Science Musings Discussion
I did an interview and brief reading from The Path for Boston's WUMB radio yesterday. This posting is a slightly modified version of what I read. I'll leave a comment when the segment is available on WUMB's website. Chet
The actual complexity of any one human body is unfathomable. Yet what a glorious vision is even the puniest hint of that process.
One aspect of this complexity that has caught my attention for some time now is the actual number of cells in the average human body, a number that whatever it is, utterly defies comprehension.
60 trillion was the number bandied about for a while, then 100 trillion seemed popular. Sean Carroll's recent book on evolutionary development biology, Endless Forms Most Beautiful, talks about "multi-billion-celled animals" and "perhaps ten trillion cells" in the human body. No apparent consensus. Mystery! Yet also magnificence!
Geoff:
100 trillion bacteria in the human gut as opposed to a mere 10 trillion of our somatic and germ cells. (Host-Bacterial Mutualism in the Human Intestine, Sci. Mag. 25 March '05, pp
1915-1920).
We're all chimeras!! And to be democratic about it, we are a collection of prokaryotes with a superstructure of eucaryotes. It's a miracle.
Yup! And I've come across estimates of 1 quadrillion bacterial cells using me and you as habitat, with a little symbiosis thrown in for good measure. Not often does one get a chance to use the word quadrillion in such a banal but exhilerating context!
And, are our mitochondrial cells 'ours' or an ancient loan to our lineage?
(http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/may2001/
988816800.An.r.html)
I’m probably one of the few unrepentant dualists on this blog, not in the Manichean sense, but in the sense that I believe the soul survives the body at death. But returning back to earth (literally), I’d like to recommend a book I just began – “Bones, Stones, and Molecules,” by David Cameron and Colin Groves. This book is a look at the latest findings on human origins and is an excellent example of the tensions that exist among competing theories and the authors’attempt at resolution by the use of “organized doubt,” i.e. the scientific method.
Barry, I like your smarts, your honesty and your courtesy. You are more than welcome as the house theist (we are all religious). As for life after death -- as my wife says, in addition to the Beatific Vision and everlasting bliss, you'll have the pleasure of knowing you were right. As for us, ...
Good luck! Chet
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