The Zen of Science: Life as an Experiment

 “The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk into the everydayness of his own life.  To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be on to something.  Not to be on to something is to be in despair.”   Walker Percy

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”

 Ursula K. Le Guin

“Thinking is more interesting that knowing, but less interesting than looking.”  Goethe

One of the lessons I try to impart to our new scientists is to not get too high or too low if their experiment succeeds or fails.  This is a lesson I had to learn over a period of time, and I left science for a while because I viewed the success or failure of my experiment as my success or failure.  The mantra I repeat for all my scientists is “the data is not good or bad...it tells us what we need to do next.”  What I have found over the years is that when I’m truly in discovery mode, each experiment is a revelation and there is usually a way forward regardless of the outcome. When you approach your experiments with an open mind there is joy in the outcome and I revel in the surprise when I get a result that is different from what I expected.

There is another element of Zen that has important ramifications both in life and in the lab:  Being in the moment.  There is inertia in new lab projects, and one of the impediments to moving forward with the experiments is looking ahead at potential technical hurdles—for coming up with reasons about why something won’t work.  I work mightily at getting my scientists to focus on the current experiment.  The reason we do experiments is because we don’t know the answer...if we did we wouldn’t need to do the experiment!

I began to approach my company management and my life with the same attitude:  Life is an experiment.  What I find with the “Life is an Experiment” approach is that I am open to trying out new ideas, to taking chances without agonizing over possible outcomes, to approaching problems and solutions with curiosity rather than trepidation.  I’m not saying that I don’t study a subject in depth before I design a life experiment, but I’m not afraid to try.  When you get to my age, your life is full of experiments, and you hope that you’ve learned something along the way that allows you to do a better experiment.

I know all my experiments won’t meet my expected outcome, and I love the anticipation of an unexpected result.  For instance, I marvel at the curiosity displayed my 11-month old granddaughter who is into everything, and I lament the fact that my children (10 and 12) have lost some of that curiosity.  I wonder what I could have done to keep that strong curiosity alive, although I realize that school and the friction of life strip us of some of that curiosity. I offered my kids a quarter for every good question that they submitted to me in writing—I determined what was a good question--and I expected that I would be crying “Uncle!” before too long.  I got some great questions like “Do black holes die?”

 It was my plan that when I had accumulated enough questions, that I would offer them $1 for every answer they found to their questions.  I figured that I would recoup my investment by improving their chances for getting a scholarship to college, or if they answer enough questions like the Black Hole question maybe they can skip college.

 To date I have received few written questions.  Some might view this experiment as a failed experiment.  Wrong.  What I learned from this experiment is that my children are not highly motivated by money.  I guess that’s good news if they want to be scientists when they grow up, bad news if they want to be salesmen.  What a wonderful opportunity this experiment has given me to find out what sorts of rewards motivate my girls!

This blog is an example of a life experiment.  I have invited many highly opinionated scientists, who freely give me feedback on the blog, to put down their ideas--and there are some really good ones--but no one has stepped forward to contribute a guest blog.  I suspect that they are busy, but also that it takes some courage to expose oneself publicly.  I don’t know if this blog will engage readers, but I have thoroughly enjoyed the experiment!

Scientist Humor

I wrestle with the stereotypes that are frequently assigned to scientists, and one of these is that we are always serious and lack a sense of humor. I find humor everywhere in science if you know where to look.  The first cloned sheep cloned was cloned from a mammary cell, and the sheep was named Dolly—after Dolly Parton.  That’s funny.  Humor creeps into other names, too.  I am always amused by the developmental gene named sonic hedgehog named after a video game character.  That’s funny.

When I was working on the West Coast for a biotech company, Triton Biotechnology, there was an article in the San Francisco Chronicle stating that scientists lacked a sense of humor.  I’ve always prided myself on having a sense of humor, and I‘ve found that the creative scientists I like to associate with have a good sense of humor.  I’m not as sure about the “business types” in the biotech arena, but maybe some of them will write in to refute me on this.

