Three Scientific Revolutions: How They Transformed Our Conceptions of Reality (33 page)

Such are the truly marvellous advances already achieved and others awaiting us!

Another area where there has been considerable medical progress is in reversing aging and increasing our longevity. Kaku reports that medical researchers “have now isolated a number of genes (age-1, age-2, daf-2) that control and regulate the aging process in lower organisms” (p. 168), and since there are counterparts in humans this “has allowed scientists to narrow the search for ‘age genes' and look for ways to accelerate the gene repair inside the mitochondria to reverse the effect of aging” (p. 169). He predicts that by 2050,

it might be possible to slow down the aging process via a variety of therapies, for example, stem cells, the human body shop, and gene therapy to fix aging genes. We could live to be 150 or older. By 2100, it might be possible to reverse the effects of aging by accelerating cell repair mechanisms to live well beyond that. (p. 169)

Some optimists have suggested that when we fully understand the aging process we not only can reverse the process to prolong our lives, but like the robots previously discussed, achieve the religious promise of immortality. But whether or not that would be desirable is another question. In any event it seems unlikely considering that the geological history of the earth indicates that our human species, as all previously advanced species, is doomed to extinction due to drastic climatic changes or the impact of massive meteors or asteroids on the earth unless we can escape to an exoplanet.

Given these amazing neurophysiological, medical, and genetic advances there is now the attempt to explain the problem that has perplexed philosophers since ancient times, usually referred to as the “mind-body problem.” Having been so accustomed to directly experiencing thoughts, memories, feelings, emotions, intensions, fears, anger, hate, love, affection, etc., in the past they were simply considered consciousness endowments so different from the body that they were attributed to a soul, vital spirit, or divine endowment. But the recent striking success in
correlating
these mental states with complex neurological structures in our brains has led some researches to consider these underlying neurological processes not just correlated with conscious processes, but the conscious states themselves and thus not needing a separate cause. As Alex Rosenberg, an advocate of this view, states:

Neuroscience is beginning to answer these questions. We can sketch some of the answer in the work that won Erick Kandel the Noble Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The answer shows how completely wrong consciousness is when it comes to how the brain works. Indeed, it shows how wrong consciousness is when it comes to how consciousness works.
¹³¹

Based on his studies of the conditioning formation of the neurons of sea slugs, rats, and humans, Kandel concluded that all our learning and behavioral responses can be explained as due to the evolutionary development producing more neurons with greater molecular complexity and synaptic connections. Continuing Rosenberg's description:

A little training releases proteins that open up the channels, the synapses, between the neurons, so it is easier for molecules of calcium, potassium, sodium, and chloride to move through their gaps, carrying electrical charges between the neurons. . . . The genes in the nuclei of each cell that control its activities are called somatic genes, in contrast with the germ-line genes in sperm and eggs, which transmit hereditary information. Both kinds of genes contain the same information, since the order of DNA molecules in each of them is the same. Somatic genes are copied from germ-line genes during embryonic development. (p. 181)

Obviously this is a completely reductionistic conception of how we experience the world assisted by how the computer functions as a model for the brain.

The brain is a computer whose “microprocessors”—its initial assemblies of neural circuits—are hardwired by a developmental process that starts before birth and goes on after it. Long before that process is over, the brain has already started to modify its hardwired operating system and acquired data fed through its sensory apparatus. . . . Beliefs, desires, wants, hopes, and fears are complex information storage states, vast packages of input/output circuits in the brain ready to deliver appropriate and sometimes inappropriate behavior when stimulated. (p. 189)

While my own loss of memory and hearing as I get older is explainable by the deterioration of the areas and functions of the brain correlated with the loss, I find it hard to believe that all the qualitative aspects and impacts of the world and interactions with other people that constitute our experiences and thoughts are nothing more than brain processes. Yet Rosenberg states: “When consciousness convinces you that you, or your mind, or your brain has thoughts [or experiences] about things, it is wrong” (p. 172; brackets added). It seems to me if that were true then we should be experiencing the brain processes themselves, which is quite different from what we normally are aware of.

Moreover, it would deny the referential functions of ordinary language, prose literature, poetry, opera, paintings, applied mathematics, and scientific explanations that are not experienced as neuronal structures of the brain, but mental states referring to or descriptive of the world and enabling us to communicate about it. It is these capacities that enrich our lives and they surely are not
about
the brain but what we are experiencing or thinking. What we see or think when we look at the moon and stars at night are not neuronal discharges but the night sky!

Also the argument that attributing experiences to consciousness is analogous to outmoded explanations in terms of souls, vital spirits, or divine endowments is mistaken because the former were never experienced as such, while the fact of
having conscious experiences and thoughts of our surroundings
can hardly be considered illusory. That our normal experiences are
correlated
with and depend upon the complex chemical-electrical neuronal processes in our brains cannot be denied, but how our brains
produce
our conscious experiences still remains a great mystery.

One of the most dramatic examples of how the brain
produces
extraordinary experiences is that of Joan of Arc whose astonishing religious beliefs and achievements have recently been attributed to a “hyperreligiosity” caused by “temporal lobe epilepsy that can also be induced by what is called “transcranial magnetic simulation” or TMS, along with the epileptic lesions. As described by Kaku in his latest book,
The
Future of the Mind
:

More recently, another theory has emerged about this exceptional woman [Joan of Arc]: perhaps she actually suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy. People who have this condition sometimes experience seizures, but some of them also experience a curious side effect that may shed some light on the structure of human beliefs. These patients suffer from “hyperreligiosity,” and can't help thinking that there is a spirit or presence behind everything. Random events are never random, but have some deep religious significance. . . . The neuroscientist Dr. David Engleman says, “Some fraction of history's prophets, martyrs, and leaders appear to have had temporal lobe epilepsy. Consider Joan of Arc, the sixteen-year-old girl who managed to turn the tide of the Hundred Year's War because she believed (and convinced the French soldiers) that she was hearing voices from Saint Michael the archangel, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Saint Margaret, and Saint Gabriel.
¹³²
(brackets added)

Kaku adds that “Some scientists have gone further and have speculated that there is a “God gene” that predispose the brain to be religious. Since most societies have created a religion of some sort, it seems plausible that our ability to respond to religious feelings might be genetically programmed into our genome” (p. 198). This might explain the universal historical appeal of religions, but not their truth.

