Every adult human being is two different miracles: a miracle of physical organization and a miracle of mental abilities. Neither an adult human body nor an adult human mind can be explained by mechanistic science, genetics or neuroscience.
Upon hearing such a statement, the average adult might say, "I can explain how I came to be." If asked to supply explicit details, a person might say something like, "I originated because my mother and father had sex, and my mother's egg was fertilized by my father's sperm." But if you state such an account, you are not explaining how you originated. You are merely explaining how your mother got pregnant. You should not confuse understanding how your mother got pregnant with understanding how you originated. Explaining how you originated is a task enormously harder than merely explaining how your mother got pregnant.
There are two things we would need to explain before we can say that we understand the origin of an adult human being. The first thing we would need to explain is the origination of an adult human body, a state of enormous hierarchical physical organization and also gigantically dynamic functionality. The second thing we would need to explain is the arrival of the mind of an adult human being. The second task should not be reduced to some mere "problem of consciousness," as if all that we need to explain is some mere awareness of any type. The second task is the task of explaining all of the mental faculties and types of mental experiences of an adult human being. Such faculties include awareness, self-hood, thinking, memory creation, instant memory retrieval, and the preservation of memories for many years. Scientists have no credible explanation for either the arrival of an adult human body or the arrival of an adult human mind. Let's look at why existing explanations don't get the job done.
If someone defines a fertilized human egg as a human being, a definition that is very debatable, you might be able to say, "I understand the physical origin of a human being," and merely refer to a sperm uniting with an egg cell as such an origin. But the question we are concerned with is whether anyone understands the physical origin of an adult human being. The physical structure of an adult human being is a state of organization millions of times more complex than a mere fertilized speck-sized egg cell. (A human egg cell is about a tenth of a millimeter in length, but a human body occupies a volume of about 75 million cubic millimeters.) So you don't explain the physical origin of an adult human being by merely referring to the fertilization of an egg cell during or after sexual intercourse.
We cannot explain the origin of an adult human body by merely using words such as "development" or "growth." Trying to explain the origin of an adult human body by merely mentioning a starting cell and mentioning "growth" or "development" is as vacuous as trying to explain the mysterious appearance of a building by saying that it appeared through "origination" or "construction." If we were to find some mysterious huge building on Mars, we would hardly be explaining it by merely saying that it arose from "origination" or by saying that it appeared through "construction." When a person tries to explain the origin of a human body by merely mentioning "growth" or "development" or "morphogenesis," he is giving as empty an explanation as someone who tells you he knows how World War II started, because he knows that it was caused by "historical events."
There is a more specific account often told to try to explain the origin of an adult human body. The account goes something like this:
"Every cell contains a DNA molecule that is a blueprint for constructing a human, all the information that is needed. So what happens is that inside the body of a mother, this DNA plan for a human body is read, and the body of a baby is gradually constructed. It's kind of like a construction crew working from a blueprint to make a building."
The problem with this account is that while it has been told very many times, the story is just plain false. There is no such blueprint for a human being in human DNA. We know exactly what is in human DNA. It is merely low-level chemical information such as the sequence of amino acids that make up polypeptide chains that are the starting points of protein molecules. DNA does not specify anatomy. DNA is not a blueprint for making a human. DNA is not a recipe for making a human. DNA is not a program or algorithm for making a human. Not only does DNA not specify how to make a human, DNA does not even specify how to make any organ or appendage or cell of a human. There are about 200 types of cells in human beings, each an incredibly organized thing (cells are so complex they are sometimes compared to factories or cities). DNA does not specify how to make any of these 200 types of cells. Cells are built from smaller structural units called organelles. DNA does not even specify how to make such low-level organelles.
Here are a few relevant quotes by authorities:
- On page 26 of the recent book The Developing Genome, Professor David S. Moore states, "The common belief that there are things inside of us that constitute a set of instructions for building bodies and minds -- things that are analogous to 'blueprints' or 'recipes' -- is undoubtedly false."
- Biologist Rupert Sheldrake says this "DNA only codes for the materials from which the body is constructed: the enzymes, the structural proteins, and so forth," and "There is no evidence that it also codes for the plan, the form, the morphology of the body."
- Describing conclusions of biologist Brian Goodwin, the New York Times says, "While genes may help produce the proteins that make the skeleton or the glue, they do not determine the shape and form of an embryo or an organism."
- Professor Massimo Pigliucci (mainstream author of numerous scientific papers on evolution) has stated that "old-fashioned metaphors like genetic blueprint and genetic programme are not only woefully inadequate but positively misleading."
- Neuroscientist Romain Brette states, "The genome does not encode much except for amino acids."
- In a 2016 scientific paper, three scientists state the following: "It is now clear that the genome does not directly program the organism; the computer program metaphor has misled us...The genome does not function as a master plan or computer program for controlling the organism; the genome is the organism's servant, not its master.
- In the book Mind in Life by Evan Thompson (published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) we read the following on page 180: "The plain truth is that DNA is not a program for building organisms, as several authors have shown in detail (Keller 2000, Lewontin 1993, Moss 2003)."