On the day that I heard about this story, I was scheduled to present data at our Molecular Biology Group meeting--around 16 people or so—including my boss and his boss.  We heard about the article in an email from our business development group, although it’s still not clear to me why they cared.   I managed to get my hands on an internal memo that was color coded, in this case, the color of the business development group.  When it was my turn to present, I held up the memo and with a serious demeanor pretended to read it.  I told the group that in light of the recent Chronicle article, I had been asked to read this important internal memo before I presented my data:  “To All Scientists:  In order to rebut the Chronicle article published this morning and the statement that scientists lack a sense of humor, the Triton business development group was starting a joke hot line. “  Then I read the Business Development group’s office number. About half the scientists in the group thought this was hysterical, and the other half sat there with dumbfounded looks.

I have repeated this experiment using different humorous themes several times in the course of my career, and each time I meet with about the same result.  About half the scientists in the room react strongly with laughter, and the other half just look puzzled.

Because of the inherent ability of science to disrupt conventional thinking-- to challenge strongly held beliefs-- and the problem that we don’t communicate well with people about what science is or what we do, scientists make people uncomfortable.

So, non-scientists invent stereotypes that make us flawed, and in that way more human and less scary.  OK—this scientist is really smart but he/she is socially inept.    It has been my experience that many scientists are uncomfortable socially.  What is the definition of an extroverted scientist?  Answer:  An extroverted scientist talks to your shoes in a conversation.

It has been my experience, also, that while scientists are portrayed as milquetoasts, that this wimpy portrayal is not an accurate stereotype.  In my labs, scientists were a minor league baseball player, a weight lifter, a 6’2” outdoorsman, a kayaker, and a martial artist.  Hardly milquetoasts. 

On the other hand, I have attended dances, usually at the end of conferences, where the spectacle of hundreds of dancing scientists had all the beauty of a wildebeest herd fording a crocodile infested river.

(see scientists dancing below)

I hope you found this funny!  No?—you must be a scientist.

Great Teachers

   “A society's competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic tables, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity.”
― Albert Einstein

 “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”
― Albert Einstein

“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” -- Ken Robinson

Some of the questions I’ve pondered for much of my adult life are “What makes a teacher great?”  and “How do we educate ourselves and our children?”  I love movies like the Ron Clark Story, Freedom Writers,  Stand and Deliver, and The Ben Carson Story .  I think there are important lessons and insights in these movies that apply not only to disadvantaged youth, but to all children. 

I recently heard a Colorado legislator arguing for a reduction in money for K-12 citing studies showing that throwing more money at education does not yield commensurate benefits. He continued his argument by stating that college level courses often had very large classrooms (lecture halls?) yet were successful in educating their students. What is required to properly educate our students, particularly the young?

I think many scientists would say that they had a great teacher that inspired them, that started them on their journey of exploration, a teacher that they admired. I think these teachers have a number of characteristics that define great teachers:

 A great teacher is, first, a great student.  A great teacher learns as much from his students—maybe more-- than they give back.  In all the movies above, the teachers carefully observed their students-- learned about the personal lives and motivations, the impediments to learning, and the life passions of their students—and adapted their teaching methods to connect to their students.  This theme of connection resonates through my blogs, and it is seminal to education.  A great teacher can connect to the mass audience in a large lecture hall, with universal themes in stories and parables that touch our emotions as well as our intellect.   

What is missed in these large lecture halls is the intimate connection that comes from the interaction of student and teacher, and this can be incredibly powerful.  An example comes to mind of a great teacher I had in college (University of Colorado, Boulder) in a class on the biology of the bi-lipid membrane.  The professor was L. Andrew Staehelin, now a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado.  Towards the end of the course, we were required to write a research paper on a topic we chose.  Dr. Staehelin did something that was unique in my university experience.  He sat down with each and every student and went through their manuscripts line by line.

Obviously, this cannot be done in a large lecture hall classroom.   His intent was not only to teach by pointing to shortcomings in the manuscript, he also solicited additional information from the student by asking questions.  He got to a section in my paper that cited an experiment, where he admitted he didn’t understand what I was trying to communicate.  I had to confess to him that I really did not understand the paper I cited.   What Dr. Staehelin told me (see Einstein above) was that if I didn’t understand the paper, the authors of the paper did not understand the experiment well enough to communicate to me effectively. 

