Chill out. Things aren’t as bad or as complicated as they seem.
We have a tendency to regard our busy lives as highly complex, but in a comparison of apples and apple seeds, on the macro scale of human existence very little goes on either currently or historically that matches the complexity of cell activity and evolution. How many things do you have to do today? How many interactions with others will you have? How many thoughts or emotions will pass through your central nervous system? You would no doubt say “too many to keep track of,” but if you search the Internet, you’ll find all sorts of estimates. The number is irrelevant though you, personally, would be correct in saying not only “too many to keep track of,” but also “because it seems like ‘too many,’ does it really matter?” And you would be right. Now reduce yourself to the working of a single cell and all its organelles and components. Check out the interaction of genes. Think about what role ribosomes play now or played in the evolution of life. How does one compare the macro and the micro? On the tiniest scale many little things have to happen in order for a few big things to occur, and many little things have happened to get human evolution to where it is today.
In their search to discover how cells arose, theoretical biologists examine the smallest living units. How did living things come to be? Single-cell organisms undergo complex processes and their past is shrouded in a history that extends billions of years into Earth’s past and maybe even beyond Earth itself. What was the “last universal common ancestor” (LUCA) of biological makeup or processes that led to the development of self-replication and ultimately of cells?
You could argue that since you are a collection of trillions of cells, you are much more complex than individual cells, and that understanding YOU, the PERSON, is the most complex problem. In a physical sense, you are correct, but only insofar as you are multiplying the actions within a single cell by the interactions of many cells. Yes, you are physically complex, more so than you are intellectually or emotionally complex, even if you run through thousands of thoughts and emotional states during a day (the latter dubious and the large number debatable).
Take emotions, for example. Aren’t we quite simple? The only reason that psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, and therapists can deal with emotional problems is that they are ultimately reducible and understandable on a practical level. Emotional states occur with variations, but not beyond the context of basic categories found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 (DSM-5). Those “disorders” can only be identified in the context of basic emotional categories. I’m going to risk it: We know disorders because we see them against a background of “normal” orders. That’s not to say that those with emotional problems can reason out the nature of their maladies, but rather to acknowledge that psychologists can make a list of characteristics associated with the sundry human emotions that plague us or exhilarate us.
The common nature of human emotions can be seen in fictional representations. There’s a leveling and a categorizing that marks our emotional lives, and we learn by experience to interpret their indicators. Dramatists can make us laugh or cry, feel empty or fulfilled, scared or confident, or angry or frustrated. “Feeling depressed today?” “Feeling elated?” “Feeling disinterested?” “Feeling angry?” Go ahead, you name some others; your list won’t be as long as the list of interactions of cell molecules. You know just about all of them or certainly most of them. Your only difficulty might be in interpreting the emotions of people from a culture you never experienced. But with a little bit of exposure, you will become fluent in reading any emotions from any culture. No surprises ultimately, just categorizing. Can we search for the Last Universal Common Ancestor Emotion?
It’s that LUCAE that serves as the source of our ability to advise. We seem to know it both intuitively and experientially, but we have trouble identifying it rationally. Can we ever identify the LUCAE? What is our current state of inquiry?
Psychological knowledge, regardless of the relatively short list of human thought and behavioral categories and stereotypes, lags behind biological knowledge. We seem to still be in a stage of tearing apart. The DSM-5, after all, is number 5. Will there be a number 6? No doubt.
Biologists, whose task seems unencumbered by intangibles, began tearing apart the cell a long time ago. And during the last century they made efforts to try to “put one back together” as Harold Urey and Stanley Miller did in their famous experiment. To reconstruct required delving into cell history. Where and when did the cell’s parts arise? How did they self-organize? How did they come to cooperate? Because of cell complexity and the depth of time that shields cell origins, biologists might never discover the ultimate LUCA of cell parts. But they are far ahead and much closer to LUCA than any psychologist is to discovering LUCAE.
Here’ what I refer to. The following comes from research by theoretical biologists who looked into the role that ribosomes played in evolution. They end their study with this:
“We believe that our results provide tantalizing insights into evolution processes that bridge the RNA-world and compositional approaches to the origins of life with LUCA approaches to provide an intermediary state of organization that integrates self-replication with protein translation. A self-replicating ribosomal entity would provide a logical intermediary between self-replicating RNAs or compositionally-organized aggregates of molecules and highly organized, cell-encapsulated genomes. “Selfish” ribosomes, in short, provide one potential intermediary in the process of evolution from the first macromolecules to hyperstructures and finally cells.” *
Biologists have not achieved their goal of discovering the cell’s LUCA, but they seem immeasurably closer than psychologists are to discovering the LUCA of human emotion. Nevertheless, you, I, and just about everyone else can identify in the context of any culture the rudiments of emotions and their sundry variations and also why playwrights can portray them. And that’s why I believe our personal collections of trillions of cells lead relatively simple lives.
Chill out. Your life isn’t as complex as you claim.
