Bénézech - Simpson
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© Karl Simpson
This
week, as once before, I offer you something personal. We scientists are also
capable of irrational thought or whimsy, poetical excesses and why not
mysticism? And sometimes such irrational thought, or irrational processes, can
point a path to the real and concrete. Kekulé dreamed of monkeys and realised
that benzene was best represented as a ring molecule. From that derived much of
the strength of organic chemistry. Kekulé is not the only dreamer...
Decency
can travel well.
or:
Scientists
can be mystics too
I woke up in the middle of
the night not so long ago with a sensation of incredible grief and loss,
stunning and crushing in its power and immediacy. As I lifted my head from the
pillow into haunted wakefulness the sensation of a troubled dream did not
dissipate as such sensations usually do. Rather it became more substantial with
the return of awareness. I opened my eyes to see my home about me, totally
normal, but inside I was troubled. What was this pain I was feeling - why was
my soul so deeply gouged? More than a dream, this was almost a memory, an
actuality, an ongoing event affecting all mankind, all thinking kind. Moreover,
it was not a selfish dream, or thought, it was as though I had become party to
and a conduit for, an outpouring of sentiment from all time and all of mankind.
How could this be true, for true it felt? How could the lives of many, all
awareness, pass through one brain and so trouble me?
The subject was transportation
to new lives elsewhere and the sadness of separation and distance. I was upset,
no I felt the upset, lived the upset, of those brave individuals colonising new
worlds, be they the new colonies of America or some distant planet. The first
months and years of settlement involve irrevocable separation from family and
friends, all the symbols and landmarks that make home. I experienced not just
the personal loss of a young person who says a final goodbye to his still
healthy and loving parents, but the loss of a million young men and women, the
tears and heartbreak of a universe full of caring souls. My heart was truly
shriven.
Even in the sixteenth
century, America was but a boat ride away, several months at most. But suppose
we colonise some distant planet orbiting a distant star; what will such
colonists experience? For such person even familiar life forms will be left
behind. There will be no continuity. And although the Earth has now shrunk
enormously, that continuity is important, for there is still a real sense of
finality - for most people - in accepting a job in another country, perhaps
half way around the world. It is easy to say that Tokyo is now only 14 hours
from London, but all our history, our culture, underlines the enormity of that
distance. How much more enormous would be the sundering involved in a journey
to Mars, or to that star with a habitable planet. Is it possible that somewhere
near us, someone from far away, another world, is watching us? Perhaps by some
accident of nature I happened to "tune in" to his or her anguish and
share that pain.
Will the "wild
west" idiom of conquest, competition and violence recur, on such
journeyings? Perhaps - only to disappear when once more stable family units and
an infrastructure have been put in place. Or are we now as a race more mature,
more able to live with each other and whatever else this universe might hold up
for our attention? Could we now better face the sadness? If I felt the sadness
of those from other worlds, other evolutions of intelligence in this shared
universe, my dream spoke to hope, for those who share such common feelings -
must love.
How was it that I felt this
enormous wave of distress, far more than one heart should take? I awoke, but
that sadness was there, quite real and not at all illusory. I could
rationalise, say this was but a dream, but the sentiment stayed and in the
awakening grew not weaker but stronger. Being awake gave me access to my mind
and conscious reflection. Part of me was still surprised that this sentiment
was so strong, why, why and why again was I possessed of this waking dream?
From sadness I moved to
thought, reflection and eventually, a realisation that there was a continuum,
even for those, who one day separate themselves, even from the hold of planet
Earth. Perhaps others have made that break from their own "Earth" or
whatever passes for cradle of life and thought and above all - humanity. The
continuum is in shared humanity and that sharing of culture, origins, ancestors,
history and life itself. The sentiment of oneness filled me, fills me even now
much later. I felt an identity with all of humanity that had ever lived. I was
at one with every child which grieved for a parent lost over some far horizon.
I was at one, truly shared life, with the strangest intelligence in the
strangest corner of the universe, for surely - no not surely, I know, we share this.
From there, on further, to understanding the separation of death. As long as we
hold to certain values and ideals, we carry humanity encapsulated within us.
Just as a braid of hair, or a photograph, can encapsulate the memory of a loved
one.
Decency can travel well.
Within me was a growing sense
of identity with mankind, but more too, with all life on Earth and ultimately with
every rock, drop of water or dust mote that has ever been. In early conquests
of New Worlds, continuity was, is and will be important. In the wild western
frontier of America such continuity had been interrupted, leaving individuals
high and dry, with no point of reference - save perhaps the misdeed of likewise
lost souls. Perhaps quite simply, many of the colonists were criminals, not
simply starving children transported for stealing a loaf of bread, but true
villains. Do such villains exist but among us, or have all peoples of
intelligence been plagued by this virus of bad?
