The Irony of the Science of Life

At the heart of biology lies an irony hiding in plain sight—one that perhaps requires the sensibility of a poet to fully expose. The paradox is this: in biology, the very science of life, we frequently kill the subject of our study in order to understand it. To observe the mechanisms of life, we must often first extinguish the spark itself.

The poet who most famously articulated this tension was William Wordsworth (1770–1850). In his 1798 poem The Tables Turned (the full text of which I append below), he offered a succinct and haunting indictment of the analytical impulse:

'We murder to dissect'

This sentiment is a quintessential expression of the Romantic era—a period in British literature generally dated from 1785 to 1832—which arose, in part, as a reaction against the cold, mechanistic reductionism of the Enlightenment.

This era also produced alternative methodologies, most notably the scientific work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Unlike the Newtonian model, Goethe’s approach to science sought to understand the "wholeness" of living organisms through "delicate empiricism." He argued that one should observe the metamorphosis of plants and the harmony of form while the subject remained vital, rather than relying solely on the post-mortem analysis of its parts.

A remarkably similar perspective appears in the mid-twentieth century within the World Perspectives book series. In the general introduction to the series—an essay included in all 54 volumes—the editor Ruth Nanda Anshen argues that "to subdivide Man is to execute him."

Whether the method is physical dissection or intellectual subdivision, the result remains the same: death. Anshen’s warning was intended to combat the increasing fragmentation of human knowledge. She contended that over-specialization in science and philosophy acts as a too narrow lens that, while magnifying a part, destroys the essence of the whole person.

In our own time, we see a belated recognition of this problem in the rise of Systems Biology. This discipline attempts to move beyond the reductionist "murder" of previous centuries by focusing on the integrated networks and emergent properties of living systems. It suggests that by looking at the interactions rather than just the isolated components, we might finally begin to study life without first having to extinguish it. In our quest for precision, we must ensure we do not lose the very subject we sought to define.

The Tables Turned (1798)
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless—
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—
We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

Another CIrculation Figure

 

Another figure depicting the human circulatory system. (Another in what I ought to call the 'same but different' series.) This is from McNaught and Callander's Illustrated Physiology. The more recent editions had different editors and I think that the book is now sadly out of print. This is a great pity. It was one of my favourite books especially for the illustrations - which I used to use as lecture slides.

There were other 'Illustrated's consisting primarily of pages of such figures. It was published originally, I believe, by Churchill Livingstone. One I used to use was Pathology Illustrated. Another (which I did not use) was Gynaecology Illustrated. These also appear to be out of print. I cannot remember any others, although there was once a pocket sized Illustrated Physiology for Nurses.

Just One Sperm

We are all familiar with the iconic imagery of the human ovum besieged by a frantic swarm of sperm, each vying for entry. This is the prologue to conception. It is a biological commonplace that only a single sperm succeeds; once it has penetrated the outer layer, the ovum effectively bars all doors and windows to further entrants.

Whether or not this popular narrative is strictly accurate is secondary to the "thinking tool" I wish to explore. I am interested in an alternative explanation—one that, while ultimately incorrect in a human context, remains a compelling mental model for how biological systems manage exclusivity.

We often accept the "all-access" model of the ovum uncritically. But we must ask: how is this exclusivity achieved, and why? Is there another way to conceptualize the barrier?

One possible alternative is what might be termed the "one-way-in" hypothesis. In this scenario, there is only a single portal of entry. The successful sperm, once inside, effectively locks the door behind it, physically preventing any further access. I recall hearing this idea suggested once, many years ago. As the speaker spoke, my mind raced ahead, visualizing a single, localized gate rather than a global defensive reaction across the entire surface of the sphere. I was so preoccupied with the elegance of this hypothesis that I’m afraid I missed what the speaker when on to say next.

