Beyond Biology

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Beyond Biology

• Metaphysical Brain Science

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The Human Family
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Biology
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All these Authors

• One Message Humans are subject to insuperable
  laws of Biology
• All institutions, ethics come from Biological
  (natural) roots
• But our struggle is quite the opposite to
  escape the limitations of natural boundaries. We
  do this with our intellect.
• Only recently in history has great progress been
  Made.

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The big question

• Is there was more to our existence than mere
  physicality biology and chemistry. Science
  finds that humans like other animals obey
  biological laws.
• Humans have the same needs and biological
  functions as all other living organisms
• Humans employ similar strategies to fulfill needs
  as other animals albeit in more complex social
  and intellectual context.

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Question

• When it comes to our biology are we masters or
  slaves?

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Argument of Experience

• Daily medical practice and experience shows with
  a certainty that biomedical processes mediate
  consciousness, mainly that death coincides with
  death of the organism. .

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Clinical argument

• Most convincingly for me as a neurologist I
  observed that mental deterioration correlates
  with definable physical processes within the
  brain as in Alzheimer disease where simple
  accumulation of a chemical substance beta-amyloid
  ends in the slow dissolution of the personality.

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Amyloid senile plaque
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Disease is Physical change
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• And Mental illness was often traceable either to
  physical processes or the simple deficiencies in
  neurotransmitters as in depression and serotonin.

Chemical structure of Serotonin
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The common man

• Moreover, its a casual observation that life
  slips away easily the end of human life is not
  different other life forms. If we die as other
  animals do, are we not merely a mixture of
  chemicals and substances, no more than the matter
  from which we are made?

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The big question

• Tantamount to search for a soul, something
  separable from physical attributes .
• Something that sets humans apart from inanimate
  objects and other animals
• Adding meaning to life.
• Objective evidence?

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Despair vs. Striving

• Despairing of this hopeless state in which all
  must in the end mean nothing and having been
  influenced by higher human strivings noting
  creativity, literature, dance, art music
  architecture, medicine I thought this has to be
  wrong. It was so offensive to my inner being to
  reduce all human strivings to machinations of
  flesh and bone.

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Materialism

• Their statues are made of silver and Gold
• The product of the hands of man
• Nostrils they have, but smell not
• They have hands, but feel not
• Feet they have, but walk not,
• Neither do they utter a sound with their throats.
• Those who make them, shall become like them,
• Also those who confide in them.
• -Psalm 115

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Redutio ad Materium
Golem, zombie, doppelganger
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Reductio ad Materium
Is there a way out?
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Yet I could make no cogent argument that this was
not so.

• This tormented me and yet I could make no
  rational argument against this materialism.

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How do you know its there?

• One day I was talking to my small son about
  colors and the spectrum. And he gravitated into
  questions about invisible electromagnetic energy.
  I told him that the greatest part of the
  electromagnetic energy was not visible, x-rays,
  gamma rays, radio waves. He asked, if that is so,
  how do you know its there?

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• The visual perceptive apparatus, eye and brain,
  apprehend only a tiny part of the electromagnetic
  spectrum. Yet of late, since the 19th and 20th
  centuries mainly, weve come to know and use
  invisible waves, x-rays, radio, microwaves.

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The Eye
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Visual Brain Areas
Human Brain
Ape Brain
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How do we see beyond what our visual apparatus is
capable of seeing?
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Middling Vision
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Transcending biology

• Vision is a metaphor for biological
  transcendence, stepping beyond our biological
  endowment we see far more than by rights we ought
  to be able to see. This has become apparent
  recently in our history, but in many fields of
  human endeavor, our capacities have gone beyond
  what reasonably we should have expected given our
  biological ability.

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How far can you see?
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Chandra Infrared Image
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Moses of Michelangelo
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Beyond Biology

• Cheat death and disability with scientific
  discovery
• Peer into the distant past and future beyond the
  temporal bounds of our own lifetimes.
• Store vast amounts of information outstripping
  the biological memory
• Accumulate experience of civilization and pass
  down vast stores of information.

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Beyond biology

• See far flung portions of the e-m spectrum
• Peer into atoms and galaxies outside the limits
  of our vision
• Fly faster than legs can carry us
• Build buildings to shield us from elements
• Write literature, poetry and symphonies
• Create art
• Examine and are aware of ourselves
• Improve on our own biological endowments

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Escape velocity

• Much of this humankind has done only recently in
  history, the velocity of change building on past
  efforts attaining certain escape velocity
  escape from natural world.