- Developmental biologist C/H. Waddington stated, "The DNA is not a program or sequentially accessed control over the behavior of the cell."
- Scientists Walker and Davies state this in a scientific paper: "DNA is not a blueprint for an organism; no information is actively processed by DNA alone...DNA is a passive repository for transcription of stored data into RNA, some (but by no means all) of which goes on to be translated into proteins."
- Geneticist Adam Rutherford states that "DNA is not a blueprint," a statement also made by biochemistry professor Keith Fox.
- "The genome is not a blueprint," says Kevin Mitchell, a geneticist and neuroscientist at Trinity College Dublin, noting "it doesn't encode some specific outcome."
- "DNA cannot be seen as the 'blueprint' for life," says Antony Jose, associate professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at the University of Maryland, who says, "It is at best an overlapping and potentially scrambled list of ingredients that is used differently by different cells at different times."
- Sergio Pistoi (a science writer with a PhD in molecular biology) tells us, "DNA is not a blueprint," and tells us, "We do not inherit specific instructions on how to build a cell or an organ."
- Michael Levin (director of a large biology research lab) states that "genomes are not a blueprint for anatomy," and after referring to a "deep puzzle" of how biological forms arise, he gives this example: "Scientists really don’t know what determines the intricate shape and structure of the flatworm’s head."
- Ian Stevenson M.D. stated "Genes alone - which provide instructions for the production of amino acids and proteins -- cannot explain how the proteins produced by their instructions come to have the shape they develop and, ultimately, determine the form of the organisms where they are," and noted that "biologists who have drawn attention to this important gap in our knowledge of form have not been a grouping of mediocrities (Denton, 1986; Goldschmidt, 1952; B. C. Goodwin, 1985, 1988, 1989, 1994; Gottlieb, 1992; Grasse, 1973; E. S. Russell...Sheldrake, 1981; Tauber and Sarkar, 1992; Thompson, 1917/1942)."
- Biologist B.C. Goodwin stated this in 1989: "Since genes make molecules, genetics...does not tell us how the molecules are organized into the dynamic, organized process that is the living organism."
- An article in the journal Nature states this: "The manner in which bodies and tissues take form remains 'one of the most important, and still poorly understood, questions of our time', says developmental biologist Amy Shyer, who studies morphogenesis at the Rockefeller University in New York City."
- Timothy Saunders, a developmental biologist at the National University of Singapore, says, "Fundamentally, we have a poor understanding of how any internal organ forms.”
- In an essay pointing out the vast complexities and interlocking dependencies of even simpler aspects of biology such as angiogenesis (the formation of new blood vessels), Jonathan Bard of Oxford University states, "It is pushing the boundaries of belief too far to believe that it is helpful to see the genome as holding a program."
- A paper by Stuart A. Newman (a professor of cell biology and anatomy) discussing at length the work of scientists trying to evoke "self-organization" as an explanation for morphogenesis states that "public lectures by principals of the field contain confidently asserted, but similarly oversimplified or misleading treatments," and says that "these analogies...give the false impression that there has been more progress in understanding embryonic development than there truly has been." Referring to scientists moving from one bunk explanation of morphogenesis to another bunk explanation for it, the paper concludes by stating, "It would be unfortunate if we find ourselves having emerged from a period of misconceived genetic program metaphors only to land in a brave new world captivated by equally misguided ones about self-organization."
- Physics PhD Eric Heden states, "The molecular coding within DNA, rich and vast as it is, falls impossibly short of being able to supply the informational guidance needed to supervise the development and moment-by-moment cellular activities of living organisms."
- Referring to claims there is a program for building organisms in DNA, biochemist F. M. Harold stated "reflection on the findings with morphologically aberrant mutants suggests that the metaphor of a genetic program is misleading." Referring to self-organization (a vague phrase sometimes used to try to explain morphogenesis), he says, "self-organization remains nearly as mysterious as it was a century ago, a subject in search of a paradigm."
- Physician James Le Fanu states the following:"The genome projects were predicated on the reasonable assumption that spelling out the full sequence of genes would reveal the distinctive genetic instructions that determine the diverse forms of life. Biologists were thus understandably disconcerted to discover that precisely the reverse is the case. Contrary to all expectations, there is a near equivalence of 20,000 genes across the vast spectrum of organismic complexity, from a millimetre-long worm to ourselves. It was no less disconcerting to learn that the human genome is virtually interchangeable with that of both the mouse and our primate cousins...There is in short nothing in the genomes of fly and man to explain why the fly has six legs, a pair of wings and a dot-sized brain and that we should have two arms, two legs and a mind capable of comprehending the history of our universe."
