The Mind of a Human Biologist

Following my ‘First Anniversary' post, this would be a good time to mention more about the mentality I bring to this blog. My undergraduate degree was in Human Biology, as studied at the University of Surrey. There the course and department flourished between the 1970s and early 1980s, but now neither exist. Its demise began in the early 1980s with university cutbacks. Deemed more economically viable, an undergraduate nursing degree program ultimately took Human Biology’s place.

Interestingly, while the course did exist, no strict definition of the course title was ever given. What ‘Human Biology’ was, or how it should be understood, was never strictly prescribed. Whether it was a deliberate decision to remain uncommitted to a strict definition of ‘Human Biology’ is unclear. However, I think that this lack of definition was ultimately a good thing. We were left as students to discover what human biology was—and what it could be—for ourselves. Furthermore, whatever it was was not necessarily the same for every student. The course had many different and quite diverse facets. Each of us was allowed to develop our specific interests to the full. Each of us was a human biologist in our own particular ways. That is not to say that some commonality did not unite us.

There was a book that might be called the ‘book of the course.’ That was Human Biology (Harrison, Weiner, Tanner, & Barnicott. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964). Even though that book considered many of the facets of the course, it gave only a flavour of the breadth of our course. More importantly, what it gave was a sense of the ethos of the course. Nowhere was this better set out than in the Foreword written by the Nobel Prize-winning biologist Sir Peter Medawar (1915-1987). In it he describes how he understood human biology. It is worth quoting from it extensively. Medawar suggested that...

    "Human Biology is not so much a discipline as a certain attitude of mind towards the most interesting and important of animals. Human Biology portrays mankind on a canvas that serves also for other living things. It is about men rather than man: about their origin, evolution, and geographical deployment; about the growth of human populations and their structure in space and time; about human development and all that it entails of change in size and shape. Human Biology deals with human heredity, the human genetical system, and the nature and import of the inborn differences between individuals; with human ecology and physiology, and with the devices by which men have met the challenges of enemies and of hostile environments. Human Biology deals also with human behaviour - not with its wayward variations from one individual to another, but rather with the history and significance of, for example, family life; of love, play, showing off, and real or sham aggression. Finally, and most importantly - because most distinctively human - it must expound and explain the nature, origin and development of communication between human beings and the non-genetical system of heredity founded upon it."

(NB Writing in 1964, we must allow for how he refers to ‘men’ and ‘man.’ While it does not sound inclusive, human beings in every manifestation are included. If that were not implicitly the case, then Human Biology would be worthless.)

Reading for a degree, one does not usually read books from cover to cover. One typically omits prefaces, forewords, etc. It was only some years after graduation, when studying Medawar’s philosophical thought for a Master’s dissertation, that I bothered to read that foreword. Ironically, it was only then that I read a description of what I had already found to be the case for my undergraduate course. I am particularly drawn to the sentence, “Human Biology is not so much a discipline as a certain attitude of mind towards the most interesting and important of animals.”

Human Biology then is a way of thinking about ourselves.

First Anniversary

This post marks the first anniversary of me starting this blog. I would like to thank all those who have dropped by and read my various musings.

The turn of the year also offers me a good opportunity to remind myself about what I am doing… or think I am doing. Fortunately, I have a ‘What to expect’ statement of intent in my first post. My intentions remain largely unaltered, but I do not rule out development in unexpected directions. (Even directions as yet unknown to me!) I find that as I go along, there are certain things I’d like to share that are well suited to the blog format and other things that are not. Fortunately, I appear to have plenty of the former to be going on with.

The aim of this blog is to share things from my former academic life that cannot be shared in any other way. Otherwise they would vanish. I wonder what would have happened to these musings were it not for the invention of the blog and the blog format. I wonder how much has been lost of the musings of our forebears because they lacked such a vehicle. Even if some of the things I share are of minimal (possibly no!) value, I hope they are worth a quick read and a wry smile before they are forgotten.

Some might be worth remembering, though. At the end of a lecture many years ago, a student approached me and asked if I’d taught a girl called Sarah. I said that I had and that I remembered her very well. ‘I thought so,’ the student replied. ‘She taught me this subject on an access course I did before coming here. All the interesting and funny stories you’ve been telling, she now tells!’ I was deeply flattered.

If you, the reader, can use anything from these blogs, then please do so. I would be delighted if they were to find a new lease of life elsewhere.

Reminder: I continue to post on the 3rd, 11th, 19th, and 27th days of each month. This was an additional anniversary post.

What sort of science?

Is science only about finding things out? Or are there problems or puzzles that we are trying to solve? How often do we stop to wonder at what sort of enterprise we are engaged in? We imbibe how to do science over a long period of time beginning at school and going on to various levels at university. After university, it may take other particularly practical forms. If we are involved in a problem or puzzle solving version of science, exactly what is it that we are trying to solve? Engrossed in the practical elements of research, we may sometimes overlook our precise goals.

