This ScienceDaily story details an exciting, new, magnetic way of controlling cellular molecules. The effect is the same as when drugs or other molecules bind to the same molecules.
The mechanical method has exactly the same effect as the 'chemical' one. That could only happen if the cellular molecules are machines. QED.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
THE LOGIC AND TRUTH OF BEING
We are founded on logic, on the truth of our being. When we betray logic and truth we not only betray what we are we also damage its fundamental functioning and structure, and the result is physical and mental unease or disease.
MACHINES OF BEING
Body molecules--DNA, proteins, etc--are machines, not reagents.
So traditional pharmaceuticalists are like sculptors who think they are modifying sculptures but are actually blundering mechanics trying to modify an engine without realising that it is an engine, have never seen one running, and have no notion that it is or of how it is.
So traditional pharmaceuticalists are like sculptors who think they are modifying sculptures but are actually blundering mechanics trying to modify an engine without realising that it is an engine, have never seen one running, and have no notion that it is or of how it is.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
THE PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL MEETING-POINT
The organism senses and functions, at the highest level, as an organism. Below that are the senses and functions of the organs, below that are the senses and functions of the structures within organs, below that are the senses and functions of the cellular networks, below that are the senses and functions of the cells, below that are the senses and functions of the molecular networks, below that are the senses and functions of the molecules, which are made of atoms, which have their own fundamental 'senses and functions,' the actions and reactions we call physics and basic chemistry.
On fundamental atomic 'sense' is built a higher level of sense, the molecular; upon that is built a higher level, the molecular networks; upon that is built a higher level, the cellular; upon that is built a higher level, the sub-structures of the organ; upon that is built a higher level, the organic; upon that is built the highest level, that of the organism.
In short, the intelligence of the organism is built on molecular intelligence, which is built on the natural logic of the atom. The intelligence and functioning of the organism is founded on molecular intelligence and its interaction with the organism through the ascending intelligence hierarchy.
In, around and under that is the quantum world, the world of particles, where, as Einstein put it, there is 'spooky action at a distance', quantum entanglement. Particles can be 'aware' of and 'in contact' with others, synchronising instantly, constantly, irrespective of distance. That defies logic and physics, it is incomprehensible to the reasonable laws of the physical--because they are no longer in operation. It must, therefore, be the level of the spiritual. Thus in our desire for ever deeper knowledge of the physical universe we have dug down so far that we have gone out of it altogether, and found to our surprise or chagrin that the whole thing is founded on the spiritual. We have found the point at which spirit and flesh divide. Physics is at loss to explain anything at that level because it just is, existing and functioning in the eternal now, the realm of the spiritual.
As Time magazine said years ago, 'The scientists, after slogging up the mountain of knowledge for centuries, arrive at the top to find the theologians sitting there waiting for them.'
More light may be shed on the same point by this ScienceDaily report in August 2008. As an unknown amateur poet once said: 'In and out of things that seem are dancing things that are.'
---------
The level above the spiritual, the molecular, is where all our physical actions start. The mechanism of feeling thirsty, for example, can be seen as having as its fundamental cause the fact that the nanomachines we call protein molecules are lubricated by water, and that its attendant 'minuet' is also vital to their proper formation. So when there is insufficient water for all that to happen as it should it is the protein molecules that will notice it first. That message passed up the chain causes you to head for the tap.
(It also seems reasonable to think that that 'water network' is also used in intermolecular communication, using water molecules as a choregraphed pigeon-post. The dance set up by one molecule used to interface with the dance of the next one, like so many ballerinas passing a particular step across the stage, or so many bees signalling to their peers by their dance where they should fly to gather nectar.)
(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 5th of December 2007.)
On fundamental atomic 'sense' is built a higher level of sense, the molecular; upon that is built a higher level, the molecular networks; upon that is built a higher level, the cellular; upon that is built a higher level, the sub-structures of the organ; upon that is built a higher level, the organic; upon that is built the highest level, that of the organism.