The lack of any specification for building a human in DNA is only one of two major reasons why a reading from DNA cannot explain the physical origin of a newborn baby or an adult. The second major reason is that there is nothing in the human body that would be capable of reading a DNA specification for making a human, if such a thing happened to exist. Consider what goes on when a house is built. Dumping some building materials and a blueprint will never cause a house to be built. The house can only get built if there are intelligent blueprint readers smart enough to read and understand the complex blueprints, and carry out their instructions. With about 200 types of cells, each so complex they are often compared to factories, a human body is something a million times harder to build than a mere house. If there were some instructions for building a human in DNA, such instructions would be so complex that they would require something extremely intelligent to interpret such instructions and carry them out. But we know of no such intelligence existing in a human womb where a baby grows.
The "DNA as blueprint" idea is further discredited by the C-value paradox under which many relatively simple organisms have genomes much larger than more complex organisms. For example, a certain flower from Japan has a genome 50 times longer than the human genome, and quite a few amphibians have genomes 10 times bigger than the human genome.
There is no blueprint or recipe or program for making a human in human DNA, and there is nothing intelligent enough in a human womb to read and execute such immensely complicated instructions if they happened to exist. So the physical origin of each full-sized human body is a miracle far beyond our understanding.
We lack any understanding of how the supremely hierarchical organization of an adult human body arises. Consider all the different levels of organization. Subatomic particles are organized into atoms, which are organized into amino acids, which are organized into protein molecules, which are organized into protein complexes, which are organized into organelles, which are organized into cells, which are organized into tissues, which are organized into organs, which are organized into organ systems, which are organized into the human body. There is nothing in a speck-sized human egg that explains how most of those different levels of organization could arise.
We take for granted the miracle of a speck-sized egg growing into a human body a million times more organized than such a cell. Why is that? Mainly because it is something that happens most of the time. It seems that we will not be astonished by any transformation, no matter how inexplicable it may seem, as long as it happens most of the time. Imagine if you lived on a planet in which you could plant acorns in the ground, and they would grow into three-story houses complete with electricity and running water. You would not think such a thing was very marvelous if it happened most of the times that acorns were planted in the ground, and if such a thing had been happening for as long as your species could remember. The arising of a full-sized human body from a speck-sized fertilized egg millions of times less complex and organized is a marvel a million times more impressive than a three-story house with electricity and running water arising from an acorn planted in the ground. We do not at all understand how this marvel happens. We do not understand the physical origin of any adult human body. In a section entitled "Developmental Biology," a paper by a University of Oxford biologist confesses, "We...rarely understand what is going on in any detailed way."
The diagram below illustrates some of the things that must occur for there to exist an adult human body. Each of the pillars is something that must go on for there to ever exist an adult human body. Each of these pillars is a wonder that scientists cannot mechanistically or genetically explain.
Let us look at some of the pillars in the visual above.
Protein Folding
For an adult to live, there must constantly occur protein folding, under which linear chains of amino acids form into the complex three-dimensional shapes needed for protein molecule function. But the protein folding problem remains unsolved. We don't understand how three-dimensional protein molecules are constantly arising from one-dimensional polypeptide chains (mere chains of amino acids) that do not specify any three-dimensional shape.
There has been some progress in protein structure prediction, the art of predicting the 3D shape of a folded protein molecule from its linear amino acid sequence. Although such progress is often mistakenly depicted as progress in solving the protein folding problem, it is no such thing. The "protein structure prediction problem" (predicting the 3D shape of a protein from its amino acid sequence) is a different problem from the protein folding problem (the problem of how protein molecules get their 3D shapes within human bodies), and the two problems should not be confused or conflated (although some careless writers do that). Using deep-learning AI "frequentist inference" (involving massive electronic databases created through analysis of countless thousands of proteins and their shapes), very fancy computer programs such as AlphaFold2 can now predict fairly well 3D protein shapes from their amino acid sequence. But that does nothing to explain how linear sequences of amino acids are able to organize into folded 3D shapes needed for protein molecule function, in a body that does not have any such AI deep-learning software and the huge electronic database it requires.
Genes specify which amino acids make up a protein. But genes do not specify the three-dimensional shapes of proteins needed for them to be functional.
Here are two relevant quotes by scientists:
- "In real time how the chaperones fold the newly synthesized polypeptide sequences into a particular three-dimensional shape within a fraction of second is still a mystery for biologists as well as mathematicians." -- Arun Upadhyay, "Structure of proteins: Evolution with unsolved mysteries," 2019.
- "The problem of protein folding is one of the most important problems of molecular biology. A central problem (the so called Levinthal's paradox) is that the protein is first synthesized as a linear molecule that must reach its native conformation in a short time (on the order of seconds or less). The protein can only perform its functions in this (often single) conformation. The problem, however, is that the number of possible conformational states is exponentially large for a long protein molecule. Despite almost 30 years of attempts to resolve this paradox, a solution has not yet been found." -- Two scientists, "On a generalized Levinthal's paradox," 2018.
Protein Complex Origination
Humans have more than 20,000 types of protein molecules, partially specified by about 20,000 genes, each of which lists the amino acid sequence used by a protein. Each protein uses a different sequence of amino acids. Different types of proteins combine to form teams of proteins called protein complexes. Individual proteins might be called building blocks of protein complexes, although such a term might mislead you, because a building block such as a brick is very simple, while a protein typically consists of hundreds of well-arranged parts and thousands of well-arranged atoms. So it's much better to call proteins "building components" of protein complexes.