Before closing this discussion of how recent science has achieved the major advances in our conception of reality and thus largely replaced religion at least among philosophers and scientists, I think it would be appropriate to continue Kaku's discussion in his previous book of the discovery of the genome and the structure and function of DNA. As previously indicated, DNA is the molecular deoxyribonucleic acid controlling heredity by the genes and, along with the ribonucleic acid RNA, conveys information to proteins directing their essential and ubiquitous functions. These discoveries have been the foremost contributions of genetics to demystifying human origins and revealing our genetic ancestry that disclosed our striking similarity (90% of our genetic makeup correlates with those of mice) to and common origin with other species.

Along with Darwin's evolutionary theory of “natural selection,” explaining how our adaptive traits evolved confirmed by the discovery of fossil remains and reinforced by the hereditary evidence encoded in the genome in the nucleus of our cells, they have provided an
entirely naturalistic
explanation of the origin and nature of human beings completely refuting creationism. Moreover, knowing the genetic functions offers a futuristic means of improving human nature.

For the first time in history, due to the decoding of the genome and the structure and function of DNA, RNA, and more recently proteome (the key to explaining the creation of proteins), we now have the means of relieving or remedying the greatest source of human misery. Even more than natural disasters, it is the tyrants, theocrats, terrorists, murderers, rapists, alcoholics, drug addicts, sadists, psychotics, paranoids, and deranged human beings, owing in large part to destructive genes (think of Hitler, Stalin, Hosni Mubarak, Bashar al-Assad, and Putin), who have been and are the major cause of the suffering in the world.

Recall the setting fire to the American Consulate in Benghazi that killed three American diplomats, along with the esteemed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens who, ironically and tragically, had devoted his life to promoting better relations with Arabic and Muslim nations. Initially explained by US intelligence agents as a reaction to a video defaming Mohammad, after a thorough inquiry a State Department Panel concluded that it was not the video, but the increase in local militia assaults that was the cause that could have been prevented if two State Department Bureaus had responded to requests by officials at the Benghazi Embassy for increased security. Interestingly, following the assaults most shahs and ayatollahs denounced the attacks while thousands of Benghazi residents also demonstrated their opposition.

Of all the various accounts of international conflicts, such as strident nationalism, ethnic conflicts, border and territorial disputes, claims to colonial possessions, economic competition, and ideological or religious disagreements, the one I find must convincing in explaining the uprisings in the Middle East and recent vicious assault on Western embassies by Middle Eastern terrorists is David Deutsch's explanation that they are due to the conflicting contrast between open dynamic and closed static societies in his book
The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World.
¹³³
He describes dynamic societies as those open to criticisms of the traditional beliefs, institutions, ethnic discriminations, and social and economic discrepancies of their societies often due to changing conditions, acknowledging the right of people to express their convictions according to their individual assessments and dispositions, however unorthodox or erratic, as long as they do not pose a threat to others. It is this tolerance of the critical examination, revision, and rejection of religious doctrines and rituals, along with other repressive cultural and political institutions, while also recognizing the scientific method as the only known reliable method of inquiry that has made many Western countries so progressive. As Carl Sagan in his usual open- minded, astute manner has stated:

Science is different from many another human enterprise—not, of course, in its practitioners being influenced by the culture they grew up in, nor in sometimes being right and sometimes wrong (which are common to every human activity), but in its passion for framing testable hypotheses, in its search for definitive experiments that confirm or deny ideas, in the vigor of its substantive debate, and in its willingness to abandon ideas that have been found wanting. If we were not aware of our own limitations, though, if we were not seeking further data, if we were unwilling to perform controlled experiments, if we did not respect the evidence, we would have very little leverage in our quest for the truth.
¹³⁴

Despite the opposition of the Catholic Church and some Protestant denominations, consider the progress that has been achieved in Western democratic societies by rejecting such false conceptions, explanations, and institutions as fixed species, geocentrism,
creation ex nihilo
, predestination, rigid hierarchical societies, the divine right of kings, papal or biblical infallibility, and racial or sexual discrimination. In contrast to dynamic societies, static societies (as the West was after the decline of Greek and Roman culture and ascendance of Christianity during the medieval period or dark ages) are closed authoritarian societies opposed to change. The cause of much social unrest and terrorism in the world today, most Islamic states still have theocratic rulers that traditionally repress the civil rights of women and reject practically all democratic reforms due to their acceptance of Muhammad as the prophet of their religion and the Koran as the sacred book believed to be the word of God as dictated to him by the archangel Gabriel.

Thus Muslims generally have rejected scientific inquiry and explanations, such as the Big Bang theory, the theory of evolution, the decoding of the genome with its naturalistic explanation of the origin of human beings, along with the use of contraceptives to avoid unwanted or defective births and overpopulation, and generally are opposed to homosexuals and granting women greater freedom and access to higher education, although recently they were undergoing some liberating changes referred to as the “Arab Spring” that unfortunately has declined.