With modern tools of inquiry, I have since revisited this idea. In humans, the "one-way-in" hypothesis does not hold. The actual mechanisms of preventing polyspermy—the entry of multiple sperm—are far more sophisticated than a single locked door. The "fast block" is not biochemical but electrical; upon the first contact, the egg's membrane potential shifts rapidly to repel other suitors. This is followed by a slower, permanent biochemical "hardening" of the outer layer.

However, there are nuances that suggest entry is not entirely a matter of random landing. Specifically, the presence of the first polar body—a byproduct of meiosis—creates a slight physical gap between the egg and its outer shell. This "polar body gap" provides more room for movement, often resulting in a higher frequency of sperm entry near that site. Furthermore, at the moment of contact, the egg's cytoplasm may bulge outward to form a "reception cone," creating a temporary, localized portal to facilitate the entry of that specific sperm. These are fascinating localized events, yet they do not constitute a "single door" in the structural sense.

Interestingly, the "one-way-in" model is not a biological myth; it is simply not our model. Many fish and insects utilize a micropyle, a literal single point of entry. This narrow canal in the protective chorion or shell acts as the primary physical bottleneck, ensuring that sperm can only reach the egg at one specific coordinate.

This divergence in strategy highlights a fundamental biological necessity: polyspermy must be guarded against at all costs. In humans, if an egg is fertilized by two sperm—a condition known as dispermy—the resulting triploid state (three sets of chromosomes) almost invariably leads to a non-viable pregnancy, disrupting the very first divisions of the zygote.

Nature does, however, occasionally provide a glimpse into the "what if." The extremely rare phenomenon of "semi-identical" or sesquizygotic twins occurs when a dispermic egg manages a rare biological self-correction. By splitting the three sets of chromosomes into two separate, healthy diploid embryos, the fluke results in twins who share 100% of their mother's DNA but only a portion (roughly 50%–78%) of their father's, as each twin retains a different combination of the two original sperm. There are only two confirmed cases of this worldwide.

That the "one-way-in" hypothesis is a non-starter for human biology does not diminish its value as a heuristic. Comparing the "all-ways-in" model with the "one-way-in" structure serves as a useful device for students of biology and logic alike. If presented with these two possibilities, which would a student assume to be the more likely? The micropyle is a masterpiece of efficiency, yet the human "all-access" sphere allows for a broader selective pressure, where the egg interacts with the most fit candidate regardless of where it lands.

Which is the more "logical" engineering solution? And, perhaps most importantly, what is the simplest empirical test to distinguish between them? In the age of in vitro fertilization, we have our answer: the fact that a technician can micro-inject a sperm into any point of the ovum's surface confirms that, for us, every wall is a potential door.

Two Blue Eyes

When I was teaching the medical curriculum, the dissection of the head and neck was a task reserved for the entirety of the second year. By contrast, the first year was devoted to the rest of the human frame: beginning with the upper limb, students proceeded to the lower, then through the thorax, abdomen, and finally the pelvis. This sequence reflected, in part, the daunting complexity and minute detail inherent in the anatomy of the head, an area where the density of vital structures requires a more seasoned hand.

It was always a point of interest to me that I never heard a student complain about the necessity of dissecting the face. By the second year, any initial qualms regarding the sanctity of the human form—what one might call the Platonic ideal of the individual—seemed to have dissipated. Even when features were distorted or bloated by the embalming process, they remained unmistakably recognisable as faces, the primary seat of human identity. On one occasion, I encountered a group of four students—a pair working on each side of a female cadaver—who appeared uncharacteristically bemused. When I inquired as to the trouble, they pointed to the "blueness of her eyes."

Retracting the eyelids, I was met with two strikingly blue irises. This was startling; normally, the embalming process—utilising formaldehyde and phenol—renders the cornea opaque and the sclerae discoloured. Yet here, the sclerae were notably clear; if not perfectly white, they were a very light shade of grey, a condition quite unlike the clouded appearance typical of preserved specimens. The students’ confusion was entirely justified; it was as if the "medical gaze" had been met by a stare that refused to yield to the indignities of post-mortem preservation.

