It finally came. The vaccine. Not that we doubted, with brilliant scientists at work all over the world and the urgency of a devastating pandemic. This particular vaccine is a triumph of modern biology. A piece of genetic material called messenger RNA has been custom made with instructions to fabricate a particular protein found on the skin of the coronavirus. Under that RNA’s directive, our cells make zillions of copies of the protein, harmless in themselves, but recognized as uninvited guests at the table. Our immune system, the T-cells and B-cells, are called into action and fabricate customized antibody molecules to dismantle the protein. Those antibodies remain in the body so that when a full virus particle invades us, there will be an army ready and waiting to conquer it.
What strikes me in this success story is that our bodies do most of the work. The vaccine is simply a trigger to set into motion the astounding machinery already built into our bodies. Defeat of the virus is a collaborative effort, but one in which our bodies do most of the heavy lifting.
I would argue that the human body is more complex, and more amazing, than any other known object in the universe. Planets, stars, even black holes, are simple by comparison. Every second, the human body produces 25 million new cells. And each one of those cells undergoes about 100 million chemical reactions per second. The nose can distinguish about 1000 billion different odors.
Returning to the human body’s ability to create particular antibodies to protect us against particular invading viruses, the variable section of each antibody is composed of a string of about 100 amino acids. Since there are 20 different amino acids, that leads to 20100 uniquely different possible antibodies. Or, writing out the zeroes, our bodies are capable of making about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000 uniquely different antibodies. None of the marvels we human beings have built – from the ancient pyramids and aqueducts to steam engines to automobiles to computers to smart phones – is as amazing as our own bodies. Each of us is a walking wonder of engineering and design.
Mere numbers cannot convey the genius of the human body. Poets have taken their turn. Here is Walt Whitman, from his incomparable Song of Myself (1892): “I am the poet of the body . . . If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it . . . . The smoke of my own breath, Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine, My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs.”
And Emily Dickinson, in her famous poem “The Brain:”
The brain is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside
Dickinson’s poem describes perhaps the most astonishing part of our bodies, our brains, and the wondrous ability of our brains, our imagination. Beyond that is the most ineffable quality of our existence: our consciousness, which remains mysterious to philosophers and neuroscientists alike.
You could hook up the hundred billion neurons of your brain to a giant computer and read out all of their electrical quiverings, and you still wouldn’t understand the nature of consciousness, the origin of that unique sensation of “I-ness” that we call consciousness. And how could it be that a mere material collection of atoms and molecules could produce such a sensation. In all other areas of science, we study a thing from the outside looking in. We put a box around the thing and poke it and twist it and measure it from our comfortable vantage outside the box. But with consciousness, we can’t get outside of the box. Some philosophers, like Colin McGinn and Thomas Nagel, argue that the task is impossible. [See my earlier blog posting on consciousness.] Our consciousness is so unfathomable and unique, perhaps we can never be sure whether we are in the box or outside the box.
As I write these words about brains and minds, my own mind is wandering down dimly lit hallways, opening doors here and there, and I think of how quantum physics has changed our ideas of the distinction between the observed and the observer.
There’s a famous experiment in quantum physics suggesting that the observer is always inside the box – inseparable from the thing being observed. It’s called the “double slit” experiment. A device emits small particles (like electrons) one at a time, which travel towards a plate. The plate has two holes or slits in it. After passage through one or the other hole, the particles land on a screen, where their position of impact is recorded.
The following successive measurements are made: (1) The upper hole is blocked, so that the particles can travel only through the lower hole. The resulting pattern on the screen is recorded. (2) the upper hole is unblocked, the lower hole is blocked, and the pattern on the screen is recorded. (3) Both holes are opened, and the pattern on the screen is recorded. (4) Lastly, instruments are placed on the plate to measure whether each particle passes through the top hole or the bottom hole. The instruments do not interfere with the particles’ trajectories; they just light up if a particle goes through their respective hole. Remarkably, the pattern on the screen is not the same as for (3). It is a pattern matching either (1) or (2). Evidently, the pattern on the screen depends on whether the particles are observed at the intermediate point of the plate. The mere observation changes the result. The observer (whether a human eye or a photoelectric cell) is an inescapable part of the phenomenon. The observer cannot be separated from the observed.
What does quantum physics thus say about consciousness? If we are always inside the box, then not only can we not fully observe own brains in any detached way, but we cannot observe anything else in a fully detached way. Then, perhaps, our notion of an “external reality” outside of ourselves is oversimplified.
And yet, we are able to make extremely precise predictions about the world outside of our bodies.
The universe is a strange place. Despite all our advancements in science, there are still many phenomena and ideas that baffle us. And most baffling and wondrous of all are our own bodies and minds, performing millions of intricate activities in secrecy as we spin along in some tapestry of space and of time.
Amen.