Now, imagine my surprise from having a highly regarded scientist at the top of his field telling me—an undergraduate—to trust my own instincts, to trust myself:  That the fault did not lay in me; that I had not failed; that my inability to understand was not due to my stupidity.  That what we had here was a failure to communicate.  How empowering!  I have never forgotten that lesson, and it is a lesson that I pass on to my children, co-workers and employees.  This is the kind of student/teacher interaction that can and should take place in every classroom every day.  Yet this is kind of interaction is not possible or occurs infrequently in large classrooms.

Another trait that I have observed in good teachers is a passion—not only for teaching—but for their subject matter.  I visited my daughter’s classroom in 5^th grade, where I was able to observe a science lesson.  The lesson consisted of writing vocabulary words on the blackboard and querying the students for concepts in the lesson.  What I did not see was the passion, the mystery and wonder of events, the flights of imagination... the creativity! I love to play what I call the “caveman” game with my kids.  How did that first person come up with a way to measure time?  Distance?  What tools in nature could that person employ to solve a problem? 

I watched a TED talk video ( www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html) by Sir Ken Robinson, a creativity expert.  He is an incredible communicator, and very funny, but he has a serious message:  There are different forms of intelligence, yet we try to put all students in the same box in school.  We de-emphasize the creative arts and don’t encourage our students to develop their creativity.  Liz Coleman (www.ted.com/talks/liz_coleman_s_call_to_reinvent_liberal_arts_education.html) talks about rethinking our educational strategy.  We drive our students to become experts in a narrow field.  Our students learn more and more about less and less.  And because of this, we begin to lose our ability to communicate—to connect with each other.  Ironically, the scientists that I most admire--and the ones that I hire--are the creative individuals who are interested in the whole world around them.  I find that I can talk with them about everything—from the origin of the universe, to politics, to quantum physics, to diet and exercise, to global warming, to evolution, to anything and everything--in the world around us.

Finally, a good teacher gives her students permission to fail.  I struggled with this concept at first.  My business education taught me that good management does not reward effort, but rather success.  And that’s what we do in school now.  If you get an A, I will give you an extra recess or a slice of pizza.  It does take effort to get an A—but if you fail you don’t get rewarded.  Of course the unintended consequence of this strategy is that we develop children (or employees) who don’t take risks because there is no reward for failure. 

I think a better strategy is to encourage an internal, rather than external, reward.  Better to reward our children for exercising their imaginations.  To find motivation from the joy of discovery.  To revel in our curiosity about the world around us.  And if we fail, to realize that there is no failure if we learn.  There is no better teacher than failure, if that failure is a result of daring greatly--of attempting to do something that lies in the very limits of our ability.  I once heard that chess great Bobby Fisher remarked that he never learned anything from winning a chess match.  Yet the hallmark of Bobby Fisher's chess was the imagination, boldness and fearlessness of his game in spite of the risks.

I marvel that my children have an incredible ability to find out answers to their questions on the internet.  My greatest challenge is not to have them find the answers, but to ask the questions.  I pray that they get teachers who can inspire them to ask questions.

Ode to the American Farmer

Besides my role as CEO of Avidity, I am Chief Technology Officer for Beacon Biotechnology and Beacon Food Safety where I work on developing rapid tests for food pathogens. I'm mostly focused on testing food just before it reaches the consumer. The first week in April I had the opportunity to see our food production system at the source--the American farm. My wife's cousin Ed is a master farmer near Kalona, Iowa. The importance of agriculture to the area is embodied in the name Kalona, named after a prize winning bull. 

 According to a recent National Public Radio Broadcast (NPR --March 13, 2012) farm income is up 30 % in the last two years, due in part to increases in productivity: ".. modern farmers can work much more land, and get two or three times more grain out of it than their fathers did." Americans have always embraced innovation and technology. You need look no farther than Ed's farm to understand how the American farmer has embraced innovation and technology to feed the world. Ed won a technology award from the Iowa Beef Center at Iowa State University.