I then proceeded to do what the students, for reasons unknown, had hesitated to do: I tested the resistance of the globes. Using a small instrument—the specific tool escapes me now, as it was of little consequence—I gently tapped each eye in turn. The result was the distinct, sharp sound of metal striking something hard. The woman had, in life, been fitted with two ocular prostheses. Given the era of the cadaver, these were perhaps unlikely to be true ‘glass eyes’, which largely predated the mid-20th-century shift toward acrylic (PMMA) polymers, though they often retain the name in common parlance. Regardless of the material, this was no doubt a meticulous cosmetic restoration intended to maintain the appearance of sight.

It is quite possible to interact with an individual possessing a single glass eye without ever suspecting the truth; their behavior remains that of a sighted person, the moving eye masking the stillness of its partner. However, a bilateral prosthesis is impossible to ignore in life, primarily because the subject lacks the visual cues, saccades, and environmental engagements of the sighted. In all my years of practice and teaching, I have never encountered a living person with two glass eyes. To find them here, in the quietude of the dissecting room, was a final, silent revelation of a life lived in darkness but presented to the world in brilliant blue.

A Book Can Do What Nothing Else Can

I recently rediscovered a quotation in my notes that frequently resurfaces in my thoughts: "What a good book does is take you to where Google and Wikipedia cannot." While the author was not immediately recorded in my files, a cursory search—conducted, somewhat predictably, via Google—attributes the sentiment to the best-selling Swedish author Fredrik Backman (1981- ). (The link leads to Wikipedia; I am, at least, attempting to be ironic.)

Backman utilized this phrase to articulate the singular capacity of fiction to navigate what he termed the "messy essence of being human." He suggests that emotions, psychological nuances, and the tapestry of shared experience exist in a realm far beyond the reach of the mere data points and aggregated facts found within search engines or online encyclopedias.

While Backman’s primary focus is fiction, the principle applies with equal force to non-fiction. I am reminded of the preface to my school Latin textbook, wherein the author boldly asserted that one cannot, in fact, learn Latin from a book. His intention was to emphasize the necessity of a teacher—a guide possessing both insight and lived experience. In his zeal to defend the pedagogical relationship, he inadvertently created a paradox: he had written a book to teach a subject while claiming the medium itself was insufficient for the task.

This irony echoes the Platonic critique found in the Phaedrus. Socrates argued that writing is a "semblance" of wisdom rather than truth itself, noting that a book stays silent when questioned. It cannot defend its own logic or adapt to the specific needs of the student. Like my Latin teacher's preface, the critique suggests that the book is a vessel, but the "living word" requires a human interlocutor.

The earliest prominent digital references to Backman’s quotation seem to cluster around early 2024, yet the sentiment feels older. Notably, the original phrasing contains no reference to Artificial Intelligence. In our current cultural moment, this feels like a significant gap. If Google and Wikipedia represent the repository of human facts, and Large Language Models represent the mimicry of human patterns, we might modernize the adage: "What a good book does is take you to where Google, Wikipedia, and AI cannot."

While an AI can synthesize information with startling efficiency, it lacks the intentionality of the human guide. It offers probabilistic patterns, not the hard-won insights of a life lived.

One hopes this principle extends to the medium of the blog. A successful piece of digital writing should do more than rearrange existing information; its value lies in its ability to transport the reader into a sphere beyond the silicon-based. Perhaps the true merit of modern writing is not found in the speed of its data delivery, but in its willingness to go deeper into what it means to be carbon-based—grounded in the messy, physical, and intentional reality of being human.

The Cyclopean Eye

War films set at sea invariably include a quintessential shot: the view through binoculars. We recognize it immediately by the cinematic mask—a black screen punctuated by two overlapping circles framing a distant vessel. While this shorthand effectively signals the use of an optical instrument, it remains a mere cinematic device, a form of visual synecdoche where a stylized part represents the whole experience of "looking." In reality, when we look through binoculars, we do not see a dual-lobed shape; we see a single, unified, circular field of view.

