of it, you don’t remember or care about names. You can make up any name you want for anything there. Or see and know landmarks without a name. 

I've always been interested in how people perceive places and how people create meaning through places. I try to listen to the voices, the versions and the scenes. I don't restrict meaning to organized tours, glossy brochures and pamphlets, but try to really find and listen to the many voices of a landscape. Even the quiet voice of the physical environment, for it is not really silent.

Learning how we ascribe symbols to places, events and other people, or names in general, reveals much about ourselves and those that came before us.  We are products of language, thus, language imparts power. Place names, or toponyms, provide valuable insight into the historical geography of a particular region.  These names attached to the physical landscape inform us of its past and present culture, including ethnic settlement patterns.  The other association with toponyms is the dominant voices in the past and the present, and those voices that have been silenced.

Place names can be quite revealing. The Native Americans sometimes gave many names to non-living things, including each other. Not uncommonly, one individual could have many names. Never were they names that Europeans use. No Native American chose to be Robert or Ester without a strong European influence, or even Anglo-American coercion. Even after death, many natives were buried the Anglo way and assigned Anglo names that were inscribed on their headstones. I witnessed this in several cemeteries, such as in Fort Sill (Oklahoma) where Geronimo was buried.

Here is no different. With reluctance I have referenced this region in south Texas as ‘Big Bend Country’. I also call it 'Occupied New Mexico'. But inside my head and heart, it is the desert and canyons, with special locations called 'Home'.

•  For those interested in toponyms, I highly recommend reading this book by Mark Monmonier: From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow:How Maps Name, Claim, and Inflame.
• Witch's Tit is a mountain in the Big Bend area. And it really does have the shape of a..... breast. 

A-Z Challenge. Ohm.

In case new readers haven't caught on yet, I have an odd and inexplicable curiosity of names. (My favorite subject is toponyms, but that's for the letter 'T'.) This interest even surfaces in my science writing where I often address scientific names and common names of, well, just about everything in science. Yet, I am also known for totally disregarding official names, including my own. I'll let the couch-psychologists toy with that.

Rubbing the sleep from my eyes (literally, desert dust) and listening to a quail thumping outside my window while waiting for my coffee to brew, the roulette in my mind landed on a rather insignificant word for today's letter 'O': ohm.

What's in an 'ohm'?

Some might recall from physics (the 'F' word, 'fysics') class learning about the relationship between the potential difference applied across a conductor and the resultant electric current; aka Ohm's Law.

Those with an engineering slant will immediately gravitate to that Pièce de résistance of electricity, the ohm. It is an SI (International System of Units) unit of resistance: the proportionality of current and voltage in a resistor. The definition of ohm as a unit has undergone several revisions since the 1860's, but it also has been assigned a symbol: Ω. That's easier to remember.

Probably few know that Georg Ohm, the German mathematician and physicist, received most of his education in chemistry, mathematics, physics and philosophy from his self-taught father, who was a locksmith by trade. His brother, Martin, also became a well-known mathematician. Despite the lack of exceptional institutional education, both siblings surmounted that resistance with family motivation. Seems to be the 'Ohm way.'

But there are more 'ohm's to be had. A large impact crater on the far side of the Moon (cue Pink Floyd) is known as the 'Ohm lunar crater'. The name of that crater was assigned by the the International Astronomical Union, and, of course, in tribute to our friend Georg Ohm.

The Ohm River lies in the region of Hesse, Germany, and is a tributary of the greater Lahn River. Suitably, the town of Homberg/Ohm in the valley of the Ohm was famous for its beer in the 13th century.

Now let's go across the ocean to the U.S. The small town in Ohm, California, was named (1900) after the Ohm Ranch. Thomas Ohm, a German native, established the ranch in 1868 and raised grain. I wonder if his crop was hops.

South of the border, a Mexican of German descent, Germán Ohm, was a popular featherweight boxer. His boxing career was short, spanning the age 18 to his retirement at 22. Most of his fights of recognition took place in the late 1950's. Seems that his fists carried the Ohm legacy of resistance.

Sweeping across the globe now to India, and overlapping centuries across time, 'ohm' is also an alternative spelling for 'om'. The sound is a mantra of Hindu origin, but also a sacred sound in Buddhism, Dharma and Jainism. The syllable represents many meanings depending on the source.

