McClintock is the mystic I need right now, and I love where she takes you—toward teleophilia, basal cognition, and something like panpsychism, or at lest, anthropomorphism all the way down. Very nourishing for me.
Do you know the work of David Goodsell? Structural biologist who does these wonderful watercolor visualizations of biochemistry in action. I first started following him in the pandemic (https://matthewbattles.substack.com/p/viral-portraiture). His work builds from a profound knowledge of molecules as folding contraptions and densely-knotted energy fields toward their squirmy, slippery vitality—and community. A feeling for the molecule!
Those are remarkable. Truly incredible merging of aesthetics, skill, and deep, deep knowledge. And, as you might have guessed, in this edition, I was going to trace the history of precisely this kind of visualization! I loved this description in your post, too—"What we’re seeing here isn’t phenomenally 'visible' in the ocular sense—visible light can’t resolve images of objects at this scale. The visual realm expressed here is a synthesis of diverse ways of seeing and knowing at molecular scale, drawing from a long genealogy of imaging technologies, from x-ray crystallography and electron microscopy to computational modeling."
I love you noting that it is not just something we *have* not seen, but that we *cannot* see in the way our eyes evolved to work. That's always bothered me a smidge about the astronomical imagery we see so much of: it's beautiful, of course, but it is not what the eyes (or basically any eyes) would actually see.
I look forward to your tracing the history of visualization! I too feel a bit bothered by astronomical imagery that brings the extra-visible into view, without some helpful framing/annotation to help the viewer grasp the work the image is doing. Jennifer Roberts has expressed her appreciation for such imagery—she mentioned this in passing on Instagram, anyway, and I'd like to understand her take better. I mean, the Pillars of Creation? The Tarantula Nebula? I *love* those pictures. But as you suggest, they may encourage unrealizable expectations for what is seeable astronomically—also, they don't necessarily convey the extrasensory ways astronomical sensing produces knowledge. Right? Like, the work somehow is not primarily about seeing—or, it extends "seeing," changes it, in very interesting ways.
Somehow, I think the sheer materiality of Goodsell's work—his Peter-Max palette and watercolor wiggliness (you can see the tooth of the paper in some pictures)—underscores that each image is an argument, a story.
You've collected thoughts and expressed ideas I've long thought about but couldn't find words for. My father, who grew up farming with my grandparents was a scientist who spoke in his private life about the world in this way, saying "mind is everywhere" and "the more science uncovers about the world, the more magical it seems" and constantly pointing to evidence of this everywhere he went. We watch the universe evolve, and the behavior of the plants and animals we love. It's self-evident that their awareness is so far beyond what most give them credit for. "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas first woke me up to cellular awareness. My teacher Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen often says our cells know first, the brain knows much later. I look forward to reading many of the writers you quote here and asking Bonnie if she knows of them. Thank you so much.
"Trillions of brilliant little cells each doing its thing to make … me. I’m held together by bioelectric fields and metabolic processes and the convenient sense that I am a single being. At my own scale, I am a galaxy of sorts, hiding in plain sight, obscured by the bright sun of consciousness. And so are you." - I read that at least 3 times before moving on. It is beautiful. 😍 Thank you.
“Mystification came, in her view, when we tried to use our current concepts to explain phenomena that demanded new ways of thinking.” Amen. Side note: after you recommended Pleasant Place I read them and discovered instructions for growing a nasturtium. I went out and found one and followed the instructions. It bloomed today and it’s glorious!
Wow!! This truly is an amazing piece - reminds me of my academic days in graduate school. I'm amazed and how you are able to scientifically explain the feelings and sensations that sensitive people like me have about plants, but have been unable to articulate why. I have a greater understanding of how we are all connected on this plane. Thank you for your hardwork and dedication!
Yesterday I read Larry Laurence A. Moran's new book "What's in your genome?" from cover to cover. I found it a riveting read. I felt I was learning something new on every page. I am a biologist, but my interest is mainly at organizational levels above the cell - tissues, organs, organisms, populations. I took at least three or four graduate classes in biochemistry, molecular biology, cell biology and a biotechnology techniques lab, and one on population genetics, so it's not like I have never heard of any of this, or never loaded a gel. But that was 25 years ago and that world has advanced quite a lot since then, while I kept pace mostly with research at higher levels of organization. That was also the first time I encountered Larry's name - my biochemistry class, just like so many similar classes around the country for many years, assigned us his textbook. But textbooks have to be written a certain way. There is emphasis on how reactions and pathways are supposed to work, but not much emphasis on the kinetics (answers to my questions about speed/rate of those reactions to my professor at the time were not very clear and satisfactory, but perhaps that was just not as well known back then), or statistics (how likely it is for this reaction to occur, or how many copies of a molecule the cell needs in order for the reaction to occur etc). I got many of those answers yesterday!