In short, the intelligence of the organism is built on molecular intelligence, which is built on the natural logic of the atom. The intelligence and functioning of the organism is founded on molecular intelligence and its interaction with the organism through the ascending intelligence hierarchy.
In, around and under that is the quantum world, the world of particles, where, as Einstein put it, there is 'spooky action at a distance', quantum entanglement. Particles can be 'aware' of and 'in contact' with others, synchronising instantly, constantly, irrespective of distance. That defies logic and physics, it is incomprehensible to the reasonable laws of the physical--because they are no longer in operation. It must, therefore, be the level of the spiritual. Thus in our desire for ever deeper knowledge of the physical universe we have dug down so far that we have gone out of it altogether, and found to our surprise or chagrin that the whole thing is founded on the spiritual. We have found the point at which spirit and flesh divide. Physics is at loss to explain anything at that level because it just is, existing and functioning in the eternal now, the realm of the spiritual.
As Time magazine said years ago, 'The scientists, after slogging up the mountain of knowledge for centuries, arrive at the top to find the theologians sitting there waiting for them.'
More light may be shed on the same point by this ScienceDaily report in August 2008. As an unknown amateur poet once said: 'In and out of things that seem are dancing things that are.'
---------
The level above the spiritual, the molecular, is where all our physical actions start. The mechanism of feeling thirsty, for example, can be seen as having as its fundamental cause the fact that the nanomachines we call protein molecules are lubricated by water, and that its attendant 'minuet' is also vital to their proper formation. So when there is insufficient water for all that to happen as it should it is the protein molecules that will notice it first. That message passed up the chain causes you to head for the tap.
(It also seems reasonable to think that that 'water network' is also used in intermolecular communication, using water molecules as a choregraphed pigeon-post. The dance set up by one molecule used to interface with the dance of the next one, like so many ballerinas passing a particular step across the stage, or so many bees signalling to their peers by their dance where they should fly to gather nectar.)
(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 5th of December 2007.)
BACTERIA ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE
They also show us the way to a true democracy.
The September/October 2006 issue of Update, the magazine for members of the New York Academy of Sciences, has a piece headed Microbial Chatter, How Bacteria Talk to Each Other, which outlines the researches of Bonnie Hassler, a molecular biologist at Princeton University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
'She has found that bacteria like to live in complex multi-species communities and their ability to communicate and co-operate is essential to their survival,' says the magazine. Amongst other abilities, they are 'multilingual' (via signalling molecules called auto-inducers), and they have a communications system called 'quorum sensing' in which the majority rules. A single bacteria expressing what might be called an auto-inducer opinion cannot persuade group action; that happens only when a large number express it in unison. There are three main types of auto-inducers. One of them enables cross-species communications: 'An example of this ability for mixed-species consortia to talk among themselves is evident on our teeth: 600 species are there every morning in precisely the same organisation as the night before. The only way they can build their complicated biofilms is to know precisely what other cells are out there and to use the information to function effectively as a working conglomerate.'
Meanwhile, in the brains a few centimetres above those teeth there is touching faith in the notion that our system of government is a democracy, that it truly is 'government of the people, by the people, for the people', when it is nothing but an elected dictatorship--it is government of the people, by a few people, for some people. The bacteria have true a democracy. Every bug has an auto-inducer voice, every voice counts, and the action of the group is decided by the majority in unison. A molecular opinion expressed by only a few bugs is ignored.
Poor people. How sad! They have less organisational sense than the bugs on their teeth.
(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 9th of October 2006.)
Footnote posting (2nd of May 2008): As this article in ScienceDaily shows, the phenomenon of 'quorum-sensing' as it is called can now be used to tell staph biofilms to go away. Rather like telling politicians ditto. Would that they would take the same kind of notice...
