That history class by Yuval Noah Harari

Status then: A very very poor blogger

Status now: A very poor blogger (now that I'm here for at least a few minutes)

So instead of whining over my blogging habits over the years, I'd rather plunge into business which is about the latest book I finished. And yes, I do have some thoughts. Even if I've failed to touch all of them, here's what I could pen down...

Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens makes it for a fascinating read, one that I would recommend to all kinds of consumers around me. Sapiens, a commentary on social evolution comes across as a brave attempt, where Harari exercises his cognito, egro sum over our chance existence on this planet as a species. Wielding a cynical tone, Harari presents man’s history from the budding point of his speciation from his ancestors over 70,000 years ago until the point when he now assumes a godly status. Sapiens claims the agricultural revolution as “the biggest fraud”, yet also deems it the first ever societal invention “that keeps more people alive under worse condition”. Biological evolution facilitated by natural selection is perhaps the greatest natural phenomenon, which I believe we are to thank for letting us be that blip on this life-hunting radar of the (yet-so-far-known) non-living universe. This biggest fraud, as Harari unapologetically calls it, perhaps laid the first stepping stone for social evolution, which our consciousness collectively selected for generations to come. If biological evolution equates to a driverless, natural phenomenon, then does that make social evolution a targeted, imaginative phenomenon? And how did this materialise? And old answer for an old question: Biological evolution outdid itself with a some extra folds in the carpets of our brain: Human Cognition. Ever since then the ‘Fittest’ that survived has found new definitions replacing one after the other with changing seasons.

With cognition now taking over the wheel, Harari (under his own) presents a fitting case about extent and persuasiveness of man’s imagination which constructed all societal structures and laws, from the norms of agriculture, animal domestication, unification and control of society via fabricated monetary, religious and legal systems, to establishment of capitalistic ventures and governments. Each of these find their basis on the collective acceptance of these systems by homo sapiens all over the world (where any resistance would be met by violent and clever methods of domination), such that now it seems almost impossible to imagine if this species could have taken an alternate course of journey in space-time. Sapiens serve as a sound text for this age that suggests a revision on the holy trinity (of mass-unifiers) as money, religion and empires. Man controlled beasts and all those he thought of as lesser men. For ethologists, domination and hierarchy are no new concepts in kingdom Animalia. Should one be surprised how man used the best of his “software” updates sponsored by natural selection to construct ideas of empires and capitalism? Best of all, these imperial and capitalistic forces in turn sponsored man’s desire to fight against ignorance, to quench his thirst for knowledge, to set out on scientific adventures: The most significant consequence of cognition since time immemorial.  As Harari points these out in his tales from the “Marriage of Science and Empire”, we are reminded that these achievements were going on to lay the groundwork for the pursuit of the real intelligent design (All work and no pray makes Jack a curious boy :P).        

     

The author goes on to place a giant flag on the tug-of-war between the state and market which has been constantly ripping the individual apart; the age-old Fountainhead-esque debate with Harari reiterating his stance on the sheer fabrication of both institutions. Harari implies , the very biologically-natural existence of man has gotten so deeply interwoven within the man-made fabric of social structure that the reality of his survival is now governed by these products of human imagination (talk about irony). As the book draws close to the stream of our present, the author highlights some striking differences between life in the past and life now wherein more people died due to wars in earlier centuries than now. He brings into one’s attention the relatively improved conditions of life, lowered mortality and peace across the world that reigns now. But for us, the current tenants of this earth, is that satisfactory? According to me, this is where Harari delivers a punch. He questions the relationship of this historical race for power accompanied by scientific revolution with happiness. For starters, if neuroendocrinologists could help answer that, some primate studies highlight the cost of dominance as they show higher cortisol (a stress biomarker) levels in alpha males. So in general, is there any relation between a man’s success and his happiness? And what does the test of time say? In comparison to the past, more people today battle with depression (a condition ranking as the second most prevalent disability worldwide). Here the author questions our obsession for a forever-happy life. Is it possible or even necessary to achieve this quintessential happily ever after despite man’s progress through space-time? However, what left me unconvincing about his ideas on happiness was his explanation for its causation. He takes a rather reductionist approach by blaming the hormonal juices that gives rise to happiness. No doubt, they are associated but they aren’t the root of it and only serve as the tool. Serotonin and dopamine are essential to manifest a range of positive emotions but the sequence and often their feedback over a period of time is important here. A stimulus often (environmental or genetic or their interaction) precedes the flow of these hormonal juices which by the way, is also variable in each developing stage of the individual. So, when he says, “happiness begins within”, it has to do with what stimulus you chose or happen to be around to turn on those circuits inside you that makes you feel a certain way. The stimulus is crucial here. This stimulation may or may not be a source of imagination coming from inside of you (your head). And those hormones he pointed his guns at, are mere switches which modulate the degree of the (predisposed) state of positivity and neuroticism in people. If an analogy could help - why did you drive a nail into your wall? Not because you own a hammer (read hormones), rather because your partner gifted you a painting by your favourite artist (read stimulus).