Anyone that grew up in the 1960's (me, for instance) will recognize its association with the Flower Child and Peace Anti-war Movements. One explanation probably describes it in both earlier and latter contexts: ""OM" is the reflection of the absolute reality, it is said to be "Adi Anadi", without beginning or the end and embracing all that exists." Or, as I like to put it, "No matter where you go, there you are."

And with that, let's slowly form the syllable 'Om' in our throats and mouths, slowly humming it out with no resistance, and embrace the day.

"Ohm....................."

A-Z Challenge. K is for Karma

Karma is the mad hatter of a hater's world. – Amy Wynne Whatley

Now as a man is like this or like that,
according as he acts and according as he behaves, so will he be;
a man of good acts will become good, a man of bad acts, bad;
he becomes pure by pure deeds, bad by bad deeds;

And here they say that a person consists of desires,
and as is his desire, so is his will;
and as is his will, so is his deed;
and whatever deed he does,
that he will reap.
—Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 7th Century BC 

A-Z Challenge: H is for Heart.

How many times have you asked yourself, "Why am I doing this?", "What am I doing?", "Am I on the right path?"

We've all been there at one time or another. Perhaps several times. For many decades I have always asked myself this: 'Does this path I am on, or about to embark on, have heart?' 

What does that mean?  Our heart is the organ that pumps our life's blood to all of our internal tissues. When it stops pumping, the body dies. Metaphorically, heart is also our inner-most truth-sayer; it tells us the truth. It is the source of our compassion, love, determination, our weaknesses and strength. It is being 'whole' instead of being lost in strewn bits and pieces. It is also the source of our 'knowing', despite our awareness or lack of. When we lose 'heart', we lose our direction, motivation, commitment, our strength, and our happiness. We lose ourselves and we are not whole.

The heart knows the way home; it knows the truth. It knows when we are off-course. It also knows when we are betrayed; by others or by ourselves. A path with no heart can suck all our self-esteem and self-worth from us. Or it can instill false hopes. Losing heart will leave us empty, angry, and unbalanced, leaving us blundering blind on a heartless path.

Embarking on a path may be full of uncertainties. But if we have heart, and we know that our direction is true; if we accept that we may have to change course along the way, and if we learn from all the obstacles along our path, then that path has heart. And as we journey forward, we become stronger and whole; and more happy.

"You must always keep in mind that a path is only a path. Each path is only one of a million paths. If you feel that you must now follow it, you need not stay with it under any circumstances. Any path is only a path. There is no affront to yourself or others in dropping a path if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on a path or to leave it must be free of fear and ambition. 

I caution you: look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone this one question. Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same. They lead nowhere. They are paths going through the brush or into the brush or under the brush of the Universe. The only question is: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then it is a good path. If it doesn’t, then it is of no use." - from The Teachings of Don Juan, by Carlos Castaneda

I look forward to my new Path with Heart. I hope you all do the same.

A-Z Challenge: E. Environmentalist

“But they are harder to find now, those spirits. I look out across the moonlit Lake District ranges, and it’s as clear as the night air that what used to come in regular waves, pounding like the sea, comes now only in flashes, out of the corner of my eyes, like a lighthouse in a storm. Perhaps it’s the way the world has changed. There are more cars on the roads now, more satellites in the sky. The footpaths up the fells are like stone motorways, there are turbines on the moors, and the farmers are being edged out by south-country refugees like me, trying to escape but bringing with us the things we flee from. The new world is online and loving it, the virtual happily edging out the actual. The darkness is shut out and the night grows lighter and nobody is there to see it.” - Paul Kingsnorth, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist

I’m not sure when I realized I was an ‘environmentalist.’ I always scorned being classified or grouped into labels, such as a feminist, liberal/democrat/conservative/republican. To me they were just names of boxes which we crawl in or are shoved into with labels on the covers. Once labeled, all personal thought and individual ideas are ignored. You don’t own yourself anymore.

I realized decades ago that my attachment; actually, my very sense of identity and place, with the non-human environment was an inherent part of me that can’t be ignored or pretended. I am a product of my environment. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Even as a scientist, a biologist, I am constantly reminded of the world around me and how it affects me. I wither and fade in cities. In the forests, the desert, near lakes and rivers, surrounded by a variety of flora and fauna, I am a child and wizened adult, a creative and loving force.