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Civilization Escaping Biology
Museum of civilization
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Escape velocity
Aurora and Orion from space shuttle
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Escape velocity
Mozambique from space
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Ad Mysterium
Karyatid mystery Poulos
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Soul

• Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting
• The Soul that rises in us, our life's Star,
• Hath had elsewhere in its setting,
• And commeth from afar
• Not in entire forgetfulness,
• And not in utter nakedness,
• But trailing clouds of glory do we come
• From God, who is our home
• -William Wordsworth

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In or above?

• Raises question Is humankind a part of the
  biological natural world or are we above it?

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Basic Question of Existence

• Are we in nature or are we above it?
• Recent attainments have finally given the Answer
  Were above it

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Core Question

• Will Material Scientific Explanations Prove
  Adequate or Complete Description of Human
  Condition?
• No! Human aims higher. Humans aim beyond their
  immediate material predicaments. Scheme, Wonder,
  Grasp

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Janus
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No longer are we delimited by our biological
Organism
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Homo technologicus

• 99 of species that have been on the planet are
  extinct.
• Species survive an average of 2M years
• We are one of many species - a mere primate which
  will exist and then become extinct
• Mere tenants on a planet which will survive us
• Richard Leakey in Origins Reconsidered

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Survival

• Will earth survive us or we the earth?
• My own assumptions we inherit the earth which
  has a limited existence.
• After the earth is gone we will inhabit other
  worlds or other existences.
• Humankind will survive the earth which is our
  home
• Software outlasting the machine

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Extinct Neanderthal
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Human Abilities

• Last couple of hundred years we have attained
  escape velocity, beaten back our biological
  Limitations

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Asceticism

• Futile attempt to deny our biology
• But now we can Conquer it

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Question of Life and Death

• Inevitable We will conquer Death
• We will attain a forms of existence unlike our
  biological endowment
• Humans of the future will no longer have to
  contend with the mundane aspects of death

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Elemental Biology

• Manipulation of DNA
• Were on the verge of the full conquest of biology

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Manipulation of DNA
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The genetic molecule
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Where we were, Where we are

• Infant-Maternal mortality
• Conquest of Infectious Diseases
• Production of Food and conquest of Hunger

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Read History

• Death at any time due to infectious disease
• Contention with the elements
• Brutality of nature

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Vision

• How do we see so much more than the eye can is
  sensitive to? We do it with the associative
  brain. Human ingenuity.

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Vision

• Every organism is limited by its own organs of
  perception except man whose understanding goes
  beyond immediate sensation.
• Metaphor for the one species that is capable of
  performing beyond his own physical limits.

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Humans

• Produce machines to take us farther and faster
  than legs can carry us
• See beyond the meager visual spectrum
• Peer at the beginning and end of time
• Utilize storage devices with capacities far
  vaster than a thousand human human brains
• Inhabit grand buildings of advanced design
• Create unnatural art and music
• Pass down advanced civilization, a collective
  conscousness

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Matisse
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Human Mind Inscribed in the Infinite
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civilization
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Q How are Humans Distinguished from Other Animals

• A Humans Transcend Their Biological Limitations.
  We are not defined by our Biology.

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Something Beyond Material

• Beyond Scientific or Mechanistic
• Beyond the reaches of relentless Analysis

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Describe Process by one Illustration

• Doctor and Patient

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Defining the Doctor Patient Relationship

• Unique

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Doctor and Patient

• Purveyor of treatments?
• Diagnostician?
• Teacher?
• More than the above?

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Role of Suffering
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Dissolution of Personality
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The Biology of the Disease Fails to Describe the
Patient

• Response to Disease
• Retention of Personality
• Challenge in Face of Adversity

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Can Be Seen in Relation to Certain Severe Diseases
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Viktor Frankl

• Experiment Humans in Extreme Conditions
• He who has a why to live for can bear with
  almost any how.
• It does not matter what we expect from life but
  what what life expects from us.

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Humans Differ from Material Objects How?

• History
• Recorded in Mind
• Embryology
• We are not widgets that are made. We develop.