Brain surgery boosts spirituality Lose a tumour, gain self-transcendence.

scientific american

February 10, 2010 | 4 comments

Brain surgery boosts spirituality

Lose a tumour, gain self-transcendence.

By Janelle Weaver

Removing part of the brain can induce inner peace, according to researchers from Italy. Their study provides the strongest evidence to date that spiritual thinking arises in, or is limited by, specific brain areas.

To investigate the neural basis of spirituality, Cosimo Urgesi, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Udine, and his colleagues turned to people with brain tumours to assess the feeling before and after surgery. Three to seven days after the removal of tumours from the posterior part of the brain, in the parietal cortex, patients reported feeling a greater sense of self-transcendence. This was not the case for patients with tumours removed from the frontal regions of the brain.

"Self-transcendence used to be considered just by philosophers and crank new age people," says co-author Salvatore Aglioti, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Sapienza University of Rome. "This is the first really close-up study on spirituality. We're dealing with a complex phenomenon that's close to the essence of being human."

The authors pinpointed two parts of the brain that, when damaged, led to increases in spirituality: the left inferior parietal lobe and the right angular gyrus. These areas at the back of the brain are involved in how we perceive our bodies in spatial relation to the external world. The authors of the study in the journal Neuron1, say that their findings support the connection between mystic experiences and feeling detached from the body.

"The most surprising part was the rapidity of the change," says Urgesi. "This discovery shows that some complex personality traits are more malleable than previously thought."

The science of spirituality

The researchers interviewed 88 people with brain tumours of various severities. Twenty of these people had benign tumours and although they underwent surgery no tissue was removed. All 88 people participated in interviews about their religious habits and beliefs before surgery and afterwards answered a series of true or false questions that assessed spirituality. The questionnaire tapped into three main components of self-transcendence: losing yourself in the moment, feeling connected to other people and nature, and believing in a higher power. Examples of the items on the questionnaire include: "I often become so fascinated with what I'm doing that I get lost in the moment - like I'm detached from time and place" and "I sometimes feel so connected to nature that everything seems to be part of one living organism."

The researchers then mapped the precise areas of the patients' brains where they had lesions as a result of surgery. Previous studies have shown that a broad network of frontal and parietal brain regions underlies religious beliefs 2,3,4,5. But spirituality does not seem to involve exactly the same regions of the brain as religion.

In the past, neurologists have observed spiritual changes in patients with brain damage, but it is not something they systematically evaluate. "We usually stay away from it, not because it's not an important topic, but because it's very private and personal," says Rik Vandenberghe, a neurologist at the University Hospital Gasthuisberg in Leuven, Belgium. "This paper is very interesting, but like many pioneering studies, it leaves open many questions." Vandenberghe, who uses a similar lesion-mapping technique, says the data should be interpreted with caution. "It's very unlikely that something like self-transcendence is localizable to just two brain areas," he says.

Coarse measure

Probably the most worrisome aspect of the study is the way the authors measured self-transcendence. "It's important to recognize that the whole study is based on changes in one self-report measure, which is a coarse measure that includes some strange items," says cognitive neuroscientist Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "In the future, it will be important to understand why lesions in the parietal cortex induce changes on this scale."

"Self-transcendence is an abstract concept, and different people will attribute different meanings to the word," says Vandenberghe. Patient self reporting is not always accurate, he says, adding that tapping into spirituality with more rigorous behavioural measures and pinpointing the specific thoughts and feelings that constitute it are the obvious next steps.

In future studies, Urgesi would like to measure other aspects of spirituality and determine how long changes in spirituality last in patients. He'd also like to inactivate parietal regions in healthy subjects using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a non-invasive technique that temporarily changes neural activity in a specific region, to see if he can induce immediate changes in self-transcendence. He envisions a day when TMS can be used to increase the feeling of self-transcendence in people with neurological or psychological disorders.

Career Advice

Perspective: Transitioning from Pet to Peer

By Stephanie Pfirman, Caryn Block, Robin Bell, Loriann Roberson, Patricia Culligan

January 29, 2010

So what exactly is a pet, and how can you avoid becoming one?

At professional meetings, people compliment you on your talks. You're often picked for oral, rather than poster, presentations. You are invited to give talks at other institutions and to serve on professional committees. Your university often calls on you to be their public face: You are trotted out for interviews with the press, asked to give research seminars to alumni, and invited to meet with potential donors. It's easy to feel good about the direction your career is heading in.

Then, not long before you come up for tenure, you are told there are questions about your case and that you urgently need to strengthen your tenure dossier. What happened?

Research shows that most successful academic careers have four stages; first you are an apprentice, then a colleague, then a mentor, and finally a sponsor. Apprentices learn the trade from a mentor and earn their status through the field's structured norms. Senior colleagues must come to value their judgment, to view them as serious thinkers whose contributions matter, and to consider them worthy bosses -- "acceptable as their department chair," as one of our colleagues put it.

That respect is earned by serving an apprenticeship. Scientists viewed as apprentices, who proceed to meet their institutions requirements, typically sail through the transition to colleague and peer.

But it is our observation that not every probationary faculty member is viewed as an apprentice, and hence, not every one has the same opportunity to make that transition. Some -- including some of the most outwardly promising, such as the hot young scientist described above -- come to be viewed as what we call "pets" instead of apprentices. Pets may have a harder time attaining the status of colleague within their department, and the early praise and high-profile roles they are offered can instill a false sense of security that puts them at risk of a negative tenure decision.