An environmentalist to me is to listen and care for the surrounding environment. To speak for them in a language humans can understand. To learn their stories and nourish their growth. To respect their inherent values and places in our complicated web of life. And to find a way to re-establish connections between people and their wild partners on this planet. Before we destroy it all, and in this way, destroy ourselves. I want to give back what it gives to me: life.

Yet it seems that 'environmentalism' has evolved into something else. Like those labeled boxes we are hide in, even the environmentalists are trading that early set of values for trendy and compromising chips, like playing at an environmental casino. It’s all about trading species in one place for another million hours of air conditioning in an overpopulated desert city. Or the sacrificial lamb in the name of ‘conservation’. Conservation of what? And for whom? This is not the ‘environmentalist’ that I am today, nor was before.

I’ve been called a ‘tree hugger’. So be it. Sometimes I’d rather hug a tree than many of my own species.

“We are environmentalists now in order to promote something called “sustainability.” What does this curious, plastic word mean? It does not mean defending the nonhuman world from the ever-expanding empire of Homo sapiens sapiens, though some of its adherents like to pretend it does, even to themselves. It means sustaining human civilization at the comfort level that the world’s rich people—us—feel is their right, without destroying the “natural capital” or the “resource base” that is needed to do so.” - Paul Kingsnorth

A-Z Challenge: C is for Culture

What is culture? Is culture dead? Or is it just running on autopilot in chaotic traffic on a busy highway immersed in a plethora of signage which no one reads or cares?

“We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”  ― Alan Wilson Watts

“The decay and disintegration of this culture is astonishingly amusing if you are emotionally detached from it. I have always viewed it from a safe distance, knowing I don't belong; it doesn't include me, and it never has. no matter how you care to define it, I do not identify with the local group. Planet, species, race, nation, state, religion, party, union, club, association, neighborhood improvement committee; I have no interest in any of it. I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to.”  ― George Carlin

“While much psychology emphasizes the familial causes of angst in humans, the cultural component carries as much weight, for culture is the family of the family. If the family of the family has various sicknesses, then all families within that culture will have to struggle with the same malaises. There is a saying cultura cura, culture cures. If the culture is a healer, the families learn how to heal; they will struggle less, be more reparative, far less wounding, far more graceful and loving. In a culture where the predator rules, all new life needing to be born, all old life needing to be gone, is unable to move and the soul-lives of its citizenry are frozen with both fear and spiritual famine.”- Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Culture, cultura, is the cultivation of an integrated system of learned behavior patterns which are characteristic of the members of a society and which are not a result of biological inheritance. It is our ideas, beliefs, our morals and our self-identity as a collection of individuals. It is a collective 'Us.' And a collective 'Them'. It was once the fabric of our civilization. Now it is becoming our collapse. 

Perhaps our redemption lies in the following words:

“What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. Life is plurality, death is uniformity. By suppressing differences and pecularities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death. The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us. Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life." 
-  Octavio Paz  (Mexican poet, writer, and diplomat, 1914-1998)

“Culture is not your friend. Culture is for other people’s convenience and the convenience of various institutions, churches, companies, tax collection schemes, what have you. It is not your friend. It insults you. It disempowers you. It uses and abuses you. None of us are well treated by culture.” - See more at: http://www.endalldisease.com/73-mindblowing-terence-mckenna-quotes/#sthash.bPR5UuXg.dpuf

“Culture is not your friend. Culture is for other people’s convenience and the convenience of various institutions, churches, companies, tax collection schemes, what have you. It is not your friend. It insults you. It disempowers you. It uses and abuses you. None of us are well treated by culture.”
– Terence McKenna - See more at: http://www.endalldisease.com/73-mindblowing-terence-mckenna-quotes/#sthash.bPR5UuXg.dpuf

“Culture is not your friend. Culture is for other people’s convenience and the convenience of various institutions, churches, companies, tax collection schemes, what have you. It is not your friend. It insults you. It disempowers you. It uses and abuses you. None of us are well treated by culture.”
– Terence McKenna

“Personal empowerment means deconditioning yourself from the values and the programs of the society and putting your own values and programs in place.”
– Terence McKenna
- See more at: http://www.endalldisease.com/73-mindblowing-terence-mckenna-quotes/#sthash.bPR5UuXg.dp

A-Z Blogging: A is for Adaptation

Adapt or.... do what? That's a good question. We know that one of the primary drivers of success and evolution in biology is adaptation. A living cell or organism that is able to change due to altered external conditions, such as pH, moisture levels, temperature, or to change their shape, has a better chance of surviving a wider range of conditions than ones that do not. This ability is often called 'plasticity' in the science community. Organisms that have greater plasticity within a range of conditions adapt easier and quicker. Those that can't adapt may die.

