It is amazing really that scientists can now slice a gene out of a mouse and insert it somewhere else and can make that mouse learn faster or not learn at all. That is some really great science and it has all happened in a flash of biological time - in the last decade. But science still can't tell us why there is so much empty space in space. Will cosmology catch up with biology? I think it must. Einstein's big mistake with lambda is looking more right all the time but the truth is we don't know the truth yet.
What is truly amazing about our new awareness (or lack thereof) is the scale of learning about our biology since life moves in a wider context than we normally think about it - at the macro-evolutionary scale; whereas, we usually think about ourselves and other species in a micro-evolutionary scale.
When we look at the course or progression of our own species and others, which we study, we see there really is no progression, just differences. Vertebrates are no better than invertebrates. Big brained animals no better at surviving (in many cases, less better at surviving). Juan Luis Arsuaga and Ignacio Martinez writes (in The Chosen Species, Blackwell Publ. 2006):
"According to Darwin, evolution has no goal, it follows no preconceived design; it is simply opportunist, and is not directed toward any idea of perfection. To put it another way, all species (including our own) are equally perfect, each one marvelously adapted to its life habits through natural selection. In other words, unlike artificial selection which the farmer or stockbreeder carries out with a particular aim, natural selection has no objective. Although in common parlance (as well as in politica and business) the word, `evolution' signifies change for the better, in Darwinian terms `evolution' means simply change, nothing more." Evolution is not linear; it is divergent.
So what is different about us? We're not chosen to be better. We are not the end all of perfection. Far from it. We are highly flawed. Our design is rife with badly formed parts. The construction could have been much better. But compared to other mammals at least, we are tailless, we are bipedal primates, and we have larger brains relative to body mass, and we have opposable thumbs - but other than that, we are not much different and many of our parts certainly not original.
It is never-the-less exciting to live on the cusp of new discoveries. I saw great strides made in radio and as a young ham participated in many of these new developments; especially when I was working in the White House and we were always trying out state of the art science. When I saw an ENIAC at my uncle's lab when I was still a teenager, I didn't even know what I was looking at.
But the biggest, probably most confounding and depressing concern we have is the mind - and the ability we have is to think about our own death, about dying and ceasing to exist. And maybe when the entire organism isn't quite dead yet, but when the mind goes, is is as-if the body has also been sacrificed at that moment because we actually cease to exist when the brain dies. When the brain is dead so is cognition, language, emotion, perceptions and all the neural activity which makes those things possible.
The brain can be tampered with and can even be partially destroyed and yet some other module in the brain continues to function enough to keep us alive and aware though some of the limbic system may not work as well as it did before and behavior may be altered and beyond repair and may endure permanent deficits.
And if a neurosurgeon should separate the corpus callosum, which joins the right and left hemispheres of the brain a person, becomes two persons, at least to the extent that one side of the brain will not know what the other side is doing -- and there are TWO free wills.
Albert Einstein, in recent studies and analysis of his brain, it was determined that he had "unusually shaped inferior parietal lobules, which participate in spatial reasoning and intuitions about number(s)." (Witelson, Kilgar & Harvey, 1999 - from Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate)
According to Steven Pinker, neither are we a "blank slate" and those potentials for learning which distinguishes us from other animals is imprinted in our brains in specific modules - information which is conveyed in the DNA of the fertilized embryo. Is aggression also imprinted in our DNA as it seems to be very much part of the behavior of our closest animal cousins; chimps and bonobos - and also replete in the history of mankind?
But there are not many of us who do not at times worry about our own death and for most of our lives we are depressed or manic. Everyone who is human is to some extent bipolar. And while not believing in curses, still some of us consider this state the curse of being human.
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