Are you subject to fate? Have the three fates laid out your life in an unchangeable manner? Is free will a myth? Certainly, there are studies, such as those of neuroscientist Wolf Singer, that call into question your level of freedom. But should you go to the extreme to say there is, in fact, no such thing as free will and that your brain is an independent controller? Are there biochemical processes that do your thinking for you? Is cooperation among brain cells the key to your next decision? Are you fated?
Mythologized by the Greeks and Romans, Fate was envisioned as three goddesses who had roles of spinning the thread of life (Clotho), measuring it (Lachesis), and cutting it (Atropos). Ever since, the idea of the Fates has circulated through culture. “When it’s your time….” Were the Greeks and Romans just foreshadowing the work of modern neuroscientists who say we are the puppets of our brains?
It will be a long time till we resolve the dilemma of determinism versus free will. Once the realm of philosophers and theologians, free will is now the realm of neuroscientists who have discovered that brains play roles unknown to ancient, medieval, and relatively recent modern thinkers. A recent study of brainless frogs suggests that even body structure might be the work of the brain.
Tufts University’s Celia Herrera-Rincon and others devised an experiment that revealed the role of brains in African clawed frog embryos.* The bodies of brainless frogs developed abnormally. It seems that the young brain plays a role in organizing muscles and nerve fibers, and it probably plays a role in normal organ development. In other words, the brain, even in its earliest stages of development, exerts an identifiable control over the body. That begs the question: Does the more sophisticated brain in a mature animal exert even more complex control over behavior and in humans over thinking and decision-making?
“No. Say it ain’t so, Celia and Wolf,” you say. “Surely, I’m in control. Surely there’s a ‘larger’ more holistic me than a bundle of nerve fibers and neurons knotted up inside my skull.”
Think of the implications of the Tufts University experiment. It has the potential to call into question all kinds of belief and faith, and it possibly replaces traditional notions of free will with a new model for human decision-making. Is it a manifestation of chaos theory at work: Initial conditions determine outcomes. Your embryonic brain was that initial condition.
“Yes, it was,” you argue, “but it is the current environment of my life that I manage. And I do that through my free will.”
Maybe, my little tadpole. Maybe. Was Celia destined to study brainless frogs from the time her own embryonic form looked like a tadpole?
* C. Herrera-Rincon et al. The brain is required for normal muscle and nerve patterning during early Xenopus development. Nature Communications. Published online September 25, 2017. doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-00597-2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00597-2
Mythologized by the Greeks and Romans, Fate was envisioned as three goddesses who had roles of spinning the thread of life (Clotho), measuring it (Lachesis), and cutting it (Atropos). Ever since, the idea of the Fates has circulated through culture. “When it’s your time….” Were the Greeks and Romans just foreshadowing the work of modern neuroscientists who say we are the puppets of our brains?
It will be a long time till we resolve the dilemma of determinism versus free will. Once the realm of philosophers and theologians, free will is now the realm of neuroscientists who have discovered that brains play roles unknown to ancient, medieval, and relatively recent modern thinkers. A recent study of brainless frogs suggests that even body structure might be the work of the brain.
Tufts University’s Celia Herrera-Rincon and others devised an experiment that revealed the role of brains in African clawed frog embryos.* The bodies of brainless frogs developed abnormally. It seems that the young brain plays a role in organizing muscles and nerve fibers, and it probably plays a role in normal organ development. In other words, the brain, even in its earliest stages of development, exerts an identifiable control over the body. That begs the question: Does the more sophisticated brain in a mature animal exert even more complex control over behavior and in humans over thinking and decision-making?
“No. Say it ain’t so, Celia and Wolf,” you say. “Surely, I’m in control. Surely there’s a ‘larger’ more holistic me than a bundle of nerve fibers and neurons knotted up inside my skull.”
Think of the implications of the Tufts University experiment. It has the potential to call into question all kinds of belief and faith, and it possibly replaces traditional notions of free will with a new model for human decision-making. Is it a manifestation of chaos theory at work: Initial conditions determine outcomes. Your embryonic brain was that initial condition.
“Yes, it was,” you argue, “but it is the current environment of my life that I manage. And I do that through my free will.”
Maybe, my little tadpole. Maybe. Was Celia destined to study brainless frogs from the time her own embryonic form looked like a tadpole?
* C. Herrera-Rincon et al. The brain is required for normal muscle and nerve patterning during early Xenopus development. Nature Communications. Published online September 25, 2017. doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-00597-2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00597-2
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