The September/October 2006 issue of Update, the magazine for members of the New York Academy of Sciences, has a piece headed Microbial Chatter, How Bacteria Talk to Each Other, which outlines the researches of Bonnie Hassler, a molecular biologist at Princeton University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
'She has found that bacteria like to live in complex multi-species communities and their ability to communicate and co-operate is essential to their survival,' says the magazine. Amongst other abilities, they are 'multilingual' (via signalling molecules called auto-inducers), and they have a communications system called 'quorum sensing' in which the majority rules. A single bacteria expressing what might be called an auto-inducer opinion cannot persuade group action; that happens only when a large number express it in unison. There are three main types of auto-inducers. One of them enables cross-species communications: 'An example of this ability for mixed-species consortia to talk among themselves is evident on our teeth: 600 species are there every morning in precisely the same organisation as the night before. The only way they can build their complicated biofilms is to know precisely what other cells are out there and to use the information to function effectively as a working conglomerate.'
Meanwhile, in the brains a few centimetres above those teeth there is touching faith in the notion that our system of government is a democracy, that it truly is 'government of the people, by the people, for the people', when it is nothing but an elected dictatorship--it is government of the people, by a few people, for some people. The bacteria have true a democracy. Every bug has an auto-inducer voice, every voice counts, and the action of the group is decided by the majority in unison. A molecular opinion expressed by only a few bugs is ignored.
Poor people. How sad! They have less organisational sense than the bugs on their teeth.
(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 9th of October 2006.)
Footnote posting (2nd of May 2008): As this article in ScienceDaily shows, the phenomenon of 'quorum-sensing' as it is called can now be used to tell staph biofilms to go away. Rather like telling politicians ditto. Would that they would take the same kind of notice...
ONE NEURON IS A LOT OF POWER
Oh, surprise, surprise! They have just discovered that a single neuron has a lot of processing power, as this BBC report outlines.
This blogger has been saying for some time that the fundamental processing power in the brain, and in the entire body, is molecular. In each neuron there are billions of molecules. Small wonder that different synapses in the same neuron can be processing different bits of information.
The subconscious is far more 'sub'--far more fundamental--than we thought.
This blogger has been saying for some time that the fundamental processing power in the brain, and in the entire body, is molecular. In each neuron there are billions of molecules. Small wonder that different synapses in the same neuron can be processing different bits of information.
The subconscious is far more 'sub'--far more fundamental--than we thought.
INSIGHT ON THE WORKING OF THE BRAIN NOW PROVED
This blog has from time to time gone right off the topic of energy to publish ideas about DNA, cellular proteins and the detailed workings of neurons. It is gratifying to see that empirical research has now shown those ideas to have been correct--see this report in
Science Daily.
The point was underlined by another report that came out a month later, also in Science Daily.
For the earlier postings click here, and here, and here.
(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 18th of August 2007.)
Science Daily.
The point was underlined by another report that came out a month later, also in Science Daily.
For the earlier postings click here, and here, and here.
(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 18th of August 2007.)
YET MORE PROOF OF THE TRUTH ABOUT DNA
This BBC story again underlines the truth of what this blog first daringly postulated in November 2006 and reiterated in May 2007--i.e., that the traditionalists' notions about DNA are as much junk as the moniker they have long attached to most of our DNA.
Why did it take them so long to see it? How could they be so blind or arrogant or both and just dimiss what they did not understand, but which had for some reason been there for aeons, as junk? From the time I first heard the phrase 'junk DNA' I thought we would one day find out that it was not junk, and I said so to a DNA researcher way back in 1994, although it was not till November 2006 that I realised what it was. My first vague thoughts had been that it was like the comments in a program--which was nowhere near the truth that it is the machine that processes the program. The whole thing is a continuum, with all parts being necessary.
What is incredible is that such superlative intelligence can be built into and contained in what seems nothing but strings of chemicals, albeit rather complex ones, built of such simple fundamentals. It is enough to make you ponder on the real nature of life, the universe and everything. It is certainly enough to make you realise that Darwin et alia hardly knew/know a blind thing.