Consider the puzzles in newspapers or magazines or those in the apps on our smartphones. Some people naturally gravitate towards number puzzles, some to word puzzles others to more strategic puzzles like chess. The variety of considerable. As a species we are ‘solvers’. It is is sometimes suggested that our inquisitiveness is what gave rise to science. I suggest that our desire to ‘solve’ played a large part too.

I have used the words ‘problem’ and ‘puzzle’. In philosophy there is a distinction to be made between them. Problems are substantive by nature and, as a result, carry a certain importance. Puzzles are primarily linguistic by nature and rely on how words are used. (This is further complicated by the fact that a word’s meaning may shift over time.)

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) claimed that in philosophy there were only linguistic puzzles. Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994) did not hold that opinion. Popper was asked to address the matter in a paper entitled "Are There Philosophical Problems?" at a meeting of the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club on 25 October 1946.

At that meeting, he appears to have applied thinking akin to that characteristic of that for which many scientists know him. It may be expressed as follows:

• The question "Are There Philosophical Problems?" is itself a philosophical problem (it is clearly not a linguistic puzzle).
• Thus, there is at least one philosophical problem.
• Therefore, philosophy does not consist of linguistic puzzles alone.

This is a key theme in Edmonds and Eidinow’s book ‘Wittgenstein’s Poker’ first published in 2001 (and which I can highly recommend reading). 

Some puzzles are solved by putting the pieces together. A jigsaw puzzle is an obvious example. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men set out to do something akin to a jigsaw puzzle when trying to put Humpty together again. Since it did not work, that approach was clearly the wrong one. Reconstructing Humpty is problem not a puzzle. 

When trying to understand the human body scientifically, we are engaged in a process of taking the body apart and then not even trying to put the pieces together again. This deconstruction is, of course, done conceptually. Even if we were allowed, we could not take a living organism apart and it put it back together again alive. An organ may be surgically exposed and experimented upon. It is technically possible to remove an organ from the body and return it at another time. But we cannot expect to do this to several organs at once.

If we are going to deconstruct the body conceptually, we must find a way to reconstruct it conceptually, too. One way of doing this may be to move away from simply seeing organs as separate components of specific physiological systems and looking at how they work together with others organs - not least those in other systems.

A simple example is that of the heart and lungs and the way in which they work together. Typically they are addressed quite separately: the heart is described as part of the cardiovascular system and the lungs as part of the respiratory system. A textbook may describe them many pages apart and yet anatomically they are side-by-side and physiologically they have complementary roles with regard to respiratory gas transport. A conceptual linkage of the two is already done by teacher and student in and out of the classroom. There are other possibilities and there is scope for a more formal recognition of this type of thinking by textbooks.

Another diagram of the same - but different

Continuing my theme of diagrams of the circulatory (or cardiovascular) system and how they differ while representing the same thing, here is a picture from an old edition of Grant’s Method of Anatomy. (I think it is the 7th edition from 1965.) This book is still in print - although some diagrams have been modernised. I do not know how this diagram is currently being presented but there is sure to be one. A diagram of the course taken by the blood around the body is (that is, has become at some point) obligatory for textbooks.

To access other pages in this series, click ‘The Circulation’ (or the label of the same name) for the list so far.

As always, observe the similarities and the differences. In short, ‘compare and contrast’ each diagram with the others. You might also like to ask ‘Which diagram best suits my interests or requirements?’ Diagrams must provide sufficient information and not too much.

Improving upon Humpty

Humpty, having fallen from his wall could not be put back together again. Neither, for that matter, could his fragmented parts be reassembled into an alternative, viable Humpty. This is something that the nursery rhyme did not explore. Perhaps it is something nursery cannot do. However, we can at least raise the idea.

This leads, in turn, to the question of whether a new and improved Humpty might be made from his fragments? In some respects, this was the premise behind the 1970s television series ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’ and its sequel ‘The Bionic Woman’. To make such a Humpty requires not only what is left of his original parts but additional artificial parts engineered to exceed ordinary levels of human performance.

Prior to his accident, might we have been able to turn Humpty into a bionic Humpty 2.0? And, if we could, could we do this without removing any of his healthy parts? To remove healthy body parts, even for purposes of personal improvement raises ethical problems.

Organisms have two named aspects: their genotype and their phenotype. Genes get a lot of attention for a range of understandable reasons. We frequently hear of genes if not of genotypes. We almost nothing of phenotype but we are more accustomed to them than to genes. This is because these are what we see of people. We never see a genotype as such but a phenotype is how people are. Phenotype is derived from the Greek φαίνω (phaínō) meaning 'to appear, show'. Our phenotype is how we appear. It is what our bodies look like.