Harari’s cynicism about the course of social evolution is evident throughout his commentary. Is he being naïve, with his discontent over the fact that in spite the boon of cognition, the struggle for resource and power just like any other species was, is and will continue among ours as well? Or could it be the beginning of our realisation of this power-play as sort of an evolved predatory mechanism that explains our position at the acne of the ecological pyramid? He challenges the reader with the idea that intelligent design would hereafter or rather is already replacing the laws of natural selection. And what are these laws of natural selection he talks about? Natural selection is like a graduate student fixing dinner in her kitchen (throwing back to my culinary fixes that 'in spirit' resembled Oparin-Haldane's primordial soup :P) The environment is the boiling pot, the contents of her fridge along with a touch of randomness constitute the recipe and the rest is just food chemistry simmering in the laws of thermodynamics. It is a process as spontaneous as the aging of our sun, the Big Bang and collision of two black holes light-years away from home. The understanding of natural selection has enabled man to domesticate this biological process by successfully creating all that can be created in a controlled environment. Man invented a name for it - the artificial design. Isn’t it nothing but a product of our latest upgrade feature called cognition? Change is the only constant and its persistence in the environment has fed natural selection to take its course. Man has learned to control environment and create new environments, ergo making it possible for him to alter life and life-forms just like playdoh. That doesn’t not mean the artificial design resists natural selection, but perhaps that it only alters its rate. For how long will man be able to maintain these conditions? A change in its resource patterns or geographical parameters over time will eventually lead to selection pressure over certain traits and entropy will find its way (as it is doing now at this very moment). Environmental changes and natural selection over our span of species, irrespective of artificial designing, are inevitable. But what will the course be like? even the Darwinian blind watchmaker would fall short of answers. Could an army of supercomputers suggest? Only time can tell. If not for an ‘artificial death’, the earth is certainly headed for a natural death at some point of time in this space-time continuum. Our contribution is in accelerating this death given our pace of resource encroachment. In spite of man being able to master the art of controlling microenvironments, Harari makes a compelling case through Sapiens how his existence in this planet has affected its overall environment beginning with the dwindling of flora and fauna across the earth over time. The anthropogenic acceleration of climate change certainly is a striking example staring at us right now.

Neither do I agree completely with Harari’s cynicism on the human race nor do I feel extremely hopeful of a “happily ever after”. Our existence on this planet doesn’t warrant us to place ourselves on the same pedestal as other species to inculcate humility within. We may be “more evolved” to thrive in our shifting environment and despite that, the blind watchmaker is still silently at work, tweaking those parts it put together to dial that upgrade called cognition online. Despite this upgrade, here we are - A species of over 7.5 billion, exploiting the natural reserves on this planet, popping Xanax or Prozac time to time struggling to keep the angels inside our heads happy and satisfied. “More evolved” doesn’t label us as better, it just labels us as different. Our cognitive brain could one day be so evolved that it may slowly take over or least fine-tune the responses of our emotional brain (the animalistic reflexes) either in the form of cellular/anatomical hardware changes or in the form of technological advancement, a phenomenon that is currently on display to the world in real time. And then could man let himself answer all those noisy calls made by his imaginative mind? Or would he in fact begin to engineer what he even wants to imagine? Harari nails it down leaving us with the final question, one that’s telling of the hour - “the real question facing us is not ‘What do we want to become?’, but ‘what do we want to want?’”. And what does this make of our collectively-created social evolution? A targeted driverless, imaginative phenomenon.  