Although scientists have identified most of the proteins that exist in the human body, the task of identifying all the protein complexes and which proteins they are made up is a task that is very largely unfinished. The latest version of the CORUM database of protein complexes (version 4.0) lists 5204 protein complexes, but that number is only a small fraction of the total number of protein complexes that exist.
Scientists do not understand how proteins are able to continually form very quickly into highly functional protein complexes. DNA does not specify any protein complexes. Nowhere in DNA is there anything like some specification saying that such-and-such a protein complex is made from Protein X, Protein Y and Protein Z. Below are some quotes by scientists:
- "The majority of cellular proteins function as subunits in larger protein complexes. However, very little is known about how protein complexes form in vivo." Duncan and Mata, "Widespread Cotranslational Formation of Protein Complexes," 2011.
- "While the occurrence of multiprotein assemblies is ubiquitous, the understanding of pathways that dictate the formation of quaternary structure remains enigmatic." -- Two scientists (link).
- "A general theoretical framework to understand protein complex formation and usage is still lacking." -- Two scientists, 2019 (link).
- "Most proteins associate into multimeric complexes with specific architectures, which often have functional properties like cooperative ligand binding or allosteric regulation. No detailed knowledge is available about how any multimer and its functions arose during historical evolution." -- Ten scientists, 2020 (link).
- "Protein assemblies are at the basis of numerous biological machines by performing actions that none of the individual proteins would be able to do. There are thousands, perhaps millions of different types and states of proteins in a living organism, and the number of possible interactions between them is enormous...The strong synergy within the protein complex makes it irreducible to an incremental process. They are rather to be acknowledged as fine-tuned initial conditions of the constituting protein sequences. These structures are biological examples of nano-engineering that surpass anything human engineers have created. Such systems pose a serious challenge to a Darwinian account of evolution, since irreducibly complex systems have no direct series of selectable intermediates, and in addition, as we saw in Section 4.1, each module (protein) is of low probability by itself." -- Steinar Thorvaldsen and Ola Hössjerm, "Using statistical methods to model the fine-tuning of molecular machines and systems," Journal of Theoretical Biology.
This week there was a press release about a protein complex, one saying, "Inside nearly every cell of your body, the tiny F1 motor works non-stop to create adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the universal energy source that powers almost every action you take—from breathing to running." We had some details describing how the microscopic motor spins "with maximum efficiency," but no explanation of how the protein complex ever arises. At least we have a good diagram showing how the "y-shaft" spins round and round like a motor. There's a link to a paper describing what it calls "nanomachines," which are examples of the most astonishing engineering effects existing on a microscopic level within your cells.
In order for any human cell to ever form or to reproduce, there must occur very much origination of organelles, the building components of cells. Explaining the origination of organelles is made much harder by the facts that there are many greatly different types of organelles, and that some of these types exist in very great numbers in most human cell types. Your idea about the number of organelles in a cell is probably shaped by those extremely misleading "Diagram of a cell" visuals, that show maybe fifteen organelles of about 7 types in a cell. The truth is that the average human cells has thousands of different organelles.
- A cell diagram will typically depict a cell as having only one or a few mitochondria, but human cells typically have many thousands of mitochondria, as many as a million.
- A cell diagram will typically depict a cell as having only only one or a few lysosomes, but human cells typically have hundreds of lysosomes.
- A cell diagram will typically depict a cell as having only a few ribosomes, but a human cell may have up to 10 million ribosomes.
- A cell diagram will typically depict one or a few stacks of a Golgi apparatus, each with only a few cisternae. But a cell will typically have between 10 and 20 stacks, each having as many as 60 cisternae.
- A cell diagram will rarely even depict a microtubule, although according to the paper here "cells can contain from just a few to many hundreds of microtubules (Aikawa, 1971; Osborn & Weber, 1976)."
- The membranes of cells are extremely complicated structures, consisting of four layers, with each layer being populated by many types of proteins each consisting of hundreds of well-arranged parts. Some of this complexity could easily be shown by a "closeup circle" in a cell diagram, showing a closeup of part of the membrane. But we rarely see any such depiction of the complexity of the cell membrane, and cell diagrams almost always have cell membranes depicted as featureless things looking as simple as the surface of a balloon.
- The cytosol of a cell is typically depicted as if it were a simple fluid like water. But the cytosol is actually loaded with many types of complex protein molecules needed for cell function.
How do organelles originate? Scientists don't understand that. DNA does not specify how to make any organelles. The chart below illustrates what is not specified by DNA. None of the seven higher levels of organization in the human body is specified by DNA, which contains only low-level chemical information. DNA contains no information on human anatomy and no information on cellular structure.
On page 2 of the document here we read this:
"Organelle biogenesis is the process by which new organelles are made. In a few cases,
notably mitochondria and chloroplasts, some organelle proteins are encoded by the organelle’s
own genome. However, the amount of DNA in such organelles can encode only a very small
number of the many proteins required."