It is amazing to me the way in which Ed is able to integrate the latest in science and technology in an integrated, comprehensive vision of his farm. Ed's success starts with hard work. My wife and I would meet up with Ed around 7:30am for breakfast—we were just getting started on our day, but Ed was coming home from his early chores. Ed manages roughly a thousand acres of land with his son-in-law, another full-time worker, and some part-time help. Ed grows soybeans and corn, and raises beef cattle and pigs.

The beauty of Ed's farm is how each of these different pieces works together synergistically. Let's start with corn. I know a lot has been written about how ethanol production has hurt food prices and nets very little net energy in the domestic energy equation. I would like to see the detailed analysis of ethanol production from corn to see if it has incorporated all the "externalities" of ethanol production. One of the by-products of ethanol production is a fibrous, high-gluten waste product that can be blended to provide a nutritious feed for the pigs. Ed buys this inexpensive gluten by-product and blends his own pig feed.

Some of the silage is harvested and blended with hay and other feeds to be used as nutritious cattle feed that Ed can store for extended periods of time by storing the blended silage in a lined, covered pit. The waste from Ed's pig operation is harvested and injected into the soil used to grow soybeans and corn; this process minimizes pig-waste odor and the result is an outstanding fertilizer. The silage also serves as ground cover to conserve the soil.

The pig operation is a marvel of technology. Pig farming receives a lot of bad press for the problems with the pig waste, and for the perception that the pigs are "factory inputs" raised under inhumane conditions--over-crowded and stressed. I can tell you that Ed raises his pig in pens where the pigs run, chase each other, and generally seem content. Attributing human emotions and traits like "happy" to livestock is probably a mistake, but the animals, at least, showed no signs of distress. The pig house automatically lowers sun blinds in the windows when the house begins to get to warm, and turns on fans. The air-flow in the pig house minimizes odor and the smell was not unpleasant. The pigs are automatically given food from an outside storage bin when the weight of the pig feed in their troughs drops to a set-point.

The role of genetics on the modern farm cannot be understated. I would guess the American farmer is a little confused by the uproar around Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO's or the clever pejorative Frankenfoods). Let me point out the irony that all of our crops and domestic food animals were "engineered" by farmers selecting for desirable genetic traits over millennia. The randomness of genetic assortment makes this selection a somewhat sloppy hit or miss proposition, but nonetheless it's been very successful. We've gotten better at selecting new traits through molecular biology. There is nothing inherently bad in this faster, cheaper way of doing things, although certainly we can debate the wisdom of loss of diversity and other choices that may or may not increase risk to the farmer and to society in general.

Ed's pigs produce bigger litters, are bred to be lean, and mature quickly. His corn, particularly the high yields, herbicide resistance, and the addition of the amino acid lysine which gives the corn more complete nutrition, are GMO, but he also plans to grow organic soybeans where he can get a premium price. His cattle are Angus and Charlet /Angus hybrids. He artificially inseminates his heifers with bull semen that is thoroughly analyzed and validated for its ability to produce offspring that are lower in birth weight and heavier at the time of harvest. This minimizes the loss of calves at birth, and maximizes Ed's profits when the cattle are sold. Ed took great pride in showing me the cattle chute that to his pen that is based on the left-handed spiral developed by Temple Grandin, the autistic CSU professor who pioneered much of the cattle handling equipment that made cattle ranching both more humane and efficient.

Ed’s equipment is an important key in his ability to maximize his yields. Ed’s combine for harvesting corn is a technical marvel. Ed’s combine calculates and maps both soil moisture content and yields as he is harvesting. This is accomplished by coupling the moisture and yield data to GPS in the cab of the combine. This yield data can be used to identify areas where yields might be improved and insights into yield variables.

The planters, too, are technically advanced. Ed uses no-till planting where the planter scrapes a narrow path through the tillage to expose the dark soil. The dark soil is efficient at capturing sunlight and warming the ground, fostering germination. A blade on the planter cuts a narrow furrow and a seed is placed at the proper depth (taking into account the soil moisture content) and spacing. A wheel follows to seal the furrow.

