Power in the Blood

39. Bridge to Erewhon (EXCERPT)…Even stranger facts than found in the quantum world, however, are rife in biology and still more so in its evolutionary time-dimension, whose further linkage with psychology is shown not only by the Darwinian ascent of Wo/Man, but because both subjects often involve phenomena lacking any definitive explanation—as opposed to the kind of rhetoric of a scientific mien that often feigns at resolving the kind of puzzles presented equally by human psychology and evolutionary biology. Dreams are of course a prime example, having been “explained away” as wish-fulfillment, brain processing of superfluous information, sorting of imagery left over from the day’s events, and in various other ways that seek to impose a rational framework on the psyche, despite that the faculty of reason itself subsists within a larger psychological context whose underlying forces motivate human thought and how it is directed. And in biology, a survey of strangeness could begin with the quasi-scientific tale that birds evolved from dinosaurs—which certainly may be true if it can be shown that the creatures ancestral to birds actually were a species of dinosaur and not just of similar shape as are some fish when compared to dolphins or a hummingbird to the hummingbird moth. But if that popular view of the avian lineage happens to be the case, it might be necessary to attribute to dinosaurs the same internal anatomy as birds, including the unique avian respiratory system.1 The “flow-through” lung of birds is not harder to explain than the bellows-type lung of mammals and reptiles, insofar as either can be, but accepting the logical necessity of its totally separate origin and lineage vastly expands the already monstrous size and complexity of the evolutionary panorama. Yet that particular example is relatively simple as compared to countless others, for instance how intracellular mechanisms made the leap to what has been called the “irreducible complexity” of structures like the rotary flagella of bacteria whose movement is propelled by a molecular motor. The fact of that leap having occurred does not, of course, preclude the molecular features involved from having achieved the requisite feat of self-assembly on their own, since the biochemistry of human and other cells performs virtual miracles at every instant of their lives. But dispensing with “irreducible complexity” by reducing it to readily rational dimensions, if that is possible, still leaves many other less noted yet even more problematic examples, such as the variety of parasites that were able to evolve the capacity to program the behavior of their hosts. Nevertheless, psychology often dictates that inconvenient facts be set aside in shaping whatever mythology is best suited for the times and to illuminate human experience. Thus, the crucial understanding of evolution as having been the prologue to civilization instead of simply “the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century”2 or a cosmological accident of which we are the lucky beneficiaries may deserve higher regard than the enduring enigma of how and why many major evolutionary shifts like that of frogs to lizards actually took place, or how many of Life’s more curious passengers, such as mites that cling like slippers to the feet of ants3, have found their way upon the broad but rugged highway of natural selection. Yet the meaning of human life is only diminished by dismissing evolution in favor of God or vice-versa when both of these mythologies being based in truth, lend more favor to that meaning when in mutual alliance. For to say the hand of God somehow working through the evolutionary process implies that same hand to actually be Nature herself, simply admits the untellable proportions of a Gestalt that is equally the natural and supernatural context of our lives. And supernaturally, that same context holds an Erewhon from whence may flow a re-enchantment of the world that could also enable its purely physical salvation. 43. Wizard behind the Genes (EXCERPT) Such irreducible meta-complexity is why, for example, the original explanation for the ornate pattern on the tail of a male peacock does not really work. That particular application of the Darwinian principle called sexual selection, was the basis for claiming that peacock hens are attracted by brighter displays and therefore more apt to mate with males so adorned, thereby selecting the genes instrumental in producing the gaudiest displays. Of course in many species a similar explanation can be justified because brighter plumage may indicate superior resistance to parasites and overall fitness. However, “the white peacock, which lacks the colorful effect of the peacock’s ‘eye,’ is nevertheless preferred by many hens” and therefore the view of sexual or aesthetic selection as the reason for the peacock’s display being so gorgeous “was criticized so violently that it was dropped even by the Darwinians themselves” because “there was no valid experimental proof that aesthetic selection did in fact occur” Furthermore, the whole subject of the peacock’s display and the part it plays in mating is quite complicated, and not only in terms of how the feathers develop in the adult male to produce the total effect—“the ornamental feathers are governed by special laws of development—as they grow longer, they also grow looser. Thus all ornamental feathers have a strong shaft, but lack the downy part which normally provides thermal insulation This role is taken over by special down structures in the region—one further provision that shows how complex a phenomenon the peacock’s display really is.” But to get a fuller picture of what is happening it is necessary to take into account the behavioral factors involved—“the display goes hand in hand with a complex type of behavior” in which “the hen is not simply a disinterested spectator but an active participant in the display. In the presence of the courting cock, she begins to peck at her food with great intensity, and as she pecks at her food, the cock becomes visibly more excited—the two partners are actors in one and the same drama.” Clearly, genetic factors are involved in producing both the appearance of the male peacock, and the behavior of both sexes in the mating ritual, but “The fact that the peacock’s ritual as a whole has both behavioral and structural components poses the problem of the particular role of the latter” as indicated by the preference of many hens for white peacocks seeming to indicate that the more typically colorful “fan” pattern of which “all the feathers which participate in it are so many variations on a single theme—the eye feather which shines forth in all its splendor on the central axis”1 is irrelevant as far as aesthetic or sexual selection is concerned, even though natural selection has at least not weeded out this particular form of extravagance. Thus, however desperately is felt the need to find some way to account for phenomena like the peacock’s display and many others of equal perplexity—parasites that program the behavior of their hosts being one outstanding instance in such regard—in which biology abounds, that deficit cannot be squarely addressed within limitations of proven science, that offers no conceivable way of even asking how the deepest wizardry of life and evolution actually does its magic. Nature’s far horizons, in other words, remain at some unthinkably greater distance than the explanatory powers or conceptual boundaries of intellect can rightfully hope to attain. And that of course is because the mind, being but one of the myriad productions of Nature, can far less hope to resolve the Magnum Mysterium of which both its rational and neuronal processes are but a fragmentary part, than adventurers who braved stormy oceans in creaky wooden ships could guess what dire contingencies might imper