And then I read something...

Voila! Long time no see...!!

Wow! So much has happened in the world. Smart phones have replaced literally everything from wristwatches to romantic partners...the Naruto saga has come to an end. It is season 6 in Westeros already and 'winter is coming'. While here on earth, winters right now are way warmer and we are heading towards a doom soon enough...and what not. I started this so long before my PhD and now I'm revisiting, infact realising the existence of this blog in my last sem of my course. It's a pity that I couldn't keep up with my blogging habits. But I ended taking a peek here coz i was desperate to put this amazing quote down somewhere...
"Each child is an adventure into a better life - an opportunity to change the old pattern and make it new"
For a person who pursues the question on environmental influence over one's development, this comes across as very tempting. And interestingly when you cannot deny the growing evidence supporting this...then well, why not?
I could just continue writing if not for my FYP student who's waiting for me at my desk to run some stats right now. So for now, thanks Hubert H. Humphrey, for this intruging line.

Sorry for the typos. Its my first post from my smart phone. I'm not very smart at using it...yet...     Someday....i will be.. 

the excerpt that makes me smile every time I read it...

"I HAVE never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood. Perhaps in other company he is that way, but I have never had reason so to judge him. It has nothing to do with his present fame. Already he is much talked about, usually with reverence, and someday he may be considered in the category of Rutherford or Bohr. But this was not true when, in the fall of 1951, I came to the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University to join a small group of physicists and chemists working on the three-dimensional structures of proteins. At that time he was thirty-five, yet almost totally unknown. Although some of his closest colleagues realized the value of his quick, penetrating mind and frequently sought his advice, he was often not appreciated, and most people thought he talked too much.

Leading the unit to which Francis belonged was Max Perutz, an Austrian-born chemist who came to England in 1936. He had been collecting X-ray diffraction data from hemoglobin crystals for over ten years and was just beginning to get somewhere. Helping him was Sir Lawrence Bragg, the director of the Cavendish. For almost forty years Bragg, a Nobel Prize winner and one of the founders of crystallography, had been watching X-ray diffraction methods solve structures of everincreasing difficulty. The more complex the molecule, the happier Bragg became when a new method allowed its elucidation. Thus in the immediate postwar years he was especially keen about the possibility of solving the structures of proteins, the most complicated of all molecules. Often, when administrative duties permitted, he visited Perutz' office to discuss recently accumulated X-ray data. Then he would return home to see if he could interpret them.

Somewhere between Bragg the theorist and Perutz the experimentalist was Francis, who occasionally did experiments but more often was immersed in the theories for solving protein structures. Often he came up with something novel, would become enormously excited, and immediately tell it to anyone who would listen. A day or so later he would often realize that his theory did not work and return to experiments, until boredom generated a new attack on theory.

There was much drama connected with these ideas. They did a great deal to liven up the atmosphere of the lab, where experiments usually lasted several months to years. This came partly from the volume of Crick's voice he talked louder and faster than anyone else and, when he laughed, his location within the Cavendish was obvious. Almost everyone enjoyed these manic moments, especially when we had the time to listen attentively and to tell him bluntly when we lost the train of his argument. But there was one notable exception. Conversations with Crick frequently upset Sir Lawrence Bragg, and the h sound of his voice was often sufficient to make Bragg move to a safer room. Only infrequently would he come to tea in the Cavendish, since it meant enduring Crick's booming over the tea room. Even then Bragg was not completely safe. On two occasions the corridor outside his office was flooded with water pouring out of a laboratory in which Crick was working. Francis, with his interest in theory, had neglected to fasten securely the rubber tubing around his suction pump.