One wonders how much intelligence is built into DNA, and whether it has sufficient processing power to experiment, and thus to play an active role in improving an organism or in producing offshoot organisms. We no know that bacteria can 'vote' and that the preponderant chemically-communicated 'opinion' rules, so perhaps the preponderance of a particular genetic luggage in an organism's DNA, due to the survival of the fittest, causes more than just weight of numbers giving rise to certain offspring. It also causes joint processing and thus a greater refinement in the direction pointed to by those numbers. In other words DNA plays an active role not a passive one.
Footnote (23/07/2007): This article in ScienceDaily, which overturns traditional notions of proteins, shows that the functioning of the body is at base molecular. Myriads of molecular engines make up a cell (and not just proteins, obviously); myriads of cellular engines make up an organ; many of organic engines make up an organism. The high-speed internal action of the molecular engines will always be beyond our analytical capabilities, so the so-called 'designer drugs', which were predicated on the notion that proteins were static in shape, will remain a mirage.
(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 18th of June 2007.)
Why did it take them so long to see it? How could they be so blind or arrogant or both and just dimiss what they did not understand, but which had for some reason been there for aeons, as junk? From the time I first heard the phrase 'junk DNA' I thought we would one day find out that it was not junk, and I said so to a DNA researcher way back in 1994, although it was not till November 2006 that I realised what it was. My first vague thoughts had been that it was like the comments in a program--which was nowhere near the truth that it is the machine that processes the program. The whole thing is a continuum, with all parts being necessary.
What is incredible is that such superlative intelligence can be built into and contained in what seems nothing but strings of chemicals, albeit rather complex ones, built of such simple fundamentals. It is enough to make you ponder on the real nature of life, the universe and everything. It is certainly enough to make you realise that Darwin et alia hardly knew/know a blind thing.
One wonders how much intelligence is built into DNA, and whether it has sufficient processing power to experiment, and thus to play an active role in improving an organism or in producing offshoot organisms. We no know that bacteria can 'vote' and that the preponderant chemically-communicated 'opinion' rules, so perhaps the preponderance of a particular genetic luggage in an organism's DNA, due to the survival of the fittest, causes more than just weight of numbers giving rise to certain offspring. It also causes joint processing and thus a greater refinement in the direction pointed to by those numbers. In other words DNA plays an active role not a passive one.
Footnote (23/07/2007): This article in ScienceDaily, which overturns traditional notions of proteins, shows that the functioning of the body is at base molecular. Myriads of molecular engines make up a cell (and not just proteins, obviously); myriads of cellular engines make up an organ; many of organic engines make up an organism. The high-speed internal action of the molecular engines will always be beyond our analytical capabilities, so the so-called 'designer drugs', which were predicated on the notion that proteins were static in shape, will remain a mirage.
(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 18th of June 2007.)
DNA PROVED MORE THAN WAS THOUGHT
As this blog daringly postulated in November 2006, purely from gedunken processes, empirical research has now established that the so-called junk DNA processes genes. But that ScienceDaily report (derived from Nature magazine) shows there is still a long way to go. The full power and detailed processing function of the 'junk' has yet to be revealed and understood.
(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 16th of May 2007.)
(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 16th of May 2007.)
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IS PSYCHOLOGICAL ABUSE
But it is now far more subtle and lot less messy than when the Nazis did it. Instead of Auschwitz and Buchenwald we now have concentration camps of the mind and gas-ovens of the heart. But the result is the same. Good society goes up in smoke and generations are ruined.
In the story of the Emperor's new clothes, it was politically correct to say that his clothes were magnificent--'only fools cannot see them.'
The wise avoid the trap of allowing such psychological abuse to distort their vision and judgement, and their duty to cry out the truth.
(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 7th of January 2007.)
In the story of the Emperor's new clothes, it was politically correct to say that his clothes were magnificent--'only fools cannot see them.'
The wise avoid the trap of allowing such psychological abuse to distort their vision and judgement, and their duty to cry out the truth.
(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 7th of January 2007.)