The same document says this on page 10: "Organelle biogenesis is not simply a question of delivering newly synthesized proteins and
lipids to a specific intracellular site but may also require the establishment of a complex architecture."
The same document on page 63 tells of the structural complexity of one type of organelle, the endoplasmic reticulum:
"The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) adopts a number of structural forms that correlate with distinct functions. The differentiation, maintenance, and proliferation of these forms are only beginning to be understood....The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is arguably the most dynamic and morphologically variable of all membranous organelles. The ER utilizes a cytoskeleton scaffold, associated motor proteins, and less well characterized mechanisms to undergo constant rearrangement while maintaining the characteristic forms of a continuous network of interconnected tubules, cisternae, and highly organized lamellar sheets. "
By "motor proteins" the quote is referring to protein complexes that look like tiny motors. On page 69 the document says, "In living cells, a number of studies find clear evidence for a role of microtubules and the motor protein kinesin in formation and breakdown of branching ER tubule polygon networks." The wikipedia.org article on kinesin shows an animation of a kinesin protein complex "walking" down a microtubule, like some kind of microscopic robot.
Cell Formation, Cell Reproduction
Scientists do not understand such a thing. They have identified particular stages in the most common type of cell reproduction (called mitosis): stages such as prophase, metaphase, anaphase and telophase. But without referring to higher-level “grand purpose” reasons, scientists do not understand why (on the individual cell level) a cell would pass through such phases and reproduce. A university press release confesses, "there are many remaining mysteries about how cells perform this remarkable feat." The answer is not at all "the cells follow the instructions in DNA." DNA does not contain any instructions for making cells or any specification or blueprint of a cell.
An M. Pitkanen (who has a PhD in theoretical physics) has written the following about cell division:
"Replication is one of the deepest mysteries of biology. It is really something totally counterintuitive if cell is seen as a sack of water plus some chemicals. We have a lot [of] facts about what happens in the replication at DNA level but how this miracle happens is a mystery. At cell level the situation gets even more complex."
"When a rapidly-growing cell divides into two smaller cells, what triggers the split? Is it the size the growing cell eventually reaches? Or is the real trigger the time period over which the cell keeps growing ever larger?...'How cells control their size and maintain stable size distributions is one of the most fundamental, unsolved problems in biology,' said Suckjoon Jun, an assistant professor of physics and molecular biology at UC San Diego...'Even for the bacterium E. coli, arguably the most extensively studied organism to date, no one has been able to answer this question.' ”
Anatomical structure | Cell Types Required |
Duodenum | Brunner's gland cell |
Respiratory Tract | Insulated goblet cell, "ciliated, non-ciliated secretory cells, and basal cells" (link). |
Digestive Tract | Insulated goblet cell, enterocytes, chief cells, enteric glial cells |
Stomach | Foveolar cell, chief cell, parietal cell, Enterochromaffin cell, Enterochromaffin-like cell |
Pancreas | Pancreatic acinar cell, Centroacinar cell, Pancreatic stellate cell, alpha cell, beta cell, delta cell, epislon cell |
Small intestine | Paneth cell, tuft cells |
Lungs | Type II pneumocyte, Club cell, Type I pneumocyte, Kultschitzky's cells |
Gall bladder | Gall bladder epithelial cell |
Tongue | Von Ebner's gland cell, surface epithelial cell, taste receptor cells |
Ear | Ceruminous gland cell, Planum semilunar epithelial cell, Organ of Corti interdental epithelial cell, Elastic cartilage chondrocyte, Inner pillar cells of organ of Corti, Outer pillar cells of the organ of Corti, Inner phalangeal cells of organ of Corti, Outer hair cells of vestibular system of ear, Inner hair cells of vestibular system of ear, Outer phalangeal cells of organ of Corti, Border cells of organ of Corti, Hensen's cells of organ of Corti |
Nose | Bowman's gland cell,Olfactory epithelium supporting cells, Olfactory ensheathing cells |
Cornea (eye) | Surface epithelial cell, Corneal fibroblasts |
Iris (eye) | Smooth muscle cell, iris pigment epithelium, stroma |
Retina (eye) | Retina horizontal cells, cone cells, rod cells, bipolar cells, ganglion cells, horizontal cells, amacrine cells |
Adrenal gland | Chromaffin cells |
Mouth | Surface epithelial cell, stromal cells, endothelial cells |
Nasal cavity | Surface epithelial cell, squamous cells |
Salivary glands | Striated duct cell, acinar cells, ductal cells, myoepithelial cells |
Mammary glands, breasts | Lactiferous duct cell, myoepithetial cell |
Central nervous system | Many types of neurons, stellate cell, microglial cell |