I don't know why I was always arguing, through graduate school and beyond, with people who expected and demanded perfection in biology (perhaps I grew up on Gould and they grew up on Dawkins?). I always understood biology to be messy. Full of contingencies and redundancies and imperfections. I've been teaching biology and physiology for 25 years now and this theme is something I always harp on with my students.
This is just some of what I tell my students. Cells are bags of gunk and goo floating around in water, pushed around in Brownian motion, and good luck bumping into each other and reacting properly like the textbook says they should. Cells somewhat increase the likelihood of reactions happening by shuffling all those molecules into one spot in the cell, or into a tiny vesicle, or attached to other bigger molecules, or attached to cytoskeleton, or squeezed between two closely aligned membranes, increasing the chance they meet and react. Or they are expressed only at a certain time, governed by the circadian clock, emerging en masse at a particular time of day and sheer quantity allows for many of those molecules to meet and react (this happens with the key functional genes in each cell type, e.g., detoxifying enzymes in liver, neurotransmitter-related genes in neurons etc, but not with housekeeping genes like those that make ribosomes or drive transcription and translation). Some of these randomly bouncing molecules will react textbook-style. Some will react in an erroneous way. Some will not react at all. Just like no engine is 100% efficient, so none of our cellular processes should be expected to be so. Many bonds in gasoline get broken down wrongly, making your engine hot instead of turning the wheels - likewise, many bonds in pyruvate will be broken down badly and will produce body heat instead of energetic bonds in ATP. I often give my students examples of this and I make them watch animations - contrasting those that depict molecules as cogs in a machine perfectly reacting with each other, to animations that show them all wiggly and wild and seemingly accidentally bumping into each other.
Natural selection is really neat and powerful, but most of evolution happens by neutral selection and random drift, producing traits that are far from perfect, but "good enough" to survive and reproduce. Every trait becomes so through the process of development. If the underlying molecular activity is noisy, so will be the development, resulting not in eight billion identical humans, but in eight billion different individuals. The chaos gives rise to order, but that order is not perfect. When we dissect cats in the lab, I make students go around and look at every cat in the room. They are surprised to see that every cat is different! Some have the textbook three big arteries branching off of aortic arch, but some have two, or one, or four, or five - and all that is natural variation, viable and normal and healthy.
For some time I have been toying with the idea of producing either a book or a series of videos called "Your Body is Messy" looking at all the randomness and errors and gunk and goo, and how chaos in cells, via development, results in "good enough" order of the bodies, at all levels of organization. Larry has now covered much of that ground on the molecular and cellular level but I can still perhaps do something on higher levels of organization. I also like the way he did not water this down. Fans of Kardashians will not buy this book, but reader of the book will have sufficient background knowledge as well as motivation and interest, to read this and they will be rewarded. It is written very clearly but expects the reader to do some work.
Apart from studying from his textbook, I have been reading Larry's blog Sandwalk (https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/ ) for almost twenty years. He came to visit in Chapel Hill some years ago and I went and saw him in Toronto a few years later. Both times we had great time chatting at length about science (and blogging about science!) over good food and beer. I could hear his voice as I was reading the book (which made it more fun to read). Many things in the book I already knew from his blog, and yet there was still so much more there, new to me. New examples I can use in teaching. Details (or numbers) I did not know before. Last week I took his book to all three sections of my lab and told them that if they did not believe me what I say about messiness of biology and the junk DNA, they should read Larry's book. Or suggest Larry's book to professors who teach them wrong. As I will be doing in the future whenever I encounter the Paley's watch or Swiss watch proponents of perfection, or biologists who are skeptical of Junk DNA.
Loved getting this in my inbox today what a great thought provoking and inspirational read to start my day.
McClintock is the mystic I need right now, and I love where she takes you—toward teleophilia, basal cognition, and something like panpsychism, or at lest, anthropomorphism all the way down. Very nourishing for me.