However, as humans our phenotype is not confined or restricted to just our bodily form. Phenotypes are extendable in a variety of ways. Richard Dawkins’ book ‘The Extended Phenotype’, first published in 1982, popularised the idea that phenotypes were more than just bodies. He gave a number of examples from the wild. When trying to attract mates, many animals do not rely on their bodily appearance alone. One classic example was that of the bowerbird and the elaborate habitats it creates. In essence, a bird able to make such an attractive construction must be worth mating with as it will contribute good quality genes to our potential offspring. Genotypes are reflected in the phenotypes they produce. The better the genes, the better the phenotypes. This also applies to the extensions those phenotypes give to themselves.

We are able to extend our phenotypes in other ways - and for reasons unconnected with mate choice. For example, using a walking stick to make up for injury or frailty is a phenotypic extension. Tools are phenotypic extensions. The more one looks the more one finds. Every aid to modern living is a phenotypic extension. Depending upon how we use them, they may indeed improve upon what or how we are.

Typically these are extensions to our phenotypes not replacements for parts of our phenotype. Where joints are replaced surgically the usual aim is restore the function previously enjoyed. It does not seek to exceed it. But why not?

Prosthetic limbs are also engineered primarily to restore lost function although it is possible to include an extended range and style of movement. For example, the wrist joint for a prosthetic hand might be given the ability to rotate a full 360 degrees. Even so, the desire to remove an uninjured hand simply to obtain this functionality is hard to imagine.

Whether this will always be the case is a moot point. If prosthetic hands could be engineered to have all the current functionality of a natural hand and more, might people of the future be tempted?

One way in which Humpty might have been improved upon - that is, guarded against the devastating injuries he suffered in his fall - might be to have given him a 'zorb'-like protective suit.

A Poor Question?

When biology emerged as a distinct science in the early nineteenth century there was a change of focus. Previously the study of living things was undertaken alongside the study of everything to be found in the natural world. This formed the field of natural history.

The phrase is continued in the name of a number of venerable museums. To this day, the displays in museums of natural history encompass things from the whole of the natural environment and sometimes beyond. Meteorites, for example, can also be seen in these museums. Although they have come from outer space, they landed on the Earth and, having entered our natural world, belong to the purview natural historian.

Here the name ‘historian’ should clarified. It does not refer somebody who has studied past events. Many of the exhibits in museums of natural history are about things from the past. Fossil skeletons are popular exhibits. This may give the impression that the ‘history’ in natural history relates to the past. Instead, the word ‘history’ has its origins in the Greek word ‘historia’, which means "inquiry, or knowledge gained from inquiry".

One of the scientific questions that early biologists thought they would be able to resolve was ‘What is Life?’ Attempting to answer this question has yielded a variety of answers and limited dividends as far as that specific question goes. What we have learned from the attempt has been how difficult it is to define. Faced with such a difficulty, the focus of biologists has become directed towards the characteristics and features demonstrated by living things rather than life itself.

But, is the difficulty the question itself? ‘What is life?’ may be a hard question to answer but it may also be a poor question to ask. When asking questions, it is advisable to ask what those questions mean? And to ask, whether they even make any sense? Importantly, we should have a notion of how the question might at least be addressed and where the answer may lie.

At a museum of natural history we can look at exhibits and tell immediately which were once living and which - like meteorites - never were. Yet we cannot provide a formal definition of life. This may also be the fault of what we require of a formal definition.

One may change to more meaningful questions like ‘What is life like?’, ‘What are the common characteristics demonstrated by living things?’ etc. Questions like ‘What is life about?’ do not, on the surface, seem very scientific. However, upon careful consideration may be more scientific than ‘What is life?’

We may address the question ‘What is life about?’ in a materialistic way by suggesting that life is about, what may be called, the Darwinian imperatives: Survival and Reproduction. Organisms strive to survive at least until they have performed a reproductive act. (For some insects, of course, the male is eaten in the act!) This opens up a rich field of intellectual inquiry. How one understands the organism and its component structures is then seen in the light of these twin imperatives and the parts played in survival and reproduction.

There are, of course, other ways of addressing the question ‘What is life about?’ I think of these as complementary, rather than alternative, ways of addressing the question. There is no single way of addressing this question to the exclusion of all others.

Axioms

An axiom is a statement that is accepted as true without proof. Axioms serve as the foundational principles or assumptions upon which other statements are built. Given that these statements are accepted without proof, it is possible to build a system of thought (or belief) that actually lacks foundations in any true sense.

Most people, encountering the idea of axioms, may have done so when studying geometry at the school. Famously, Euclidean geometry is built on axioms. (Sometimes these are referred to as his five axioms also there is often debate over the fifth - see below. I will simply list the five below.)