After Ed’s long day, he checks weather forecasts, global farm prices, commodities prices on the Chicago Board of Exchange, and a wealth of other information that inform all his decisions about corn, soybeans, pigs, and cattle. On top of all this, Ed is familiar and concerned about ecological issues regarding farm runoffs, water, soil conservation, and genetic cross- contamination.

Ed thinks about high agricultural land prices, and more than once lamented the lack of planning and foresight as prime agricultural land is paved and built upon. Ed told me about how a farmer in his area managed to harness methane produced by the pig waste to power machinery, and I know he’s thinking about this. Ed’s ability to provide a high level of care for his animals, his skill at maintaining his farm and equipment, his incredible wealth of information that he uses in his decisions, his knowledge of plant and animal genetics, his soil conservation and enrichment techniques, his awareness of the impact of his farm on the surrounding ecosystems are more than impressive: Ed creates a viable, sustainable farm utilizing all available inputs in the most efficient and compatible way.

Ed--and farmers like him--is the reason the American farmer is the best in the world. Ed embodies all that is good about Americans: Their willingness to innovate, their hard work, their intelligence and their diligence. Ed, you’re my hero.

Question Authority

“To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.” ― Albert Einstein

“Everyone is born a genius”....R. Buckminster Fuller

In my years in the lab and managing scientists I’ve come to realize that almost every scientist I know resists and/or resents authority. The pervasiveness of this attitude leads me to believe that revulsion of authority is a defining personality trait of scientists. Of course this presents a challenge to anyone trying to manage a team of scientists. This is particularly true when a manager tries a “top down” or bureaucratic management style with scientists.

However, I now believe that the resistance-to-authority trait is a good thing – maybe even a necessary trait—for a scientist to be a good scientist. I am told by a psychologist friend that everyone goes through a stage of development around 2 or 3 years of age (the terrible twos?) where we learn to say “no.” I was told by this friend that while I could bend my child to my will during this period (and what parent doesn’t want their child to obey them?) that it was critical that the child learns to exercise their will by saying No.
As I thought about this, I realize that the scientist must, by the very nature of their task, refuse to accept the current paradigm, to think outside the box, and re-think what is known and accepted—often at a great personal cost and professional risk. I have personally witnessed many examples of scientists who endured personnel and professional attacks by adopting a viewpoint that differed from accepted scientific dogma. Those who persevere and who eventually are shown to be correct may be rewarded, sometimes with a Nobel Prize.
Two of the most famous recent examples of this are Stanley B. Prusiner (1997) for his work with scrapie, and Robin Warren (2005) for his discovery that Helicobacter pylori is a causative agent of duodenal ulcers. Both men endured a lack of support and funding yet persevered long enough to be rewarded with the Nobel Prize.
And so, with a nod to the Boomers:
Question Authority!

Fun

“Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.” --Friedrich von Schiller
“Play is the highest form of research.” --Albert Einstein
I had the incredible good fortune to work for the company Affymax from 1990 to 1992. Affymax was subsequently gobbled up by Glaxo and re-incarnated as a pharma company. I can’t speak to today’s Affymax, but I can tell you in the early 90’s it was a very special place to work. Many (or most) of the lessons that I try to apply to my current company (Avidity) were from that period of my life.
I think anyone who worked at Affymax in this time period would tell you that it was one of the most dynamic, innovative, and FUN companies in which to work. Certainly it is the scientist’s dream to work on cutting-edge technology, but what stood out for me were the incredibly creative people and atmosphere.
Managing scientists is a challenge (more on this in a later blog). I think one of the things that set management apart at Affymax was the recognition that when you have a very creative group, play is not only healthy but is to be encouraged, or at least not discouraged. I remember a discussion among the scientists in my group (Molecular Biology) along with another group that occupied common space (Cell Biology) about the Coriolis Effect on the direction of spin of water in a sink. The entire group of scientists stopped what they were doing and gathered around the sink to perform a series of experiments where the sink was repeatedly filled with water, the stopper pulled, and the direction of spin of the water was noted as the sink emptied. The experiment was varied by initiating a spin and then pulling the stopper. As this impromptu experiment was going on, a mid-level manager entered the lab, stopped in his tracks, and observed the goings-on. Managers in many companies would have admonished the group to “get back to work.” In this particular instance, the manager, after asking what was happening, simply left without another word.
In another example, the scientists from the optics group commandeered a room and used their expertise to set up an optical solution to viewing a solar eclipse where the eclipse could be visualized on a wall. Management invited any and all scientists to come view the eclipse.
Neither of these activities could be construed as work-related, but both illustrate the connection and curiosity that scientists have of the world around us, as well as the recognition and willingness of Affymax’s management to acknowledge this important facet of our make-up.
I try to encourage that sense of play in Avidity’s scientists. We are fortunate to get to play with luciferase and fluorescent proteins. Now that I am aware of bioluminescence, I see how common it is in the world around me. And when we make and discover these magnificent proteins, I can’t help but comment about how lucky I am that I get paid to have this much fun.