Thinking on, I realised that
decent people, both simple folk and thinkers, preserve that decency - that
quintessence of humanity - no matter how far they travel, no matter where they
live. Adhering to certain ways of thinking creates a bond, a union, even when
thousands of miles, or even light years might separate an individual and the
society that gave him his values. Are such values absolute, are they universal?
Will all sentience experience this? My feeling was not just for man, but for
separation in the abstract. I now know that we all share - something. Sentience
is common to many and we grow to love. To love. Is love only for higher minds,
or is it part of life which sparks even in the less enlightened, the path to
sentience and on to intelligence. A kitten misses its mother in a new home. A
distracted mother cat searches for days for a lost kitten. Do all those who
share or who aspire to mind share also this? Do others also share this bond of
sadness, this common experience of sentience?
Can we see a sort of
sociological parallel to the contiguity of influence that addresses atomic
particles, or photons, or all existence with a shared quantum identity? As with
the particles of a Bose-Einstein condensate, is there some quantum continuity
of intellect that overcomes distance and time to address the oneness, not just
of human spirit, but of all life on Earth, all life everywhere and indeed all
of existence. Einstein thought hard about this in physical terms, but even he
would be surprised to know that a sliver of his predictions encapsulated in the
famous Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky equations has been realised. He was
uncomfortable with quantum theory, although it provided the vehicle to take his
ideas forward. Transmission of data from one place to another over great
distances relative to the quantum world has been shown not to break the quantum
identity of particles sharing a quantum state.
Can we extrapolate this to
the still-mystery which is the human soul, the mind which resides within the
human skull or whatever other form shelters such mind? Mind still (for now)
resists all the attentions of biologists like me. It hangs on to mystery and
refuses to be reduced to equations and pat formulae or metabolic pathways. Mind
is special.
And through thought, that
most human of blessings, my sadness slowly was giving way to joy, as I realised
that in the universe's giving birth, in that moment when the big bang gave rise
to everything - we too were conceived. Intelligence, love and true sentience
were writ large in the promise of the earliest moments of creation. Perhaps
such sentience was even the trigger for creation, imposing upon the universe a
need to express that highest form of "I am" - being. Nothing could
separate the common origin of the most energetic photon, the most boring iron
atom or the most exotic particle imaginable. All of this shares an original
oneness which irrevocably binds us. All spiritual life, all material existence,
all thinking-kind is one. So although each component seems to behave with will
and to escape predetermination, there is still some common thread of
experience.
Everything is at one in the
origins of all. We may cheat even death, for although that physical coil is
shrugged off, the oneness that pervades all life, the awareness of self and
others, perpetrates the dead, and in that quantum spreading might even offer
hope of some residual individuality. Just as a hologram captures in each bit of
its substance all of what is depicted, so humanity catches in its unity every
soul who has ever been a part of that humanity. Just as with holograms, the
more you have of a hologram, the better is the quality of information
contained. The more a human shares with society, the more his imprint is made
upon it. I was moved to wonder if perhaps some structure in cells might harbour
some common quantum state. With surprise I realised that I was describing to
myself a physical manifestation of the religious soul, which personally I had
always denied as unnecessary.
I want to move further
afield, I cannot accept that we, here on Earth, or "they" somewhere
just somewhere, cannot share. We are in any case, representations of that
common beginning, that primeval atom which gave us both, gave us all, life. Can
we draw upon this common origin to find strength, even if we have not yet been
formally introduced. "Are you there? I feel you and I love you - please
love me back."
Sleep or thought even of
sleep was chased far away. Perhaps this was by way of being a reply. Simple joy
was now giving way to a sort of euphoria. I had indeed touched upon a common
thread and was feeling this boundless power, this fundamental truth coursing
through my soul like some dynamised blood through my veins. My heart was
pounding with the import of this revelation. If this concept of a quantum
continuity, this existential Bose-Einstein condensate of soul could be real,
perhaps the far-flung imaginations of those who talk of telepathy and shared
experience - and yes, even souls - might have something. Perhaps even now I was
feeling this. Was this sensation willed upon me, or was it me making the effort
to listen to that which is there, free for all of us to hear, if we would?
Perhaps as human beings we can share some real-time experience of being part of
all of humanity and by extension all sentience. Apparently, if not really alone
in flesh we form a gestalt of mind.
Certainly in that original
crushing wave of sadness I felt, for a moment, I was bearing the burden of
sadness of all mankind. Somehow I had become the conduit for expression of a
wave of feeling which involved all mankind in history and in the future. Was
perhaps all sentience involved, the very universe itself, in this?
By this time my sensation had
transcended joy to the status of almost divine revelation, although I am not
what you would call a classic subject for such! Within the rigid scientific
framework of my training and value systems, a troubled dream had come to point
to a way of thinking that offered me a path to a sort of personal salvation of
mind. Dawn came to light my thoughts and separate dream from day, but the
revelation remained.
Decency can indeed travel
well.