Heart | White fat cell, cardiac muscle cell, SA node cell, Purkinje fiber cell |
Ovary | Theca Interna cell, Corpus luteum cell, Granulosa lutein cells, Theca lutein cells |
Male reproductive system (e.g. testes) | Leydig cell, seminal vessicle cell,Bulbourethral gland cell, duct cell, efferent duct cells, Epididymal principal cell, Epididymal basal cell, Spermatid, Spermatocyte, Spermatogonium cell, Spermatozoon, Sertoli cell |
Prostate gland | Prostate gland cell, duct cell |
Female reproductive system | Oogonium/oocyte, granulosa cell, |
Vagina | Bartholin's gland cell, basal cells, parabasal cells, superficial squamous flat cells |
Uterus | Uterus endometrium cell |
Urethra | Gland of Littré cell |
Kidney | Macula densa cell, Peripolar cell, Principal cell, Mesangial cell, Kidney distal tubal cell, Intercalated cell, Interstitial kidney cells |
Urinary system | Parietal epithelial cell,Podocyte, Proximal tubule brush border cell, Loop of Henle thin segment cell |
Bladder | Transitional epithelium, urothelial cells, |
Circulatory system | Endothelial cells, vascular smooth muscle cells, lymphatic endothelial cells |
Tendons | Tendon fibroblasts, |
Bones (including bone marrow) | Erythrocyte, monocyte,Bone marrow reticular tissue fibroblasts.Osteoblast/osteocyte, Osteoprogenitor cell, Megakaryocyte, osteoclast |
Liver | Hepatic stellate cell, liver lipocyte, Kupffer cells, Cholangiocytes, progenitor cells, NK cells |
Intevertebral disc | Nucleus pulposus cell |
Adipose organ (fat system) | White fat cell, brown fat cell |
Muscles | Red skeletal muscle cell (slow twitch), White skeletal muscle cell (fast twitch), Intermediate skeletal muscle cell,Nuclear bag cell, Nuclear chain cell |
Endocrine glands | Myoepithelial cell |
Immune system | Macrophages, dendritic cell, Epidermal Langerhans cell, Neutrophil granulocyte, Basophil granulocyte, Mast cell, Helper T cell, Regulatory T cell, Cytotoxic T cell, Natural killer T cell, B cell(/lymphocyte), Plasma cell, Natural killer cell |
Skin and hair | Epidermal Langerhans cell, Keratinocyte, Epidermal basal cell, Melanocyte, Trichocyte, Medullary hair shaft cell, Cortical hair shaft cell, Cuticular hair shaft cell, Huxley's layer hair root sheath cell, Henle's layer hair root sheath cell, Outer root sheath hair cell |
Thymus | Epithelial reticular cell, |
Thryoid/Parathyroid | Thyroid epithelial cell, Parafollicular cell, Parathyroid chief cell |
Peripheral nervous system | Schwann cells, Satellite glial cells, |
Interneurons | Basket cells, Cartwheel cells, Stellate cells, Golgi cells, Granule cells, Lugaro cells, Unipolar brush cells, Martinotti cells. Chandelier cells, Cajal–Retzius cells, Double-bouquet cells, Neurogliaform cells |
Pituitary gland | Corticotropes, Gonadotropes, Lactotropes, Melanotropes, Somatotropes, Thyrotropes |
Because of such interdependence, there is typically no way to explain the appearance of two organs through any narrative in which first one organ appears and then much later another organ appears.
(Image credit: Wikipedia Commons, derived from Yuan et al. 2010, Structure of an apoptosome-procaspase-9 CARD complex)
"The process of programmed cell death, also known as apoptosis, is highly regulated, and the decision to die is made through the coordinated action of many molecules. The apoptosome plays the role of gatekeeper in one of the major processes, termed the intrinsic pathway. It lies between the molecules that sense a problem and the molecules that disassemble the cell once the choice is made. Normally, the many subunits of the apoptosome are separated and inactive, circulating harmlessly through the cell. When trouble occurs, they assemble into a star-shaped complex, which activates protein-cutting caspases that get apoptosis started."
Another site that includes a 3D rotating animation of the structure shown above says this:
"The apoptosome is revealed as a wheel-like complex with seven spokes. On top of the wheel is a spiral-shaped disk that allows for docking and subsequent activation of proteases, which then target cellular components. When active, the apoptosome is revealed to be a dynamic machine with three to five protease molecules tethered to the wheel at any given time."
The "Apaf 1" part of this complex (APAF_HUMAN ) involves 1248 amino acids.
The apoptosome protein complex is only one of many protein complexes in the body involved in homeostasis. Many of these protein complexes are so complex and machine-like they are called "molecular machines." Does this mean there is some mechanistic explanation for such wonders of microscopic engineering? Not at all.
The fact is that scientists have no explanation for how protein complexes are able to form. That is shown by the quotes I gave in the section above entitled "Protein complex origination." The fact that parts mysteriously form into a machine-like functionally effective well-engineered arrangement of parts does not at all mean that there is a mechanistic explanation. Similarly, if a tornado were to blow some scattered branches so that they formed into a functional cart of wood with four working wheels and two axles, such a mechanistic output would have no mechanistic explanation.