Human vision is described as both binocular and stereoscopic. Though often used interchangeably, the terms describe distinct phenomena. Binocular vision refers to the mechanical ability to view an object with two eyes simultaneously. Because our eyes are horizontally separated, they capture the world from slightly different angles. This hardware configuration facilitates "binocular summation"—a neurophysiological process wherein the brain synthesizes disparate visual data into a single mental image. This fusion is the prerequisite for stereopsis: the perception of depth and solidity in three dimensions that allows us to make precise spatial judgments.

The result of this complex processing is that we perceive only one image. In the nineteenth century, the physiologist Ewald Hering (1834–1918) posited that we see as if through a single "cyclopean" eye, situated midway between our two physical eyes. This point is known as the visual egocenter. If you pause to locate the center of your own field of view, you will find it sits on this central axis. Furthermore, our "mental center"—the seat of personal presence—seems to reside at these same coordinates, perhaps slightly further back within the cranium.

There is a profound alignment here: where the eye is, so is the "I." This central localization of the self has long intrigued philosophers; René Descartes famously suggested the pineal gland, situated deep within the brain’s center, as the "seat of the soul" and the point where all our senses are unified. We experience a similar localization with audition; we hear from "inside our head," perceived at a central point within the self. It is a fundamental question of phenomenology: where do we actually perceive what the senses sense?

The term "cyclopean" inevitably invokes the Cyclopes of Greek mythology (rather than the Marvel Comics protagonist). We are most familiar with the Homeric account in The Odyssey, which depicts a race of uncivilized, one-eyed shepherds inhabiting a rugged island, often identified as Sicily. The most enduring of these figures is Polyphemus, who imprisoned Odysseus’s crew and was ultimately blinded by the hero’s cunning.

Whether these myths possess a biological basis remains a moot point. Cyclopia is a rare developmental defect characterized by holoprosencephaly—the failure of the embryonic forebrain to divide into two hemispheres. This results in the formation of a single central eye. While such fetuses are often miscarried or stillborn, some have survived for several hours after birth. Ultimately, however, the condition is incompatible with life due to the severe malformation of the brain.

Galileo - A famous quote… in full

Galileo Galilei is famously quoted as stating that...

    ‘Nature is written in numbers.’

Another version, almost as often quoted, states that...

    ‘The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics.’

The fuller, more accurate version is found in Galileo’s 'Il Saggiatore' (The Assayer), published in 1623. That reads:

‘Philosophy [nature] is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one wanders about in a dark labyrinth.’

So, while the shorter versions capture something of its essence, the more complete quotation provides a richer understanding of Galileo's belief in the fundamental role of mathematics in comprehending the natural world.

But we should ask, while the book of nature may be written in numbers, is it only to be understood in numerical terms? I do not deny that there is much that numbers tell us. Yet, do numbers on their own always tell the whole story? Or, do they need to be translated into another language so that the book may be read more easily?

Data is nothing but a set of digits until interpreted, and that interpretation is in terms of conceptual language. The interpretation of data is a conceptualisation. Two sets of data might contain exactly the same numbers but relate to quite different phenomena. One set may be a record of the heights of a group of men; the other might be a record of the heights of a group of sunflowers. Using numbers alone, there is nothing that inherently differentiates between them—they are just numbers.

One common failing I found in students I used to teach was their assumption that by simply including pages of tabulated data, all would be obvious to the reader. Quite the opposite was the case. Data needs to be described and turned into something meaningful. And meaning resides inside concepts.

My group of men and my group of sunflowers may have reached the same height, but I need to know more. I need context. It may have taken the men three decades to reach this height and the sunflowers three months. With that simple bit of added information, the whole picture changes instantly.