Reconstruction

I previously described how I originally considered calling this blog, ‘Deconstructing Humpty’ and often think in terms of ‘Reconstructing Humpty’. This naturally raises the question of what these phrases imply. I have discussed deconstruction. What does the phrase ‘Reconstructing Humpty’ mean?

I am sure that it can mean different things to different people. Not all of these have been explored fully by me. There may also be meanings of which I am unaware. However, one meaning important to me is that of a ‘re-imagining’. It means developing a new mental image or impression of what we are dealing with - the human body as seen from a primarily scientific perspective.

Furthermore, I suggest that Reconstructing Humpty implies a ‘re-construing’.  When learning Latin at school, children were often given a passage of text and told to ‘construe’. Put simply this means ‘translate’. However, merely swapping Latin words for English is not enough. One must also ‘interpret’. That is, one must convey the meaning that was intended by the writer of the passage in question. This means using the most appropriate words in the best possible way.

Thus the idea of ‘construction’ is not out of place here. An interpretation is a reconstruction - in a different language - of something previously constructed in another. To construe things about the human body is to interpret what we find. As part of this, we must ask whether we currently have the best or most accurate interpretation of what the body is like.

FAQs - An alternative (1)

As described elsewhere on this blog, the abbreviation FAQ stands for ‘Frequently Asked Question’. It is often seen on websites. It is a way of providing the visitor with key information quickly and easily. The intention of such questions is not to prompt further questions or inspire anything akin to contemplation. That is the job of a quite different type of question.

These are questions that often get asked again and again. That type of question might be called an FAQ with those letters this time standing for ‘Frequently Addressed Question’. Such questions typically resist satisfactory answers. They are the deeper, perennial questions about life (…the Universe and Everything).

These questions certainly cannot be answered quickly and easily. They have been asked by succeeding generations of thinkers. Thus, they may rightly be called Frequently Addressed Questions. A Frequently Addressed Question is one to which we return again and again not necessarily expecting an answer. The benefit of unanswered questions is that they open up new avenues of thought; they prompt new ideas.

In relation to the human body, what are (or should be) the Frequently Addressed Questions?

This, in itself, may be the first such question. We should ask repeatedly, ‘In relation to the human body, what are (or should be) the Frequently Addressed Questions?’

I come to such questions from a scientific perspective but there are others. Our different perspectives are not mutually exclusive nor should they be kept entirely separate.

Sinnott Quote

I previously mentioned that I came across the work of Edmund Sinnott because of a quotation from him used by JH Woodger in his Biology and Language. Here is that quotation and its source in full:

Let us never grow so pedantic that we shall frown on any brother who occasionally goes off the reservation of biological orthodoxy to refresh himself in other fields. He may bring back from his excursion a treasure which those who stay at home can never find.

Edmund W. Sinnott
The Cell and the Problem of Organization
Science
20 Jan 1939
Vol 89, Issue 2299
pp. 41-46

The Le Chatelier principle

Further to the considerations about homeostasis made on this blog, I was reading some books by Edmund Sinnott (1888-1968) recently in which he raises the question of biological organisation and its maintenance. Sinnott is not somebody well known to biologists - at least in the UK. I only came across him because of a quote of his used by JH Woodger (1894-1981) in his book ‘Biology and Language: An introduction to the methodology of the biological sciences including medicine’ (Cambridge University Press, 1952). In what I read, Sinnott raised the question of the biological role played by Le Chatelier’s principle.

A concise definition of  Le Chatelier's principle from Merriam-Webster Dictionary (and cited on Wikipedia) is as follows,

If the equilibrium of a system is disturbed by a change in one or more of the determining factors (such as temperature, pressure, or concentration) the system tends to adjust itself to a new equilibrium by counteracting as far as possible the effect of the change.

The question Sinnott asks is to what extent chemical phenomena, such as Le Chatelier’s principle, contribute to the emergence of homeostasis. Le Chatelier’s principle arises out of the nature of physico-chemical phenomena; homeostasis is a product of the way in which the body is organised. Does the latter arise out of the former?

Le Chatelier's principle is not something widely discussed in undergraduate biology. I do not recollect it being mentioned even as part of the biochemistry courses I followed. However, the notion of biochemical equilibrium was mentioned - albeit from a purely (bio)chemical perspective. The focus was always on - what might be called - the behaviour of the chemistry. That these might feed into a higher level - more organised - stability was not explored.