Extending this to cognition and learning, there's more bang per buck in the 'A' department. Think of a Triple-A Club: Assimilation, Accommodation and Adaptation. A Swiss biologist and psychologist, Jean Piaget, developed a fundamental theory for cognitive development in children, and which has then served as a general theory for learning, cognitive function and psychology. After all, we don't stop learning after reaching adulthood, although many adults are less adaptive to change.

Briefly, assimilation of new information into previously existing structures or schema coincides with accommodation, the formation of new mental structures when new information does not fit into existing structures in the mind. The mind's natural tendency then is to organize information into related, interconnected structures, where the most basic structure is the scheme.

For example, a person encounters a geco for the first time and incorporates that into his or her existing schema for "lizards". When the adult meets a rattlesnake  for the first time and learns that it is different from "lizards," he or she must create new representation for "snakes."

Thus, the internal world has to accommodate itself to the external evidence that it confronts and adjust to it. Or, in our principle 'A' word, it has to adapt. And we know that for adults, that can sometimes be a difficult and painful process.

For children, this process is much less painful because they are somewhat 'blank slates'. Assimilation and accommodation in young children is similar to writing new sentences on a brand new chalkboard. On the other hand, adults have dirty and cluttered blackboards on which information is often etched or imprinted with thick crayons and all of which complicates accommodation of new information. Adults take in new information or experiences and incorporate them into existing ideas, or change existing ideas based on their assimilation and accommodation of new information.

Unfortunately, most adults tend to modify new experience or information somewhat to fit in with their preexisting beliefs. Many times, if new information doesn't pigeonhole with preexisting beliefs, that information is discarded. That adult will not likely adapt to changing information and experiences.

Through adaptation, we are able to adopt new behaviors that allow us to cope with change. Apparently, lately in our social and physical worlds modern humans have lost their ability to adapt to new ideas and changes in our worlds. Perhaps that is why our behavior has degenerated to worse than children. Perhaps we can use the excuse of domesticated dogs, for which some biologists claim as the 'arrested juvenile state' of their ancestors, the wolf.

Perhaps that is why we humans have such a fear and hatred of wolves. We and they are less likely to adapt to changing environments and social upheaval like the coyote, who are very adaptable.

The coyote are the Tricksters; we can learn from them. ;)

Who are we really?

Alan Watts wrote in 1966 (1):

..the prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East..

Here is a source of confrontation I (and some others) have had with modern science since beginning my studies:

"....our attention — which has been aptly called “an intentional, unapologetic discriminator” — works by dividing the world up into processable parts, then stringing those together into a pixelated collage of separates which we then accept as a realistic representation of the whole that was there in the first place." (2)

Alan Watts wrote:

Attention is narrowed perception. It is a way of looking at life bit by bit, using memory to string the bits together — as when examining a dark room with a flashlight having a very narrow beam. Perception thus narrowed has the advantage of being sharp and bright, but it has to focus on one area of the world after another, and one feature after another. And where there are no features, only space or uniform surfaces, it somehow gets bored and searches about for more features. Attention is therefore something like a scanning mechanism in radar or television. . . . But a scanning process that observes the world bit by bit soon persuades its user that the world is a great collection of bits, and these he calls separate things or events. We often say that you can only think of one thing at a time. The truth is that in looking at the world bit by bit we convince ourselves that it consists of separate things, and so give ourselves the problem of how these things are connected and how they cause and effect each other. The problem would never have arisen if we had been aware that it was just our way of looking at the world which had chopped it up into separate bits, things, events, causes, and effects. (1)

But this is the way we are trained from birth. Dissect, tear apart, and stuff all the pieces in boxes, unable to see and grasp all that ties everything together. I remember experiencing how hard this is to unlearn when I was taught tracking in my early 20's by a Native American. Who always shook his head and wondered aloud how Europeans and their descendents ever survived, and only so because of technological invention. For which we pay the price of losing our ability to 'see' and thus continue falling down into our own holes that we dig ourselves into.

