Darwin and me

Retirement bringing the joy of knowing those who have lived life in differing perspectives has had the down side of distancing me from my scientist colleagues. A longing for their companionship comes to me still.

Coming upon the website http://edge.org the other day aroused those longings, even wishes that I had remained in the theoretical academia. A newsletter of the Edge Organization, there are videos and photos of a Fundacion Ciencia Y Evolucion seminar held during a tour to Punta Arenas - Puerto Williams - The Beagle Channel - Tierra del Fuego - The Extreme South. The title is "Darwin's Intellectual Legacy To The 21st Century." Though I miss the presence of Stephen Jay Gould, taken from us prematurely, the panel is impressive. I have only read or listened to a few of the talks, the first one by Dennett is enough affirmation and inspiration to last me some time.

The teeming lives of this planet, creatures of natural process, all striving to endure, as self and progeny manifest such a multiplicity of structures, sensations, and behaviors that they cannot be counted. To contemplate the particular or the general is to experience the sacred. Emotions are among those traits that have proven felicitous to enduring and are as much an aspect of our natural selves as the beating of cardiac muscle. I cannot explain why but I know my contentment comes from that understanding. I suspect it is a result of a particular cognitive/emotional set that has had survival value; the capacity discern truth and its emotional reward.

As a psychiatrist I am particularly sensitive to the sturm and drang that results from efforts to distance  emotions, (sometimes called spirit or mind,) from reason, even body. I am confident that the attraction of nature to us is that it brings the experience of wholeness of self. We renew our understanding of continuity and substance and give up the struggle to separate body and spirit, if briefly.Humans are great wishers and I know wishes can turn into plans and eventually useful discoveries. But we also have a way of  trying to press the process beyond what the facts inform us, sometimes with catastrophic results.

That said;  I do believe mankind now is on a step that has never felt our tread.  It is man vastly more able to manipulate his environment and the very DNA of the process than any creature ever before. Our wish for a creator may be fulfilled as us. And that is an interesting notion. No longer will plunder and leave be a survivable life style.

This post has gone on long enough but I hope this old woman will be forgiven for the reminiscences that mean so much to me.

The elementary school I attended in Tulsa censored library book access on the basis of grade level. By the Fourth Grade I had become a book criminal, caught and punished multiple times for sneaking over to the higher level bookshelves. This suggests that the love of information is a hardwired trait but my mother certainly affirmed it as good. Many necessities were forgone for books offered at low prices in magazine ads. One such was about the natural world and contained a chart depicting man in a "tree of life" that also included other species. My grandmother was quick to declare it blasphemous. I at the time had no idea what she was so upset about and if my curiosity about evolution was stimulated I don't know, but I certainly recall the passion of her reaction.

By junior high school I was able to legally check out Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. I read the entire volume, hardly putting it down to sleep and eat. I was learning science and its pursuit as a life style. As I have followed work in the applied sciences I have of course added insights and tweaks to technique; but the essence implanted with that first reading remains untainted.