Do you know the work of David Goodsell? Structural biologist who does these wonderful watercolor visualizations of biochemistry in action. I first started following him in the pandemic (https://matthewbattles.substack.com/p/viral-portraiture). His work builds from a profound knowledge of molecules as folding contraptions and densely-knotted energy fields toward their squirmy, slippery vitality—and community. A feeling for the molecule!
Those are remarkable. Truly incredible merging of aesthetics, skill, and deep, deep knowledge. And, as you might have guessed, in this edition, I was going to trace the history of precisely this kind of visualization! I loved this description in your post, too—"What we’re seeing here isn’t phenomenally 'visible' in the ocular sense—visible light can’t resolve images of objects at this scale. The visual realm expressed here is a synthesis of diverse ways of seeing and knowing at molecular scale, drawing from a long genealogy of imaging technologies, from x-ray crystallography and electron microscopy to computational modeling."
I love you noting that it is not just something we *have* not seen, but that we *cannot* see in the way our eyes evolved to work. That's always bothered me a smidge about the astronomical imagery we see so much of: it's beautiful, of course, but it is not what the eyes (or basically any eyes) would actually see.
I look forward to your tracing the history of visualization! I too feel a bit bothered by astronomical imagery that brings the extra-visible into view, without some helpful framing/annotation to help the viewer grasp the work the image is doing. Jennifer Roberts has expressed her appreciation for such imagery—she mentioned this in passing on Instagram, anyway, and I'd like to understand her take better. I mean, the Pillars of Creation? The Tarantula Nebula? I *love* those pictures. But as you suggest, they may encourage unrealizable expectations for what is seeable astronomically—also, they don't necessarily convey the extrasensory ways astronomical sensing produces knowledge. Right? Like, the work somehow is not primarily about seeing—or, it extends "seeing," changes it, in very interesting ways.
Somehow, I think the sheer materiality of Goodsell's work—his Peter-Max palette and watercolor wiggliness (you can see the tooth of the paper in some pictures)—underscores that each image is an argument, a story.
You've collected thoughts and expressed ideas I've long thought about but couldn't find words for. My father, who grew up farming with my grandparents was a scientist who spoke in his private life about the world in this way, saying "mind is everywhere" and "the more science uncovers about the world, the more magical it seems" and constantly pointing to evidence of this everywhere he went. We watch the universe evolve, and the behavior of the plants and animals we love. It's self-evident that their awareness is so far beyond what most give them credit for. "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas first woke me up to cellular awareness. My teacher Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen often says our cells know first, the brain knows much later. I look forward to reading many of the writers you quote here and asking Bonnie if she knows of them. Thank you so much.
"Trillions of brilliant little cells each doing its thing to make … me. I’m held together by bioelectric fields and metabolic processes and the convenient sense that I am a single being. At my own scale, I am a galaxy of sorts, hiding in plain sight, obscured by the bright sun of consciousness. And so are you." - I read that at least 3 times before moving on. It is beautiful. 😍 Thank you.
“Mystification came, in her view, when we tried to use our current concepts to explain phenomena that demanded new ways of thinking.” Amen. Side note: after you recommended Pleasant Place I read them and discovered instructions for growing a nasturtium. I went out and found one and followed the instructions. It bloomed today and it’s glorious!
Oh, yes!! They are so good. I love that it worked!
Wow!! This truly is an amazing piece - reminds me of my academic days in graduate school. I'm amazed and how you are able to scientifically explain the feelings and sensations that sensitive people like me have about plants, but have been unable to articulate why. I have a greater understanding of how we are all connected on this plane. Thank you for your hardwork and dedication!
Thanks, Maggie! I really appreciate that, from one plant person to another.
This was just a pleasure to read. I knew of Mcclintock but I haven't thought so deeply about her work. Made my day.
Great piece
Have you read “What is in our genome” by Lawrence Moran?
No, but clearly i need to put it on the list! What would you say about it?
This is what I wrote on Facebook:
Yesterday I read Larry Laurence A. Moran's new book "What's in your genome?" from cover to cover. I found it a riveting read. I felt I was learning something new on every page. I am a biologist, but my interest is mainly at organizational levels above the cell - tissues, organs, organisms, populations. I took at least three or four graduate classes in biochemistry, molecular biology, cell biology and a biotechnology techniques lab, and one on population genetics, so it's not like I have never heard of any of this, or never loaded a gel. But that was 25 years ago and that world has advanced quite a lot since then, while I kept pace mostly with research at higher levels of organization. That was also the first time I encountered Larry's name - my biochemistry class, just like so many similar classes around the country for many years, assigned us his textbook. But textbooks have to be written a certain way. There is emphasis on how reactions and pathways are supposed to work, but not much emphasis on the kinetics (answers to my questions about speed/rate of those reactions to my professor at the time were not very clear and satisfactory, but perhaps that was just not as well known back then), or statistics (how likely it is for this reaction to occur, or how many copies of a molecule the cell needs in order for the reaction to occur etc). I got many of those answers yesterday!