* Roof-Bernstein, Meredith and Robert Root-Bernstein, The Ribosome as a Missing Link in the Evolution of Life, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol. 367, Feb. 21, 2015, pp. 130-158. Online at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022519314006778
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2014.11.025
We have a tendency to regard our busy lives as highly complex, but in a comparison of apples and apple seeds, on the macro scale of human existence very little goes on either currently or historically that matches the complexity of cell activity and evolution. How many things do you have to do today? How many interactions with others will you have? How many thoughts or emotions will pass through your central nervous system? You would no doubt say “too many to keep track of,” but if you search the Internet, you’ll find all sorts of estimates. The number is irrelevant though you, personally, would be correct in saying not only “too many to keep track of,” but also “because it seems like ‘too many,’ does it really matter?” And you would be right. Now reduce yourself to the working of a single cell and all its organelles and components. Check out the interaction of genes. Think about what role ribosomes play now or played in the evolution of life. How does one compare the macro and the micro? On the tiniest scale many little things have to happen in order for a few big things to occur, and many little things have happened to get human evolution to where it is today.
In their search to discover how cells arose, theoretical biologists examine the smallest living units. How did living things come to be? Single-cell organisms undergo complex processes and their past is shrouded in a history that extends billions of years into Earth’s past and maybe even beyond Earth itself. What was the “last universal common ancestor” (LUCA) of biological makeup or processes that led to the development of self-replication and ultimately of cells?
You could argue that since you are a collection of trillions of cells, you are much more complex than individual cells, and that understanding YOU, the PERSON, is the most complex problem. In a physical sense, you are correct, but only insofar as you are multiplying the actions within a single cell by the interactions of many cells. Yes, you are physically complex, more so than you are intellectually or emotionally complex, even if you run through thousands of thoughts and emotional states during a day (the latter dubious and the large number debatable).
Take emotions, for example. Aren’t we quite simple? The only reason that psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, and therapists can deal with emotional problems is that they are ultimately reducible and understandable on a practical level. Emotional states occur with variations, but not beyond the context of basic categories found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 (DSM-5). Those “disorders” can only be identified in the context of basic emotional categories. I’m going to risk it: We know disorders because we see them against a background of “normal” orders. That’s not to say that those with emotional problems can reason out the nature of their maladies, but rather to acknowledge that psychologists can make a list of characteristics associated with the sundry human emotions that plague us or exhilarate us.
The common nature of human emotions can be seen in fictional representations. There’s a leveling and a categorizing that marks our emotional lives, and we learn by experience to interpret their indicators. Dramatists can make us laugh or cry, feel empty or fulfilled, scared or confident, or angry or frustrated. “Feeling depressed today?” “Feeling elated?” “Feeling disinterested?” “Feeling angry?” Go ahead, you name some others; your list won’t be as long as the list of interactions of cell molecules. You know just about all of them or certainly most of them. Your only difficulty might be in interpreting the emotions of people from a culture you never experienced. But with a little bit of exposure, you will become fluent in reading any emotions from any culture. No surprises ultimately, just categorizing. Can we search for the Last Universal Common Ancestor Emotion?
It’s that LUCAE that serves as the source of our ability to advise. We seem to know it both intuitively and experientially, but we have trouble identifying it rationally. Can we ever identify the LUCAE? What is our current state of inquiry?
Psychological knowledge, regardless of the relatively short list of human thought and behavioral categories and stereotypes, lags behind biological knowledge. We seem to still be in a stage of tearing apart. The DSM-5, after all, is number 5. Will there be a number 6? No doubt.
Biologists, whose task seems unencumbered by intangibles, began tearing apart the cell a long time ago. And during the last century they made efforts to try to “put one back together” as Harold Urey and Stanley Miller did in their famous experiment. To reconstruct required delving into cell history. Where and when did the cell’s parts arise? How did they self-organize? How did they come to cooperate? Because of cell complexity and the depth of time that shields cell origins, biologists might never discover the ultimate LUCA of cell parts. But they are far ahead and much closer to LUCA than any psychologist is to discovering LUCAE.
Here’ what I refer to. The following comes from research by theoretical biologists who looked into the role that ribosomes played in evolution. They end their study with this:
“We believe that our results provide tantalizing insights into evolution processes that bridge the RNA-world and compositional approaches to the origins of life with LUCA approaches to provide an intermediary state of organization that integrates self-replication with protein translation. A self-replicating ribosomal entity would provide a logical intermediary between self-replicating RNAs or compositionally-organized aggregates of molecules and highly organized, cell-encapsulated genomes. “Selfish” ribosomes, in short, provide one potential intermediary in the process of evolution from the first macromolecules to hyperstructures and finally cells.” *
Biologists have not achieved their goal of discovering the cell’s LUCA, but they seem immeasurably closer than psychologists are to discovering the LUCA of human emotion. Nevertheless, you, I, and just about everyone else can identify in the context of any culture the rudiments of emotions and their sundry variations and also why playwrights can portray them. And that’s why I believe our personal collections of trillions of cells lead relatively simple lives.
Chill out. Your life isn’t as complex as you claim.
* Roof-Bernstein, Meredith and Robert Root-Bernstein, The Ribosome as a Missing Link in the Evolution of Life, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol. 367, Feb. 21, 2015, pp. 130-158. Online at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022519314006778
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2014.11.025
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