NEXT BLOG: The one I promised this time, but I was having too much fun—“Question Authority”

People only see what they are prepared to see
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” -- Albert Einstein

“Student: Dr. Einstein, Aren't these the same questions as last year's [physics] final exam? Dr. Einstein: Yes; But this year the answers are different.”

Have you ever noticed how when you are prepared to buy a car, suddenly, there are car commercials everywhere? I’ve noticed the same phenomena when I ask a question in science—now that I am attuned to a particular topic, I see articles and discussions everywhere. It may be that I’m becoming aware of a topic just as the rest of the scientific community is also starting to wrestle with a subject, perhaps because of a recently published experiment that shifts the paradigm and forces us to consider new possibilities. The danger in this, I guess, is the trap that one of my colleagues describes as “group think.” My colleague believes that conferences are NOT good for innovative thinking because the conference group moves toward consensus on a topic as the talks progress. The individuals in the group reach closure on a particular topic rather than keeping the questions open.
The Gestalt Theory of Closure is about how we fill in incomplete information based on the common templates we carry in our minds. The human mind wants—maybe needs—to complete open questions. In Joseph P. Hallinan’s book, “Why We Make Mistakes”, he refers to framework errors, where based on previous information, experiences, or backgrounds we assume a framework for making the decision when the particular situation is not analogous. I see the framework error all the time on the program I like to watch with my kids called “Mystery Diagnosis.” Almost all of the missed diagnoses result from physicians assuming the symptoms they are seeing are familiar, and if the patient does not improve, then the doctor’s answer is often “It’s in your head.” It makes me wonder if the computer Watson would NOT make these misdiagnoses because Watson does not need to make the framework assumptions but can sift through all possibilities.
The topics of questions, and closure, are even more important to me because they offer the only solution to the problem that I have wrestled with for a good portion of my life, which is “How can I get this person to see what I’m seeing?” The Zen masters have it right: The best way to achieve a new perspective--to achieve enlightenment—is to ponder a question that does not have an easy answer --that the framework required to answer the question lies outside the framework of a solution.
In science, the biggest discoveries can arise from pondering paradoxes. The answer to a paradox is often found by a profound shift of paradigm. In biology, I can think on many examples, from a re-casting of the Central Dogma to the acceptance of prions. Questions? Please.
Next Blog: Question Authority

Truth and Beauty

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.
Francis Bacon
The search for differences or fundamental contrasts between the phenomena of organic and inorganic, of animate and inanimate things, has occupied many men’s minds, while the search for community of principles or essential similitudes has been pursued by few; and the contrasts are apt to loom too large, great though they may be.
D’arcy Thompson, from On Growth and Form

