This blog is a place to discuss anything and everything through the lens of the biological world. Whatever the subject, whatever the place, or culture, we humans are biological. We cannot escape our nature. We think as if from nature; we act as if from nature. We pretend we are beyond nature. Yet every human problem, pattern, or achievement is only an echo from the symphony of the living world. Or perhaps you might call it a cacophony.
The following blog posts will be a mixture of opinions, book review (or other media), critical analysis of ideas and events, the explanation of biological ideas, news, links, or even a comment on the quirkiness of us humans as biological entities.
Take for instance the drive home, a potentially harrowing experience that mixes high speeds with hard surfaces and tons of metal. Our brains see the patterns, absorbing the road and its surrounding as if it will be what it has been on this day, the next day, and forever. Gradually the routes we come to know are driven near ‘automatically’. Things that may have once been a source of stress and potentially dangerous become unimportant, since no problems have occurred. We gain a certain confidence that makes the ride more enjoyable, but miss new signs or worse the proverbial child chasing a ball across the street. Driving requires constant attention, yet our brain tells us to relax we have had no problem in this place before. Not surprisingly accidents are more common close to home. Not only because you spend more time there, but because your brain is adapting to the situation. A phenomenon well catalogued in Tom Vanderbilt’s ‘Traffic‘.
I have been a biologist, which partly explains my biological tunnel vision. Biology is the study of life. That’s what we are talking about here.
Life.
It’s all around us. Life perseveres by changing itself or its surroundings. Constantly reinventing itself. Stretching out – with its grimy tentacles (real and metaphoric) extending into the darkest crevices. Expanding, contracting, hiding, exposing, consuming, and producing. We humans are part of the story. We cannot escape it. It encompasses nearly every part of our existence, mediating our experiences, being our beings.
Its absence is the end.