"....And therein lies the crux of our human struggle" (3):

The real reason why human life can be so utterly exasperating and frustrating is not because there are facts called death, pain, fear, or hunger. The madness of the thing is that when such facts are present, we circle, buzz, writhe, and whirl, trying to get the “I” out of the experience. We pretend that we are amoebas, and try to protect ourselves from life by splitting in two. Sanity, wholeness, and integration lie in the realization that we are not divided, that man and his present experience are one, and that no separate “I” or mind can be found.

To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, “I am listening to this music,” you are not listening.

The last, I was taught by my father.

These are the foundations of Zen, of meditation, of phenomenology, of tracking, of being present in the world. Of really being alive.


(1) Excerpt from The Ego and the Universe: Alan Watts on Becoming Who You Really Are, by Maria Popova and the website, "brainpickings". 
(2) Quote from: The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), by Alan Watts.
(3) Excerpt from An Antidote to the Age of Anxiety: Alan Watts on Happiness and How to Live with Presence, by Maria Popova. Quote by Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety (1951).

A Test of My Humanity

“By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist. That is the void.” - Miyamoto Musashi

To suffer a loss of spirit is a test of your humanity. Losing someone dear to you; a parent, a child, a spouse, a lover - the emotions that tear through your being like a hurricane and leave you stranded on a desert in pain, every drop of life sucked out of you. Left on your knees, empty and dry, not knowing how to live or die. Your soul is ripped out of your chest and your heart lays beating in your hands. The emptiness is a bottomless pit once filled with love and presence. 

How does the spirit feel such pain? No other physical ache equals that of a grieving soul and a heart in pain. In the aftermath of a recent personal trauma I traveled to find my spirit again and heal the pain inside while wrestling with a gaping hole of emptiness. A spirit torn asunder, scattered in pieces and I knew I would never be the same.

Intellectually, the scientist I am realized the internal pain resulted from stress and shock; thousands of neurotransmitters and hormones raging uncontrolled in my brain and my body (beta-blockers would have helped). The same neurochemicals that regulate physical pain control psychological pain. Yet, what makes me human struggled to resolve the conflict of the pragmatist and the humanist within. I had to dissociate from the pain and grief to find humility and peace. Needing to find the remnants inside and nurture their growth to fill what had been lost, I returned to old medicine for my soul: the mountains.

As I gazed at the deserts and mountains passing below me the world became bigger and I became miniscule. Sprouting metal and mental wings, I watched time unfold, shape the earth and terraform history. I saw time guide the waters as they cut through the earth, smoothing mountains and eroding layers of colored sediments. Rivers and creeks gouged deeply into the land leaving threads that snaked through the terrain below. It reminded me of yards of speckled velvet thrown from above, lying quietly ruffled and wrinkled. Colored mesas and tabletops reached up to the sky above like stalagmites. Scattered straight and winding roads transected the land like large pencil marks made by humans and their machines. 

I imagined the singularity of elements and the bonding between them, the evolution of nucleic acids and proteins transforming into creatures, and the dynamic complexity between the inanimate and animate. I imagined life being born and dying, all within a blink of an eye.

Nothing is static and nothing acts in isolation. Everything is connected in a measurable or immeasurable way. Everything is mutable to some degree. The dichotomy of our consciousness to reason and make choices between our biology and our environment scares most people. Yet that is what makes us human: the capability of making decisions and choices. Even indecision is a choice. And every decision and choice is a trade-off with consequences, good and bad. Sometimes, that requires considerable strength.

Relative to the stage below, I realized that my pain, my thoughts, my drama, my life were inconsequential to the play. All before and after me are actors on this stage of time forever caught in a play billions of years old and which never ends. I don’t need to rationalize my existence nor that of others. The meaning of my life does not derive from without but from within and my interaction with my surroundings. My life, my death are one in the same. It is Humility. I again resolved myself with the world around me, acknowledging my capabilities, fears, faults and desires and the essence of who I am and can be. 

No one can take that away.

At 11,000 feet in the air and without hesitation I faced an old fear and conquered it. By embracing my fears, my death, my weaknesses, I regained my strength. Again life infused my soul and my spirit soared like an eagle over the mountains upon which I stood. My only remaining fear was to act without honor or in dishonesty to myself. And to unconditionally give it all away. That will not happen again.

I have found what I am made of: something transient yet tenacious, not dismantled by loss but recomposed by it.

Let the healing begin.

“The truth is that strength lies in the interior of the Warrior: in his heart, his mind and his spirit… The heart is essential in helping the intellect to understand the spirit.” - Miyamoto Musashi, ‘Book of Five Rings’