Visualising Thinking

I have been wondering what to do with the following diagram. It depicts how our thinking must be given different forms in order to test our ideas. In my experience, students collect data and perform statistical tests without considering carefully what they are really doing. They often follow what somebody else has done successfully, confident that ‘if it worked for them, it’ll work for me’. In brief (and often without realising it), they begin with an idea, turn it into a numerical model upon which numerical/statistical tests can be performed and then convert back into terms applicable to the original idea. This is what this diagram portrays.

My liking for this diagram comes from its similarity to a diagram I came across as a student. Instead of 20 detailed steps, it gave the four corner of a square. The problem was how to go from a research question Q to its answer A in the absence of a direct path between them? Both Q and A take a verbal form. The solution was to convert the verbal question Q into a numerical form Q’ upon which statistical tests could be performed so as to reach answer A’. That answer, also being in a numerical form, was simply converted back into a verbal form: the answer A. Thus, we can go from Q to A indirectly via Q’ and A’.

I should apologise if I infringe anybody’s copyright by reproducing the top diagram. If I ever had a note about the source of this diagram, I have lost it. I have tried to find the source; I have even tried Google Lens - but to no avail.

I am somebody, the copyright of whose work has been ‘violated’ on more than one occasion. (For example, see my Anatomical Wordbook at Anna's Archive. The copy at Open Library/Internet Archive seems to be no longer available.) I do not mind. I want to share my thought as freely as possible. (Hence my website: ~sjlewis.)

What science is about...

I do not often - if ever - cite quotations from living persons. There is clearly a certain finality about utterances from those who can utter no more. (And who can no longer change their minds about what they have said.) However, here I make an exception having come across the following from the physicist Carlo Rovelli (b. 1956), in my notes:

This is what science is about: exploring new ways of conceptualising the world.

As usual, the quotations I cite are those with which I heartily agree. This time, in doing so, I am sure to be recontextualising. As a physicist, Rovelli is exploring new ways of conceptualising the physical world - and probably the whole universe. (Sometimes physicists have used ‘world’ as shorthand for ‘universe’.)

As a human biologist, I consider myself to be exploring new ways of conceptualising what I consider to be the most interesting thing in the universe: ourselves as physical - and conscious, self-reflecting - entities.

Any science that explores new ways of conceptualising its objects of interest is doing more nuts-and-bolts, mechanistic science. It is trying to go beyond the obvious and understand the meaning of things.

Artificial Intelligence

I had a go at using AI—artificial intelligence. (Initially, I was not sure whether to use uppercase or lowercase letters. I asked one, usually good, AI app, but it did not seem to understand my question. I asked another, and the answer I got was clear, 'Capitalise'.) Much depends on the ‘prompt’, the question one puts to the AI service one is using.

Among my very first questions to AI, (ChatGPT to be precise), was about strangulation. Was it up to speed with the late Professor Keith Simpson? [See: Professor Keith Simpson and Textbook Strangulation] It was not; it gave the standard ‘cornu of the thyroid cartilage’ fracture answer.

That is not necessarily a problem. AI gets its information from what is ‘out there’. If it is not ‘out there’ one cannot expect it to be drawn upon.

Something I am keen to do is interrogate the way in which we study the human body. There is sure to be a great deal of information 'out there' about how that is performed. So I asked the following question (which AI labelled 'Body Process Classification'):

Q: How may the human body’s processes be classified?

A: The human body's processes can be classified into several categories based on their functions and mechanisms. These classifications include:

1. Metabolism: The set of chemical reactions that occur within the body to maintain life, including anabolism (building up) and catabolism (breaking down) processes.

2. Homeostasis: The body's ability to maintain stable internal conditions despite external changes, regulating parameters such as temperature, pH, and blood glucose levels.

3. Growth and development: Processes involved in the physical growth and maturation of cells, tissues, and organs throughout life.

4. Reproduction: Processes related to the production of offspring, including gametogenesis, fertilization, and embryonic development.

5. Movement: Includes voluntary and involuntary movements facilitated by the musculoskeletal system, as well as the transport of substances within the body.

6. Communication: Involves the transmission of signals between cells, tissues, and organs through various systems such as the nervous system, endocrine system, and immune system.

7. Respiration: The process of exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide between the body and the environment, including breathing and cellular respiration.