I don't know why I was always arguing, through graduate school and beyond, with people who expected and demanded perfection in biology (perhaps I grew up on Gould and they grew up on Dawkins?). I always understood biology to be messy. Full of contingencies and redundancies and imperfections. I've been teaching biology and physiology for 25 years now and this theme is something I always harp on with my students.
This is just some of what I tell my students. Cells are bags of gunk and goo floating around in water, pushed around in Brownian motion, and good luck bumping into each other and reacting properly like the textbook says they should. Cells somewhat increase the likelihood of reactions happening by shuffling all those molecules into one spot in the cell, or into a tiny vesicle, or attached to other bigger molecules, or attached to cytoskeleton, or squeezed between two closely aligned membranes, increasing the chance they meet and react. Or they are expressed only at a certain time, governed by the circadian clock, emerging en masse at a particular time of day and sheer quantity allows for many of those molecules to meet and react (this happens with the key functional genes in each cell type, e.g., detoxifying enzymes in liver, neurotransmitter-related genes in neurons etc, but not with housekeeping genes like those that make ribosomes or drive transcription and translation). Some of these randomly bouncing molecules will react textbook-style. Some will react in an erroneous way. Some will not react at all. Just like no engine is 100% efficient, so none of our cellular processes should be expected to be so. Many bonds in gasoline get broken down wrongly, making your engine hot instead of turning the wheels - likewise, many bonds in pyruvate will be broken down badly and will produce body heat instead of energetic bonds in ATP. I often give my students examples of this and I make them watch animations - contrasting those that depict molecules as cogs in a machine perfectly reacting with each other, to animations that show them all wiggly and wild and seemingly accidentally bumping into each other.
Natural selection is really neat and powerful, but most of evolution happens by neutral selection and random drift, producing traits that are far from perfect, but "good enough" to survive and reproduce. Every trait becomes so through the process of development. If the underlying molecular activity is noisy, so will be the development, resulting not in eight billion identical humans, but in eight billion different individuals. The chaos gives rise to order, but that order is not perfect. When we dissect cats in the lab, I make students go around and look at every cat in the room. They are surprised to see that every cat is different! Some have the textbook three big arteries branching off of aortic arch, but some have two, or one, or four, or five - and all that is natural variation, viable and normal and healthy.
So, of course I always understood that much of human genome is Junk DNA and that's what I teach my students. Larry did not need to write this book to persuade me. After all, very important people on the other side of the elevators on the same floor (editors of Nature), really did not like it when I published this about their hyped ENCODE project: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/top-10-science-stories-2012/ and Larry noted that as well: https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2013/01/scientific-american-chooses-encode.html .
For some time I have been toying with the idea of producing either a book or a series of videos called "Your Body is Messy" looking at all the randomness and errors and gunk and goo, and how chaos in cells, via development, results in "good enough" order of the bodies, at all levels of organization. Larry has now covered much of that ground on the molecular and cellular level but I can still perhaps do something on higher levels of organization. I also like the way he did not water this down. Fans of Kardashians will not buy this book, but reader of the book will have sufficient background knowledge as well as motivation and interest, to read this and they will be rewarded. It is written very clearly but expects the reader to do some work.
Apart from studying from his textbook, I have been reading Larry's blog Sandwalk (https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/ ) for almost twenty years. He came to visit in Chapel Hill some years ago and I went and saw him in Toronto a few years later. Both times we had great time chatting at length about science (and blogging about science!) over good food and beer. I could hear his voice as I was reading the book (which made it more fun to read). Many things in the book I already knew from his blog, and yet there was still so much more there, new to me. New examples I can use in teaching. Details (or numbers) I did not know before. Last week I took his book to all three sections of my lab and told them that if they did not believe me what I say about messiness of biology and the junk DNA, they should read Larry's book. Or suggest Larry's book to professors who teach them wrong. As I will be doing in the future whenever I encounter the Paley's watch or Swiss watch proponents of perfection, or biologists who are skeptical of Junk DNA.