Scientists throughout the ages have wrestled with the concept of beauty. In physics and mathematics an ugly theorem or proof is looked upon with skepticism. I ran across a book review of Ian Stewart’s “Why Beauty is Truth: A History of Symmetry” written by Martin Gardener (Scientific American, April 2007). Stewart concludes that 1) "In physics, beauty does not automatically ensure truth, but it helps.”; and 2) “ In mathematics beauty must be true--because anything false is ugly." Gardener’s review is a good discussion and gives examples of beautiful proofs that are not true, and some ugly solutions that are.
The concept of symmetry as beauty in physics or mathematics requires a group-- a relationship of the elements to each other so that as the group is manipulated or rotated the relationship is maintained. Symmetry arises out of the connections and relationships of the group. Symmetry is beautiful, not because symmetry in itself is beautiful, but because it allows us to make sense—to see—the connections of the elements. Therefore, it is NOT symmetry that is beautiful, but that we see the connections or the underlying relationships that give rise to the symmetry.
In biology, the symmetry we see is a physical manifestation of the physical principles that give rise to the form. One needs only to look at the spirals of a cone shell, or the intricate patterns in an animal’s coat to see Beauty. D’arcy Thompson’s mathematical treatments of these forms give us a deeper appreciation, and a deeper sense of wonder-- as Bacon describes-“making sense of the Infinite.” Mandelbrot’s fractal, a repetition of a geometric pattern at different scales, really just extends the work started by Thomson. The insight from fractal’s that many of the forms (all?) we see in nature can be replicated by a repeated pattern at different scales really doesn’t inform much of the underlying principles.
Thompson’s reductionist approach “essential similitudes” that all biology may ultimately be explained by mathematics and physics, is something that Thompson acknowledges may not be adequate to explain the complexity of systems seen in biology. How can physics explain self-awareness? Stuart A. Kauffman, in his excellent book “Re-inventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion” , takes the reductionist approach head-on and offers an alternative view that is worth reading.
We see symmetry in biology, and this physical manifestation of the underlying principles is beautiful in that we are able to connect disparate organisms, and even see the similar patterns in inanimate objects, because the same principles are working to generate these patterns. But there is a deeper Beauty. My previous Blog talked about the awe that I felt at seeing the evolutionary connections between micro-organisms. There was no symmetry in the recognition of the relationship of convergent and divergent nucleotides. There is great Beauty in recognizing the connections—making sense of the Infinite. And there is great Truth in this Beauty.

NEXT BLOG: What Has Been Seen Cannot Be Unseen.

Awesome Biology

Awesome Biology

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
Albert Einstein
In my last blog, I wrote about the sense of awe and wonder that scientist’s feel in the course of their work, and how over time we sometimes lose or forget this motivation that caused many of us to choose a science career. I think it’s easier for cosmologists or astrophysicists, than for biologists, to be in touch with these emotions as they go about their work. How could you gaze upon the vastness and complexity of the Universe and not feel a sense of awe and wonder?
But biologists have their own universe that is no less awe inspiring. I marvel at the beauty and complexity of even the simplest forms of life, and more important, the connections and interplay between organisms. One of the great stories of modern biology—a story that is currently being written-- is the interaction of the biome with our human bodies. There is accumulating evidence that our human immune systems are heavily influenced by the commensal bacteria and parasites living in our gut. There is at least one reported instance of parasitic pig worms, Trichuris suis, ameliorating the effects of autism1. There is a good review on a possible link between gut bacteria and cancer that concludes “Gut microbes are increasingly being linked to medical conditions including obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes, and cancer.” 2
What is even more remarkable is that our cells may be influenced by miRNA’s carried in exosomes from fetuses, from cell–to-cell, and even from the plants we eat.3
How is it than when we look at the boundaries of life on a fine scale that the boundaries become blurred and indistinct? This is not dissimilar to what is seen in the wacky world of quantum physics where connectivity, action-at-a-distance, and the ability of matter and energy to pop in and out of existence blur the boundaries of even the most fundamental relationships in the physical world.
I once had a physics professor ask me, as a biology major, to define life. I gave what I thought was a pretty good answer, until he began to ask questions like “Is a virus alive?” He concluded by saying that if I could not define clearly what I was studying, then I was wasting my time. Perhaps one of the goals of the modern biologist is to create that definition of life.
Next Blog: Truth and Beauty
1. http://the-scientist.com/2011/02/01/opening-a-can-of-worms/
2. http://the-scientist.com/2011/08/01/sharing-the-bounty/
3. Zhang, L., et al., Exogenous plant MIR168a specifically targets mammalian LDLRAP1: evidence of cross-kingdom regulation by microRNA. Cell Res. 2011