DNA IS FAR MORE THAN WAS THOUGHT
Genetic researchers have long dismissed as 'junk' stretches of DNA that were not genes, a view I always refused to accept. But during the past year it has been found that the 'junk' has been faithfully reproduced generation after generation after generation, thus showing that it has an important function. Nature would not bother to take great pains to replicate junk. Also during the past year other researchers built a simple computer from DNA.
It is therefore obvious that DNA is not what the traditional view would have us believe. To see it only as genes is, literally, like seeing a computer as nothing but program and dismissing the rest as junk. Genes are only part of the story. DNA is far, far more. It is integrated processor, data-storage, program and power-source. It can therefore be seen as intelligent; it has design-intelligence; it is design-intelligence: stored design with the intelligence and power to manufacture it.
That applies not only to DNA: cell-proteins in general are processors. Which explains why the folding that is so critical alters the way that protein processor functions. Folding affects the shape and therefore the function of the processor; it also affects its internal power-level because it alters the electrical potential of the molecule. When the processor and its level of self-power are different the function of the molecule are different.
It has been found that bacteria communicate with chemicals and by that means intelligently co-ordinate their actions. Therefore DNA and other complex proteins also communicate using lesser chemicals, thus forming processing molecular networks, just as computers communicate with packets of data over networks; there is also electrical communication. Thus there is an intelligent processing network at the level of complex bio-molecules, literally making the cell; on top of that is the network of cells, together making up simple organisms, or organs in higher organisms; on top of that is the network of organs together making up the organism.
A computing analogy is that the complex molecules are the components in a computer, with DNA being the CPU; on top of that computers are formed into local networks; on top of that they are formed into the global Internet.
DNA is not only a programmed computer, complete with memory, data-storage and a power-source, it is self-programming, self-improving, exploring, like T-cells, for a better 'fit' to the external needs of the organism.
The few-percent different in genetic instructions between chimps and humans (although significant in such a huge total) is therefore only a fraction of the story. The processors are different, so the resulting organisms are different. A different design-intelligence, a different level of processing power, implements a different design. The DNA processor of a human being is far more intelligent and complex than the DNA processor of an insects or bacteria, so we are far more intelligent and complex. Even when the same code or data is processed the result is different. To adapt Marshall McLuhan, the processing is the organism.
That is true not only of the making on an organism it is also true of its behaviour and activities. For instance, a bird is not taught how to build a nest or rear young, etc.. It just knows, because its molecular processing informs its actions. There is behavioural intelligence, stored behavioural design at molecular level.
The same applies to memory--indeed to thinking in general. It is essentially molecular. Above that is the neural level, the functioning of neurons; above that is the functioning of the brain, all the neurons acting in concert, firstly in the sub-networks that are the discrete areas of the brain, then in the complete network.
A thought or a memory may thus be a unique network of neurons identified by marker proteins stored only in that neural set. Then to recall the memory would just be a matter of re-establishing the same network by establishing the start of it, or sufficient of it to begin the trace, then that starter neuron would interrogate all the ones linked to it to establish which have that protein, and so on, till that entire 'thought-net' has been searched out, retrieved and be firing. Any neuron could be in thousands of thought-nets, each very different, because each cell can have thousands of different proteins; it would just be linked to a different neural set characterised by the marker protein unique to that set. Modification of a thought or memory would be then the addition or deletion of neurons from a thought-net by making or eliminating the relevant marker neuron specific to that net.
The only argument left between the ungodly and the godly is whether that fundamental DNA and molecular intelligence arose spontaneously from nothing or was put there. If put there, was it processed into being by the quantum computer called Earth (Gaia, if you prefer), a subset of the quantum computer called the Universe? Or was it all put there by God?
But both sides of that puerile ID argument (i.e., 'intelligent design' versus evolution) have to accept that absolute proof, and also therefore absolute disproof, of the ultimate source are beyond the reach of human science. Neither side can absolutely prove the existence of anything, not even their own existence.
Relative proof, however, which is knowledge of communication, or knowledge of sensory awareness both internally with oneself and externally with others, is another matter. We all do that every day. And as Winston Churchill neatly put it: Men often stumble over the truth. Most of them manage to pick themselves up and carry on as if nothing had happened.
