View previous topic :: View next topic |
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
Then God said, let us make man in our own image.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tilo Rebar
In: Sussex
|
|
|
|
Ishmael wrote: | ...how can a trait be heritable and yet not be genetic?
The answer is, of course, microbial colonization from mother to child. |
Brilliant, Ishmael!. And when a man and woman live together they both end up with a mixture of each other's micro flora and fauna.
Therefore, their offspring contains a mixture of both partners' microbiomes, plus a lesser admixture from family and friends who make up the rest of their tribe.
Wonder if long-term relationships are the result of 'compatible micro-organisms', while hostile competing sets result in eventual relationship breakdown?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
Tilo Rebar wrote: | Brilliant, Ishmael!. And when a man and woman live together they both end up with a mixture of each other's micro flora and fauna. |
Which explains why so often I have a thought in my own head and my wife suddenly says it aloud.
It also explains why she's gotten so much smarter since she met me. ;-)
Therefore, their offspring contains a mixture of both partners' microbiomes, plus a lesser admixture from family and friends who make up the rest of their tribe. |
I often marvel at how fully functional even a child of three appears. It is as though they were born with a set of ready-made assumptions concerning the workings of their universe only just awoken from dormancy.
We speak of old souls in young children. We may be onto something.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
Microorganisms are immortal.
They reproduce asexually. This means that every parent births two offspring indistinguishable from itself. Neither is a copy of the original. Each is the original.
If consciousness (human intelligence) is a product of an internal microbial community then none of us ever die. Our souls live on in every person ever to shake our hand.
Every individual is Adam, displaced only in time.
Take that Deepak Chopra.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
On the other hand, as the wild child examples illustrate, the colonization of one human being by the microbes from another (if this hypothesis is correct) is very difficult outside the womb. Communities appear to communicate but do not merge or migrate.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
On the other hand, there is of course another way that colonization can occur within the womb.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
For those of you wondering why our noses have been designed to fit our asses.
Poop is Not a Drug
However, I maintain that this is but one of the purposes for which this interface has been engineered.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
The dominant form of life in the universe is the so-called single celled organism. Not only do most organisms consist of no more than a single-cell, there are far more cells in existence as individuated organisms than there are cells in existence as part of a multicellular life-form. If one were to add up all of the cells present in every multicellular creature throughout the natural world, the count would be dwarfed to insignificance by the number of single-celled organisms sharing the same planet.
So prevalent is single-celled life that it deserves to be considered the most emblematic example of what life truly is. Excepting in the rarest of circumstances, life is unicellular.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
Adopting this view of life alters radically our perception of the living universe.
Were biologists to adopt this view, it would certainly alter the practice of biology; for, to present, the field has focused primarily on studying, and classifying, and pondering the evolution of, multicellular, sexually-reproductive life forms. Unicellular, a-sexual life has been viewed as exceptional and its study thought suitable only for a minority of niche specialists. In reality, our focus has been the inversion of what it ought to be.
The famous tree of life is really just a shrubbery. A shrubbery growing adjacent a limitless forest of variety. A forest that is the primary focus and embodiment of the life energy within this universe.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
A multicellular organism is a colony of specialized cells.
Each specialized cell performs a function akin to one of thousands of functions performed by the typical ameoba. The specialized cell maintains rudimentary capacity in internal functions necessary to support its specialized role but has lost most power in most areas common to all other life.
Consider a hair plucked from your head or a fingernail bitten from the end of your finger. Do you feel that some part of you has been lost as the hair falls to the floor or as the fingernail is tossed in the trash? Our minds have a pre-programmed, though perhaps simple hierarchy regarding the livingness of various parts of ourselves. This hierarchy of life within the colony of our body we are given to understand from birth.
As it turns out, hair is at the lowest point on the hierarchy of life within ourselves from an emperical stand point as well; for it is literally non-living in every sense along every part of its length above the root. Fingernails are composed of a similar material.
This material is called "keratin". The constantly renewed substance is composed of "dead" cells---yet it does not rot, so it is not dead in the same way that a wounded leg, starved of blood is dead. The cells have been deactivated---completely. They no longer perform any internal function.
The keratin cells are constructed by other cells, specialized to that function. These living cells produce the hair and nail structures using components of their own bodies, a-sexually reproducing and deadening their offspring.
These skin cells construct structures out of living material and then disconnect all functions not required by the structure. For hair and for fingernails, this means disconnecting all function. They die complete deaths.
But specialized cells themselves have been made the same way. A parent organism has shaped them and then disconnected all non-essential aspects of cellular life. In a sense, a specialized cell is mostly dead. It lives only with respect to its role.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
I have decided to stop reading your posts until you start behaving yourself.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
A paralysed man has been able to walk again after a pioneering therapy that involved transplanting cells from his nasal cavity into his spinal cord. |
The neural surgeons took cells from the patient's nose because the olfactory cells are the only group that grow and regenerate continuously.
The treatment used olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) - specialist cells that form part of the sense of smell.
OECs act as pathway cells that enable nerve fibres in the olfactory system to be continually renewed. |
Didn't Ishmael say that smell has priority in human biology?.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chad
In: Ramsbottom
|
|
|
|
Hmmm... Do you reckon I could sell that to the missus?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
Does she want you to die a horrible, tumor-riden death?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|