So… Where’s the Person?
It’s the unanswerables that keep me going, I think. My thirst for knowledge and answers, I guess. Lucky for me, we’re faced with these questions almost daily. (Or maybe I just think too much.)
Our classes thus far have been covering the body from a micro to macro scale. In our “Molecular Foundations” course, we’re talking about DNA, RNA, proteins, enzymes like telomerase . If we zoom out a bit, we seem to pick up where molecular biology leaves off, in histology. Histology’s electron microscope lets us see cell components and even large molecules, and staining with light microscopy picks up organelles and multiple cell layers, starting to make up tissues and organs. And then you zoom out a little further, and you dissect the lung, dive through parietal pleuras and reflect back serratus anteriors to understand the muscles, integument, nerves, blood vessels, organs, and everything from the superior to the inferior.
And then you wonder, well, that’s the whole body (unless you went a little smaller to individual atoms , or a little bigger to organ systems ); where does the stuff that makes the person come in? There are a couple answers that come to mind, but that’s not to say that any of them are actually right. There’s the soul , of course, but then where does that go? Or sit? Or exist? Is it on some metaphysical multi-dimensional co-existing plane of existence that, for one reason or another, is linked to our bodies but controls them (ie: “the ghost in the machine”)? Or are our personalities and behaviors just due to our incredibly-complex brain ? We’re still not exactly sure as to how it all works as a whole (we understand some of the mechanisms, but don’t yet understand all the connections). Or maybe none of us have any free will at all, maybe we’re all just a fascinating, real-world version of The Sims for some higher-power’s pubescent thirteen-year-old. I personally tend to think we’re mysteries of our own electrons, and discovering ourselves is some sort of necessary human ouroboros quest. We’re as much the order in the chaos as mathematics is.
It’s the unanswerables that keep me going, I think. My thirst for knowledge and answers, I guess. Lucky for me, we’re faced with these questions almost daily. (Or maybe I just think too much.)
Our classes thus far have been covering the body from a micro to macro scale. In our “Molecular Foundations” course, we’re talking about DNA, RNA, proteins, enzymes like telomerase . If we zoom out a bit, we seem to pick up where molecular biology leaves off, in histology. Histology’s electron microscope lets us see cell components and even large molecules, and staining with light microscopy picks up organelles and multiple cell layers, starting to make up tissues and organs. And then you zoom out a little further, and you dissect the lung, dive through parietal pleuras and reflect back serratus anteriors to understand the muscles, integument, nerves, blood vessels, organs, and everything from the superior to the inferior.
And then you wonder, well, that’s the whole body (unless you went a little smaller to individual atoms , or a little bigger to organ systems ); where does the stuff that makes the person come in? There are a couple answers that come to mind, but that’s not to say that any of them are actually right. There’s the soul , of course, but then where does that go? Or sit? Or exist? Is it on some metaphysical multi-dimensional co-existing plane of existence that, for one reason or another, is linked to our bodies but controls them (ie: “the ghost in the machine”)? Or are our personalities and behaviors just due to our incredibly-complex brain ? We’re still not exactly sure as to how it all works as a whole (we understand some of the mechanisms, but don’t yet understand all the connections). Or maybe none of us have any free will at all, maybe we’re all just a fascinating, real-world version of The Sims for some higher-power’s pubescent thirteen-year-old. I personally tend to think we’re mysteries of our own electrons, and discovering ourselves is some sort of necessary human ouroboros quest. We’re as much the order in the chaos as mathematics is.
It’s the one question I wonder if we’ll ever be able to answer; maybe we’re never meant to have one. If a drug can make a person become “not himself,” or an event can cause a loss of sanity, then maybe the self is much deeper than most of us take it to be. There’s a great passage in the Bhagavad Gita (that I of course can’t find) that makes me think “the Self” (or your particular word for it) is much deeper, permanent, and more constant than we take it to be.
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