Being Human
The Human Organism is a marvel of internal information and communication. This is necessary for evolution to have occurred, for the baby to develop in its mother’s womb, and for any of us to function at all. None of these processes are haphazard, or without detailed controls. We are learning much about how informatics can work … but nature got to it before we did … or, in fact, we wouldn’t be here trying to do our part in the evolving process.
The Nervous System
The most obvious internal communication system in man, and other animals, for that matter, is the Nervous System. This is what we typically think of when we think about the way that messages get around the body.
The Endocrine System
The Endocrine System is really an extension of the Nervous System. There are several glands in the body which react by pouring substances … mostly hormones … into the blood stream, which mediate different kinds of reactions. These vary widely, from Thyroid hormones, which control metabolism, to Sex Hormones, which influence sexual development and function, to Adrenalin, which may mediate an immediate response to stress, and may prepare us for Fight or Flight reactions. Endocrinology becomes a complex biological study in itself.
The Incredible Protein
Perhaps the most explosive field of biological study today is that of Molecular Biology. We are only beginning to understand the complexity and significance of molecular information carrying systems. Broadly different fields are implicated, including evolution itself, the genetic system, controlling the development of the individual, and the immunological system, protecting us from invasion by chemicals and other living substances. The learning curve here is explosive.
Darwinian Natural Selection proves to be an important, but naive oversimplification as an explanation of evolution. We are just beginning to realize how complex and wonderful the genetic system really is, and how it has impelled the evolutionary thrust forward through the millennia.
Understanding the Human Mind
“Know Thyself”
Gnothi S’Auton. Good advice from the ancient Greeks, from whom we have received so much of our basic cultural matrix. It’s a wonderful thought, but so difficult to achieve. Not that we are distant: here, after all, is where we are. Why then is it so hard to get ourselves straight?. How can man overcome his alienation, the strangeness he is to himself? The history is a long and complicated one.
Among Life Forms, Man knows in a most unusual fashion.We are used to ourselves, so we’re not too surprised at the way we function. We fail to appreciate what an oddity in nature we are. Other animals obviously know things in a sensory way … as we do. How much they think is a question. We, on the other hand, can understand relationships between things. We can infer the existence of things we never see: radio waves, atoms, and even God. We can speculate on politics, the meaning of history, and our personal hates and loves.
In Touch With Reality
The Human Animal is a knowing machine. The evolutionary “reason” why man’s way of knowing developed preferentially was because it was a better way of dealing with the practicalities of survival. But, once engendered, knowledge became a process with its own characteristics, its own rules, and its own internal objectives. The ability to conceptualize contexts and systems gave man a leg up on the other animals of field and forest. But it also gave rise to PsyQuest, the effort to understand things in general, and its own history and destiny. “Know thyself” becamse a bigger game than planned.
Empirical Knowledge the ParadigmIn the beginning of his Metaphysics, Aristotle points out the man by nature desires to know. There’s the itch in our life space, the grain of sand in the oyster of our minds that can cause a pearl of wisdom to form. What we know primarily is the world of physical and animal events in the midst of which we live. This is the world of rocks, snails, lions and tigers, and in particular, the world of the other primates, which which we share an adventure into higher consciousness … though on a vastly different plane.
Different KnowledgesThough rooted in the world of physical objects, the mind of man certainly doesn’t stay there long. Nor in fact did it from the beginning. Early man’s mind apparently was busy filling his world with unseen forces, with spirits, and with gods. That is a very quirky and difficult thing to explain, but, focusing on it, and teasing out the attendant implications, can provide some necessary insights … necessary, that is, if we wish to come to a balanced understanding of man and his (her) place in the universe. How is it that the mind of man, finding its origins and its footing in the material world, immediately sets about to escape from it?
The Fallibility of Sensory Knowledge
Although the world of material objects, animate and inanimate, is our locus of origin and our primary home, we find that there is very little which is it seems. The Sun apparently comes up in the East and sets in the West. But, though it takes millennia to figure the illusion out, it doesn’t! The stars are apparently bright specks on the dome of the sky … but, really, they are burning atomic furnaces, at unimaginable distances, and often many times the size of our sun.
The Evolutionary Character of Knowledge
The world is definitely not as it seems. Certainty is not an easy commodity to come by. Yet humans have always wanted to solidify truth and to claim special avenues to its achievement. A constant throughout cultural history has been the balance, often the struggle, between dogmatism and discovery, between champions of the status quo and adventurers into the realms of novelty and discovery. But, “man desires to know,” and understanding of the universe is an evolutionary phenomenon, as is man himself. We live on the crest of a restless wave.
We have come an incredibly long way over a cosmic blink of the eye. We need to emerge from our own history. That is an incredibly difficult challenge, since our existence is so profoundly replete with contradictions. But, PsyQuest is built on the premise that understanding ourselves is not only possible, but necessary. The adventure of adventures is coming to know ourselves … that is a process, a challenge, and an emerging reward. Stay with us.