(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 3rd of November 2006.)
It is therefore obvious that DNA is not what the traditional view would have us believe. To see it only as genes is, literally, like seeing a computer as nothing but program and dismissing the rest as junk. Genes are only part of the story. DNA is far, far more. It is integrated processor, data-storage, program and power-source. It can therefore be seen as intelligent; it has design-intelligence; it is design-intelligence: stored design with the intelligence and power to manufacture it.
That applies not only to DNA: cell-proteins in general are processors. Which explains why the folding that is so critical alters the way that protein processor functions. Folding affects the shape and therefore the function of the processor; it also affects its internal power-level because it alters the electrical potential of the molecule. When the processor and its level of self-power are different the function of the molecule are different.
It has been found that bacteria communicate with chemicals and by that means intelligently co-ordinate their actions. Therefore DNA and other complex proteins also communicate using lesser chemicals, thus forming processing molecular networks, just as computers communicate with packets of data over networks; there is also electrical communication. Thus there is an intelligent processing network at the level of complex bio-molecules, literally making the cell; on top of that is the network of cells, together making up simple organisms, or organs in higher organisms; on top of that is the network of organs together making up the organism.
A computing analogy is that the complex molecules are the components in a computer, with DNA being the CPU; on top of that computers are formed into local networks; on top of that they are formed into the global Internet.
DNA is not only a programmed computer, complete with memory, data-storage and a power-source, it is self-programming, self-improving, exploring, like T-cells, for a better 'fit' to the external needs of the organism.
The few-percent different in genetic instructions between chimps and humans (although significant in such a huge total) is therefore only a fraction of the story. The processors are different, so the resulting organisms are different. A different design-intelligence, a different level of processing power, implements a different design. The DNA processor of a human being is far more intelligent and complex than the DNA processor of an insects or bacteria, so we are far more intelligent and complex. Even when the same code or data is processed the result is different. To adapt Marshall McLuhan, the processing is the organism.
That is true not only of the making on an organism it is also true of its behaviour and activities. For instance, a bird is not taught how to build a nest or rear young, etc.. It just knows, because its molecular processing informs its actions. There is behavioural intelligence, stored behavioural design at molecular level.
The same applies to memory--indeed to thinking in general. It is essentially molecular. Above that is the neural level, the functioning of neurons; above that is the functioning of the brain, all the neurons acting in concert, firstly in the sub-networks that are the discrete areas of the brain, then in the complete network.
A thought or a memory may thus be a unique network of neurons identified by marker proteins stored only in that neural set. Then to recall the memory would just be a matter of re-establishing the same network by establishing the start of it, or sufficient of it to begin the trace, then that starter neuron would interrogate all the ones linked to it to establish which have that protein, and so on, till that entire 'thought-net' has been searched out, retrieved and be firing. Any neuron could be in thousands of thought-nets, each very different, because each cell can have thousands of different proteins; it would just be linked to a different neural set characterised by the marker protein unique to that set. Modification of a thought or memory would be then the addition or deletion of neurons from a thought-net by making or eliminating the relevant marker neuron specific to that net.
The only argument left between the ungodly and the godly is whether that fundamental DNA and molecular intelligence arose spontaneously from nothing or was put there. If put there, was it processed into being by the quantum computer called Earth (Gaia, if you prefer), a subset of the quantum computer called the Universe? Or was it all put there by God?
But both sides of that puerile ID argument (i.e., 'intelligent design' versus evolution) have to accept that absolute proof, and also therefore absolute disproof, of the ultimate source are beyond the reach of human science. Neither side can absolutely prove the existence of anything, not even their own existence.
Relative proof, however, which is knowledge of communication, or knowledge of sensory awareness both internally with oneself and externally with others, is another matter. We all do that every day. And as Winston Churchill neatly put it: Men often stumble over the truth. Most of them manage to pick themselves up and carry on as if nothing had happened.
(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 3rd of November 2006.)
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