At the time of my arrival, Francis' theories spread far, beyond the confines of protein crystallography. Anything important would attract him, and. he frequently visited other labs to see which new experiments had been done. Though he was generally polite and considerate of colleagues who did not realize the real meaning of their latest experiments, he would never hide this fact from them. Almost immediately he would suggest a rash of new experiments that should confirm his interpretation. Moreover, he would not refrain from subsequently telling all who would listen how his clever new idea might set science ahead.

As a result, there existed an unspoken yet real fear of Crick, especially among his contemporaries who had yet to establish their reputations. The quick manner in which he seized their facts and tried to reduce them to coherent patterns frequently made his friends' stomachs sink with the apprehension that, all too often in the near future, he would succeed, and expose to the world the fuzziness of minds hidden from direct view by the considerate, well-spoken manners of the Cambridge colleges.

Though he had dining rights for one meal a week at Caius College, he was not yet a fellow of any college. Partly this was his own choice. Clearly he did not want to be burdened by the unnecessary sight of undergraduate tutees. Also a factor was his laugh, against which many dons would most certainly rebel if subjected to its shattering bang more than once a week. I am sure this occasionally bothered Francis, even though he obviously knew that most High Table life is dominated by pedantic, middle aged men incapable of either amusing or educating him in anything worthwhile. There always existed King's College, opulently nonconformist and clearly capable of absorbing him without any loss of his or its character. But despite much effort on the part of his friends, who knew he was a delightful dinner companion, they were never able to hide the fact that a stray remark over sherry might bring Francis smack into your life."

James Watson
(in The Double Helix, 1967)

At the bench (Part 1)

We smile, we cry, we laugh, we get mad, we sulk and at times we just walk around with a straight face. Your face speaks for your mind. That is the power of our nature of expression. Apparently some folks have an extremely subtle nature of expressing themselves such that it takes a hefty chunk of patience and monetary investment to actually see through it.

Alright, I’ll cut underestimating these folks by masking our inefficiency to read them with accuracy and precision. My work here as a fellow, is to study the expression of a crucial protein which hops around in our body, assisting the production of important steroids in our system. We shall call him StAR. Oh yeah! I bet he is one. Not only because, this protein governs the rate-limiting step in the steroidogenic process, but also because it is the acronym for its long name – Steroidogenic Acute Regulatory protein. So that’s our StAR shining brightly in our adrenal, gonadal and every al(l) other cells that generate steroids. Steroids (in the form of hormones) are what drives you to metabolise pretty much all that you take in, mediate your behavioural responses, maintain your ionic pool, make a girl a girl and a boy a boy etc etc. Due to StAR’s cardinal role in the steroidal synthesis it is quite simple to infer that elevated expression of this protein corresponds to an up-regulation of steroidogenesis. Correspondingly, doing the math for low protein expression is no rocket science.

So why am I fiddling with StAR so much? Few studies suggest that Round up a monopolized herbicide by Monsanto widely used in the market has an adverse effect on the steroidogenic process in mammals. This is likely to jack the adrenal and gonadal steroid hormone production and believe me, you don’t want that. In our work, we treat our cute yet ill-fated rats with this herbicide at different concentrations of and study StAR’s expression in the adrenal cells with respect to this treatment, which according to some pioneers in the reproductive endocrinology domain does drop and if our study substantiates their claims, then D-Uh! Monsanto’s gonna party in hell!! :P (Ok, that was a li’l too exaggerated....this biggie can gobble anything :/ )

The very 1st scrap...

When I sit for an exam, even before the answer sheet is distributed, its a scrap sheet I ask for. If someone begins a new venture, the first thing one would likely do is invoke the almighty going omm namoh blah blah but I start with frantically pacing around looking for a scrap sheet. For me, a scrap sheet is the seed for every tree I plant. I'm sure its the same for many others too. This blog is a more or less a diary...a science diary punched with myriad of such scrap sheets I pick up along my journey as tiny little neophyte budding in this big fat world ruled by science.

My life revolves around science, my science revolve around life. So do not sulk or be surprised if you find bulk scraps blaring out biology in this blog. Scientific experiences, papers, links, write ups, articles anything and everything sciencilicious to me is all that is stacked up here. And what good is it going to bring out to the world?? Baah! I would have never started this if I was to sit and hunt for an answer to that.

Cheers!