Biocentrism

Very interesting post published 17th April 2009 on The Scientist Magazine's blog touches on the application of issues I've raised in my previous posts here. Some of those who have left comments on that article have suggest that the biocentrism concept is "egocentric".

However if one analyzes what their comments are saying, their egotism quickly emerges. That same 'brand of egotism' I wrote about in my Science and Egotism post back in February. In a nutshell, they say, if WE can not make sense of something, it can not be true. Some even take this to a further extreme; 'If science can not test it, it can not be so.' This argument is often seen in the wording; "You can not prove it, so you can not say that!" This argument only means that what is being said, is outside the realm of science. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines the scientific method this way;

"principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses" (accessed 05/03/2009)

Inherent within this definition is the limitation that what is to be tested must be falsifiable. This clearly identifies limits as to what is, and is not, within the realm of science.

I encourage you to read the post and judge for yourself. I, for one, am willing to admit that human intelligence and understanding, as well, has it's limits (inherent within our anatomy) that prevents us from a complete "understanding of everything."

How biology is central to constructing a more complete and unified theory of the Universe.

Just a Quick Note

Today's issue of Science Magazine released on line contained a very interesting article, related to sleep and learning. It found that when we sleep, or at least when fruit flies sleep, activity in the brain actually destroys nerve connections! Now don't go overboard here, this is a necessary step in our ability to retain memories. You see, the amount of information our brains receive every day is enormous. Most of this information is 'junk'. As an example, do you remember what the close you were wearing yesterday felt like against your skin? Of course not! That information is deemed 'unnecessary' by the brain. This article may very well have found the mechanism as to what occurs for our brains to do it's 'daily house cleaning' as we sleep.

This activity makes room for the much more important information to be retained for storage into long term memory. How the brain decides which connection to destroy and which to leave is still unknown.

Just thought this was interesting in light of my last few postings!

Is It Finite or Infinite?

It seems, to me at least, that today's society takes too many things for granted! The most frequent appears to be that more is always better'. Of this I am most certainly not convinced. This brings up the question in the title of the post; 'Is it finite or infinite?' Let's look at this from the aspect of 'knowledge'.

If knowledge is truly finite, it then follows that there is a limit to its realm. With this limit, we should be able to establish some sort of unit of knowledge by which it may be measured. What that unit actually is, would take some pretty deep thinking to establish. We do know that a 'memory' (neurophysiologically speaking how a memory is stored) is established by a network of nerve cells (called neurons) forming new connections within the brain. For argument's sake, let assume that our arbitrary unit of knowledge is measured in units we will refer to as a 'neuro'. So for 'one fact' to be remembered (thereby becoming part of our knowledge) it will require one neuro.

Our neuro will, of course, require the space occupied by those nerve cells that make it up. We should then be able to calculate out how much storage space it will take if a person is to 'know everything'. I suspect that some readers will already know where this post is headed, but I will continue!

Scientists have already establish that the average human brain weight is between 1200 g - 1500 g. It contains, an “Average number of neurons in the brain = 100 billion” ¹. So our ability to know or remember pieces of knowledge is most definitely finite. I'm not so convinced that knowledge is finite, are you?

1 Eric H. Chudler, Ph.D.;Brain Facts and Figures; <http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/facts.html#brain> Accessed March 09, 2009