Every day throughout your body a great army of very many types of molecular machines are mysteriously forming, having just the right arrangements to perform maintenance feats necessary for the preservation of your body. The configuration of such fine-tuned protein complexes is not specified by DNA. We know of no explanation for these marvels of fine-tuned formation that are constantly occurring in your body to preserve your life.
Below are three examples of hierarchical organization: the Harry Potter book series, New York City, and the human body. I very roughly calculate an "organization index" by multiplying together some of the numbers in each column. The "organization index" gives a very rough idea of the amount of organization and special arrangement of parts to achieve the organized thing (a book series, a city or the human body). It seems that the construction of every human body requires far more organization and special arrangement of parts than are required to make New York City, and many times more organization and special arrangement of parts than is required to write a long book series such as the Harry Potter series.
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EXAMPLES OF HIERARCHICAL ORGANIZATION |
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A book series is made of books (for example, the Harry Potter series has 7 different books) |
New York City is made of 5 boroughs (for example, Manhattan and Queens) |
A human body is made mainly of a sketetal system and organ systems (about 10) |
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Books are made of chapters (about 30) |
Boroughs are each made of about 20 neighborhoods (for example, Astoria and Corona) |
Organ systems are made mainly of organs |
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Chapters are made of paragraphs (about 50) |
Neighborhoods are made of about 100 city blocks |
Organs are made of tissues |
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Paragraphs are made of sentences (about 5) |
City blocks are made of about 50 buildings |
Tissues are made of about 200 types of cells (about 100,000,000,000 per organ) |
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Sentences are made of words (about 10) |
Buildings are made of about 5 floors |
Cells are made of organelles of at least 10 types (about 100,000 per human cell) |
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Words are made of about 5 characters (letters) |
Floors are made of about 5 rooms |
Organelles are made of proteins and protein complexes, more than 1000 per organelle |
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Characters are made of pixels, about 50 |
Rooms are made of construction components such as bricks, pipes, two-by-four boards and floorboards (about 300) |
Human protein complexes are made of protein molecules (about 10 per protein complex) |
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Protein molecules are made of amino acids (20 types), between about 200 and 2000 amino acids per protein molecule |
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Organization index = 7*30*50*6*12*5*50=131,250,000 |
Organization index = 5*20*100*50*5*5*300= 3,750,000,000 |
Organization index =10*100,000,000,000*100,000*1000*10*200= 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 |
Minds and Memory Are Just as Mechanistically Inexplicable as Bodies
The paragraphs above help explain why your adult body is a miracle of fine-tuned organization beyond any genetic or mechanistic explanation. In the sense that you have a body that is beyond any mechanistic or genetic explanation, you may truly say that in one sense you are a miracle. But there is a whole other sense in which you are a miracle, which is that neither your mind nor your memory have any mechanistic or genetic or neural explanation.
- How is a human able to ever instantly learn all of the many different things that humans can learn?
- How is a human ever able to retain memories for decades, something that should be impossible from units such as synapses, which are built from proteins which have average lifetimes of only a few weeks or less?
- How could a brain ever store a memory when nothing in a brain seems to bear any resemblance to some component capable of writing information?
- How could a brain ever read a memory when nothing in a brain seems to bear any resemblance to some component capable of reading memory information?
- How could there possibly be memories stored in brains, when there has been the most careful microscopic examination of so many thousands of brains of very recently deceased people, and the most careful microscopic examination of so many thousands of chunks of brain tissue from living people, without any trace of learned memory ever being discovered from such examination?
- How could there possibly be memories stored in brains, when no one has ever discussed any encoding system whereby episodic memories or learned knowledge could be converted to neuron states or synapse states?
- How could a human ever instantly remember lots of relevant facts about a person, place or event as soon as he hears the name of such a person, place or event?
As shown in the many examples given here, here, here, here and here, contrary to the predictions of "brains make minds" and "brains store memories" thinkers, human minds can operate very well despite tremendous damage to the brain, caused by injury, disease or surgery. For example, removing half of a person's brain in the operation known as hemispherectomy produces little change in memory or cognitive abilities. There have been quite a few cases of people (such as Lorber's patients) who were able to think and speak very well despite having lost more than 60% of their brain due to disease. Such cases argue powerfully that the human mind is not actually a product of the brain or an aspect of the brain, and is not a storage place of human memories.
Although it is claimed that memories are stored in the brain (specifically in synapses), there is no place in the brain that is a plausible storage site for human memories that can last for 50 years or longer. The proteins that make up both synapses and dendritic spines are quite short-lived, being subject to very high molecular turnover which gives them an average lifetime of only a few weeks or less. The 2018 study here precisely measured the lifetimes of more than 3000 brain proteins from all over the brain, and found not a single one with a lifetime of more than 75 days (figure 2 shows the average protein lifetime was only 11 days). Both synapses and dendritic spines are a “shifting sands” substrate absolutely unsuitable for storing memories that last reliably for decades. Synapses are connected to dendritic spines, which have short lifetimes. A 2018 paper has a graph showing a 5-day "survival fraction" of only about 30% for dendritic spines in the cortex. A 2014 paper found that only 3% of new spines in the cortex persist for more than 22 days. Speaking of dendritic spines, a 2007 paper says, "Most spines that appear in adult animals are transient, and the addition of stable spines and synapses is rare." A 2016 paper found a dendritic spine turnover rate in the neocortex of 4% every 2 days. A 2018 paper found only about 30% of new and existing dendritic spines in the cortex remaining after 16 days (Figure 4 in the paper).