8. Digestion and absorption: Processes involved in breaking down food into nutrients that can be absorbed by the body for energy, growth, and repair.

9. Circulation: The movement of blood and other fluids throughout the body, facilitated by the cardiovascular system.

10. Excretion: The removal of metabolic wastes and toxins from the body, primarily through the urinary, respiratory, and integumentary systems.

These classifications provide a framework for understanding the complex array of physiological processes that occur within the human body.

The list is a fairly standard list. It is not without its uses. One could spend a great deal of time discussing its merits or otherwise. The extent to which this would be a critique of AI or of the information we have made available to it, is a moot point. Therefore, I will not comment further.

FAQs - An alternative (2)

Continuing the theme of alternative meanings for the abbreviation FAQ, another alternative that springs to mind is Frequently 'Avoided' Questions. What questions, when we find ourselves getting near to them, do we find ourselves immediately avoiding? From which questions do we veer away?

There may be questions we consciously avoid. In that case, those questions may be easy to spot. We should be honest and ask ourselves what prevents us from going any further into such a question. When we are studying the human body, there are many questions that propriety forbids us from asking. These need careful consideration. We do not want to miss out on learning something interesting or important simply because of social mores.

There are also questions that we avoid unconsciously. In that case, they will be less easy to recognise, but they may be the most telling questions. Not because of the answer we do not get from asking them, but from why they are avoided—albeit unconsciously. Are these also the products of social mores?

Where do these unconsciously avoided questions reside? In which corner of our thinking? Are there corners of our minds where reside questions we would like to ask, but cannot?

Do we imbibe, from our respective academic disciplines, ways of negotiating routes to and through knowledge? Routes that stick to certain pathways while carefully avoiding others? To wander off the path into some areas may be to violate the parameters of one’s chosen discipline. Is that so bad? We are usually reluctant to venture into areas one’s colleagues frown upon if they knew. And then there are the types of question that society compels us not to ask. When these are legitimate questions, we should perhaps be worried when they go unasked.

As an undergraduate, I heard of a student soirée that quickly broke up after somebody asked a question deemed ‘inappropriate’ (even for the 1970s). When asked, those present would not discuss the matter. It was quite some time before somebody divulged the question to me. It is not necessary to further divulge it here but suffice it to say that it was not the sort of question one usually expects in gentile company. However, I did wonder what the answer might be! And, with all good questions and ideas, one is left asking, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ Even if it is impolite to ask certain questions of others, that does not stop one asking it silently.

Perdurantism and endurantism are opposing philosophical views about the nature of persistence and change. I mention them here because they may be applied to the nature of ourselves as physical objects—as organisms. As organisms, we have mental and physical aspects that both require philosophical and scientific examination. We possess an individuality or selfhood that seems to persist over a long period of time, irrespective of most of the physical changes we incur, and yet that selfhood can change markedly should only the brain be affected in some way. Even then, our social identity remains unaltered. Both perdurantism and endurantism offer potentially thought-provoking insights useful in interrogating what we are. (So I have no difficulty borrowing them from philosophy.)

According to perdurantism, objects have distinct temporal components that allow them to endure over time. This could be compared to a movie that is made up of several separate frames. Perdurantism holds that an object is never fully present at any given time. Rather, it lives as a sequence of temporal segments (like movie frames) that are played out over time.

In contrast, endurantism suggests that things are fully present throughout something’s entire existence. Over time, that thing’s identities do not change. Unlike the movie metaphor mentioned above, endurantism is more akin to how something is captured in a snapshot or how something is given a once-and-for-all label. According to endurantism, a thing remains unchanged during its whole existence.

Even from this extremely brief description, one can see how an embodied human being can be viewed from both perdurantist and endurantist perspectives. This raises questions about how one thing (or type of thing) can be understood from two opposing perspectives simultaneously.

NB, Not all the questions I raise are necessarily cast iron or foolproof. There may be weaknesses here, although I can’t put my finder on them at the moment.

Good at Anatomy

Having worked in anatomy, one question I never asked - and never heard asked - was what made somebody ‘good’ at anatomy. Indeed, what does ‘Good at anatomy?’ actually mean?