Euclid's axioms are:

The Axiom of Line Segment The Axiom of Extension The Axiom of Circle The Axiom of Right Angles The Parallel Postulate

Instead of suggesting that subjects like geometry and mathematics are well suited to being built on sets of rules, it would probably be more accurate to say that geometry and mathematics are the products of sets of rules. In a sense, they are sets of rules ‘personified’.

I have never heard of the idea of axioms being applied to anatomy or biology. These subjects are not devoid of rules but they do not play a prominent role. Are there any statements in anatomy or biology, accepted as true without proof? So, for each of these subjects, I asked AI whether there were any axioms. The results given by ChatGPT are pasted below.

My intention was to find out what AI might find out about how these subjects were being portrayed. Unlike Euclidean geometry, there has been no deliberate attempt to determine and state the basic tenets of anatomy or biology.

(NB Axiom and tenet are words for which much te same dictionary definition is given. Because of its geometrical and mathematical connections ‘axiom’, I suggest, has more rigid, logical connotations, whereas ‘tenet’ does not. So, at least, what might these be for anatomy and biology.)

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AI prompts and responses

A: Are there any axioms in anatomy?

Q: In anatomy, axioms are fundamental principles or truths that serve as the foundation for understanding the structure and function of the human body. While anatomy is primarily an empirical science based on observation and experimentation, certain principles are considered axiomatic due to their universal applicability and reliability. These axioms guide anatomical study and provide a framework for interpreting anatomical structures and relationships.

Some commonly recognized axioms in anatomy include:

1. Structural hierarchy: The human body is organized into levels of structural complexity, from atoms and molecules to cells, tissues, organs, and organ systems.
2. Form follows function: The structure of an anatomical component is closely related to its function. This principle, attributed to the American architect Louis Sullivan, is equally applicable in anatomy, where the form of a biological structure is intricately linked to its physiological role.
3. Bilateral symmetry: Many structures in the human body exhibit bilateral symmetry, meaning they have mirror-image counterparts on the left and right sides. This symmetry is particularly evident in paired organs such as the kidneys and lungs.
4. Hierarchy of organization: Anatomical structures can be organized into hierarchical systems, with each level building upon the previous one. For example, tissues are composed of cells, and organs are composed of tissues.
5. Anatomical position: The standard reference position for describing anatomical structures is the anatomical position, in which the body is standing erect, facing forward, with arms at the sides and palms facing forward. This position provides a consistent frame of reference for describing the location and orientation of anatomical structures.
6. Homeostasis: The body maintains a state of dynamic equilibrium, known as homeostasis, through regulatory mechanisms that control internal conditions such as temperature, pH, and nutrient levels. Homeostasis is essential for the proper functioning of cells, tissues, and organ systems.

These axioms, among others, provide a conceptual framework for anatomical study and help anatomists make sense of the complex organization of the human body. They facilitate communication and understanding among healthcare professionals, researchers, and educators in the field of anatomy.

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A: Are there any axioms in biology?

Q: In biology, axioms are fundamental principles or truths that serve as the foundation for understanding living organisms and their interactions with their environment. These axioms provide a framework for biological research, education, and the application of biological knowledge across various fields. While biology encompasses a vast array of disciplines and subfields, several overarching axioms are widely recognized:

1. Cell theory: This foundational principle states that all living organisms are composed of one or more cells, and that the cell is the basic unit of structure and function in living organisms. Cell theory is central to understanding the organization and functioning of all living organisms.
2. Theory of evolution by natural selection: Proposed by Charles Darwin, this theory asserts that species evolve over time through the process of natural selection, whereby organisms with traits that confer advantages in their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce. Evolution by natural selection is considered the central unifying principle of biology.
3. Unity of biochemistry: Living organisms share a common biochemistry, with similar metabolic pathways, genetic codes, and molecular structures. This principle underscores the unity of life and the evolutionary relatedness of all living organisms.
4. Hierarchical organization: Biological systems are organized into hierarchical levels of complexity, from molecules and cells to tissues, organs, organisms, populations, and ecosystems. This hierarchical organization reflects the nested structure of biological systems and the interactions among levels of organization.
5. Homeostasis: Living organisms maintain internal stability and balance through regulatory mechanisms that adjust physiological processes in response to internal and external changes. Homeostasis is essential for the survival and proper functioning of organisms in diverse environments.
6. Continuity of life: Living organisms reproduce, passing on genetic information to subsequent generations. This continuity of life ensures the perpetuation of species and the ongoing evolution of life on Earth.
7. Interdependence of organisms: Living organisms are interconnected within ecosystems, where they interact with one another and with their environment. This interdependence underlies ecological relationships, such as predator-prey interactions, symbiosis, and nutrient cycling.

These axioms, among others, provide a conceptual framework for understanding the diversity, complexity, and interconnectedness of life on Earth. They guide biological research, education, and the application of biological knowledge in fields ranging from medicine and agriculture to conservation and biotechnology.

End of AI responses