It is claimed that memories are stored in brains, but humans are able to instantly recall accurately very obscure items of knowledge and memories learned or experienced decades ago; and the brain seems to have none of the characteristics that would allow such a thing. The recall of an obscure memory from a brain would require some ability to access the exact location in the brain where such a memory was stored (such as the neurons near neuron# 8,124,412,242). But given the lack of any neuron coordinate system or any neuron position notation system or anything like an indexing system or addressing system in the brain, it would seem impossible for a brain to perform anything like such an instantaneous lookup of stored information from some exact spot in the brain.
If humans were storing their memories in brains, there would have to be a fantastically complex translation system (almost infinitely more complicated than the ASCII code or the genetic code) by which mental concepts, words and images are translated into neural states. But no trace of any such system has ever been found, no one has given a credible detailed theory of how it could work, and if it existed it would be a “miracle of design” that would be naturally inexplicable.
If human brains actually stored conceptual and experiential memories, the human brain would have to have both a write mechanism by which exact information can be precisely written, and a read mechanism by which exact information can be precisely read. The brain seems to have neither of these things. There is nothing in the brain similar to the “read-write” heads found in computers.
We know from our experience with computers the type of things that an information storage and retrieval system uses and requires. The human brain seems to have nothing like any of these things.
As discussed here, humans can form new memories instantly, at a speed much faster than would be possible if we were using our brains to store such memories. It is typically claimed that memories are stored by “synapse strengthening” and protein synthesis, but such things do not work fast enough to explain the formation of memories that can occur instantly.
Contrary to the idea that human memories are stored in synapses, the density of synapses sharply decreases between childhood and early adulthood. We see no neural effect matching the growth of learned memories in human.
There are many humans with either exceptional memory abilities (such as those with hyperthymesia or HSAM who can recall every day of their adulthood) or exceptional thinking abilities (such as savants with incredible calculation abilities). But such cases do not involve larger brains, very often involve completely ordinary brains, and quite often involve damaged brains, quite to the contrary of what we would expect from the “brains make minds” assumption.
For decades microscopes have been powerful enough to detect memories in brains, if memories existed in brains. Very much brain tissue has been studied by the most powerful microscopes: both brain tissue extracting from living patients, and brain tissue extracted from someone very soon after he died. Very many thousands of brains have been examined soon after death. Microscopes now allow us to see very clearly what is in the tiniest brain structures such as dendritic spines and synapse heads. But microscopic examination of brain tissue has failed to reveal any trace whatsoever of learned information in a brain. No one has found a single letter of the alphabet stored in a brain; no has found a single number stored in a brain; and no one has ever found even a single pixel of something someone saw a day or more before. If memories were stored in human brains, microscopes would have revealed decisive evidence of such a thing decades ago. But no such evidence has appeared.
- There is nothing in the brain that looks like learned information stored according to some systematic format that humans understand or do not understand. Even when scientists cannot figure out a code used to store information, they often can detect hallmarks of encoded information. For example, long before Europeans were able to decipher how hieroglyphics worked, they were able to see a repetition of symbolic tokens that persuaded them that some type of coding system was being used. Nothing like that can be seen in the brain. We see zero signs that synapses or dendritic spines are any such things as encoded information.
- Many humans can remember with perfect accuracy very long bodies of text, such as hundreds of pages; but synapses in the brain do not reliably transmit information. An individual chemical synapse transmits an action potential with a reliability of only 50% or less, as little as 10%. A recall of long bodies of text would require a traversal of very many chemical synapses. A scientific paper says, "In the cortex, individual synapses seem to be extremely unreliable: the probability of transmitter release in response to a single action potential can be as low as 0.1 or lower." Moreover, the brain lacks any physical structure consistent with an ability to store very long sequences of information, as I discuss here.
- Humans often form vivid new memories while humans are having near-death experiences taking place during cardiac arrest, when the brain has shut down, showing only flatlines of electrical activity. That brain state is called asystole, and it occurs within about 10 to 20 seconds after the heart stops. If memories are created by the brain, the formation of new memories should be impossible while the brain is electrically inactive. But we know that very vivid and detailed memories can form during such states of brain electrical inactivity. That would not be possible if memory formation is a brain activity. Moreover, during near-death experiences occurring asystole, people do not find themselves as minds without memories. They find themselves as the same selves with the same memories. There are endless accounts along the lines of this: "Suddenly I was floating outside of my body, and could see it beneath me. Later I saw my deceased mother." No such experiences would occur if a soul lacking memory powers were to persist after the heart stopped and brain waves stopped. In that case there would be no memory recall, and no memory formation.
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