Most students were engaged in rote learning the names of parts, their relation to other parts, connections, divisions, etc. Our best students were those who could remember the most. Learning anatomy was tantamount to memorising a gazetteer of place names. A London taxi driver doing ‘the knowledge’ probably learns more places and locations and routes between them than does any medical student learning parts of the human body. For good reason, this type of anatomy is called ‘topographical anatomy,’ for it is about learning where things are - and their names. Would one say that a taxi driver is good at geography - or, more specifically, the geography of London? Is there something more to being an anatomist - or a geographer? Perhaps if I were to find out what makes for a good geographer, that might inform what I consider to be a good anatomist?

We must also remember that the parts of the body did not come ready named. We named them, and those names should never be assumed to be set in concrete. The conventions regarding anatomical nomenclature have changed from time to time… and been revised… and reviewed etc.

So for somebody to be good at anatomy, there must be something more than simply being able to remember names. I once had a colleague who learned anatomy in France. At that time - the 1970s or 80s - he had to learn the name of each part in three languages: French, English and Latin. And yet, I am not entirely sure whether he saw himself as an anatomist per se. His real academic interest was in studying the early developmental fate of cells, which he had marked with fluorescent viral markers.

Is there a frame of mind that makes an anatomist? A famous anatomist from the nineteenth century, Sir Ashley Paston Cooper (1768-1841), once commented that he considered a day to have been wasted if he had not dissected something. So perhaps it is the desire to dismantle that marks out the anatomist?

And that, interestingly, returns us to the Humpty Dumpty problem. Cooper’s days felt wasted if a dissection had not been performed. It does not appear to have occurred to him, whether not putting things back together again was not also a waste.

Anomalous lobes in the lungs

As part of an anatomy course, a group of four medical students had been dissecting the thorax of a cadaver. It had taken them a few weeks as they progressed step-by-step from the skin to a now almost empty chest cavity. The heart remained in place for the next phase of dissection but the lungs were not removed.

Upon completion of this stage in the process, the students were required to be assessed by a demonstrator who would check on their learning. The demonstrator for that group of students was me. I was duly called over to quiz them. What met me was an open, lung-less cavity with the anterior wall of the chest folded back. The lungs lay elsewhere on the dissecting table.

'Before we start,' I said, 'let's put everything back into its original place so we can go through what you've done step by step.' The students picked up the lungs, quickly looked at them and squeezed them into their respective cavities. Or so they thought.

The left and right lungs are not exact mirror images of each other. For a start, the heart is situated slightly to the left and so impinges upon the left lung. For this reason - or so it is usually stated - the left lung has just two lobes, whereas the right has three. (Whether that is the complete explanation, I do not know. Indeed, what follows may suggest that the explanation lies elsewhere.)

What the students did, before putting the lungs back into the chest, was count the number of lobes: two means left, three means right. The lungs being the spongy compliant organs could be squeezed in fairly easily. But then, lungs can be squeezed into almost any space - even those from embalmed cadavers.

With this body, I could tell, things were not as expected. The left lung had three lobes (not two); the right lung had two lobes (not three). The opposite of what the students had expected; the opposite of what they had been taught and what they had read. By simply counting the lobes the students had proceeded to squeeze each lung, into a cavity of the wrong shape and size - and facing backwards!

There are more accurate ways of determining to which side a lung belongs. These do not require the number of lobes to be counted. There are a number of clearly visible surface characteristics which allows the lung to be orientated in space.

I pointed out the error to the students and passed it off lightly. We were able to laugh about it and started again. The students passed the quiz. They were serious-minded people who had applied themselves diligently to their task. I am sure that their error was a useful learning experience. However, it was actually quite a grave mistake. It would even have resulted in failure under stricter conditions.

Significantly, this was the first time any of those students had realised this anomaly about their cadaver. None of them had noticed when the lungs were first removed that the number of lobes was atypical. How could they have missed something so glaringly obvious?

Being diligent students may have been their problem. They had followed the dissecting instructions meticulously. They had removed the lungs and put them aside for dissection later as instructed. They had proceeded to dissect the empty cavities left behind before focusing on the lungs as separate organs. When it came to examining the lungs, there was, as described one with two and one with three lobes. They had assumed - as stated above - two means left, three means right.

Were the students really at fault? They were following instructions; they were doing what they were required to do. They were not required to explore the human body or discover things about it for themselves. They were put into an environment in which instructions were to be followed. It may be little wonder that they slipped up. They were learning the contents of a prescribed syllabus. The cadaver they used was a means of simply backing this up when a spirit of discovery might have been preferable.