So what exactly is a pet, and how can you avoid becoming one?

In our experience, an early-career scientist can end up being a pet for a number of reasons, but most share this in common: They are different in some way. The difference could be gender or ethnicity, but it could also have to do with institutional pedigree or the type of research. Often, their research is interdisciplinary. Pets may have a way of expressing themselves that is unusual for their field. They may, for example, be media-savvy -- a characteristic their scientist colleagues might not respect. Pets are valued for their diversity, but not as members -- or potential members -- of the in-group.

Apprentices, in contrast to pets, are mentored to conduct research that has been "certified" as mainstream and, by the local definition, at the cutting edge. They publish with -- and often look, dress, and use the same style of discourse as -- their mentors and eminent people in the field. Indeed, they may be chosen as apprentices precisely because they fit so well the demographics, background, attitudes, values, and beliefs of their established colleagues. As perceived shared identity increases, so does mentoring.

In their early years, pets get feedback -- or appear to -- similar to what apprentices receive. Indeed, distinctiveness can be an advantage and lead to special opportunities. But when their research diverges from the local mainstream, their colleagues may regard it as peripheral, unimportant, or lacking in rigor. Meanwhile, those early signals may lead pets to believe that they are on the right track. But the same qualities that led to early recognition may be penalized at this later, critical stage. They feel betrayed when questions are raised late in the game.

Although we are not aware of research addressing this issue, there is related research from the women and science literature. Study after study has shown that early in their careers, women feel supported by their departments, don't experience stereotyping, and assume that being female will not present any real difficulties.

But, as documented in a high-profile Massachusetts Institute of Technology Report, as women progress, they become increasingly aware of gender discrimination. This increased awareness has been attributed to the fact that the junior ranks are more diverse, so judgments are inherently more fair. But it may also be because senior colleagues have so far compared these newcomers only with each other; they haven't yet started comparing them with themselves.

Although being distinctive within a junior cohort has value, problems arise when tenure committees start asking, is the candidate on track to become a researcher such as Dr. X? This older group is not diverse, and because it helped to establish the norms of the field, it knows them well and enforces them. They know that anyone they grant tenure is likely to some day be their department chair. To ensure they're likely to agree with your future judgments, they need your criteria to match theirs. The diversity that was so attractive when you were younger becomes uncomfortable.

What to look for, and what to do about it

From our description, it should be clear that becoming a pet is undesirable. Are you heading down that path? How can you know? Early in their probationary period, pets get lots of reassurance, but if you pay close attention, you can sense potential trouble.

- People seem to value your presence more than your actual contributions.

- People express surprise at your high performance in a mainstream activity or subtly attribute your success to your difference.

- You get nice feedback but don't get much helpful advice; for example, you are complimented on how well you spoke during your presentation, but no one tells you how to improve it.

- You are called by your first name and introduced informally in situations where your peers are referred to as Dr. X and Professor Y and given carefully prepared introductions.

- You feel different from your colleagues and sense they also consider you different in some way.

- Because of your difference, no one in your department feels they can mentor you effectively.

If you suspect you may be becoming -- or have already become -- a pet, the most important thing is not to be seduced by the early attention you receive, and to focus on meeting the most rigorous tenure standards.

- Build a tenure dossier your senior colleagues and the distinguished scientists in your field would consider strong. Publish in the highest-impact journals and, even if your work is interdisciplinary, get some publications published in mainstream journals known and valued by your department.

- In presentations, articles, proposals, research statements, and discussions, make sure that you articulate why your research matters. Describe it in ways that make it difficult for others to dismiss it as fringe, niche, optional, or lacking in rigor.

- Accept only invitations that advance your scientific reputation; avoid those that could be labeled as "service."

- When you give presentations, include references to mainstream work so that you don't isolate yourself or your scholarship. Provide session chairs with a brief biography so that it is easy for them to state your credentials when they introduce you.

- Present your research at the annual meetings of your professional society, not just at interdisciplinary and specialty venues. Propose special sessions where you and your research can be seen as leading the mainstream. Invite prominent researchers to present in your session. This can help to shape people's perceptions of the field you play in.

- Be proactive about getting to know, and then seeking research advice and mentoring from, people who are leaders in your field. Including eminent scholars as co-authors on presentations, publications, and proposals may be helpful. But do this selectively. Some will assume that primary credit for a piece of work belongs with the most established co-author.

The consequences of being viewed as different due to your gender, race, research, or institutional pedigree are complex and difficult to overcome. The key is to recognize what's happening and to not let the early, positive attention distract you from building an impervious record of scholarship.

Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) under Cooperative Agreement SBE-0245014, ADVANCE at the Columbia University Earth Institute. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF.

References and Related Reading

A. H. Eagly and S. J. Karau, "Role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders." Psychological Review 109, 573 (2002).

L. T. Eby et al., "The Protege's Perspective Regarding Negative Mentoring Experiences: The Development of a Taxonomy." Journal of Vocational Behavior 57, 1 (2000) available online.

G. W. Dalton et al. "The four stages of professional careers: A new look at performance by professionals." Organizational Dynamics 6, 19 (1977).

D. C. Feldman, " Toxic Mentors or Toxic Proteges? A Critical Re-Examination of Dysfunctional Mentoring." Human Resource Management Review 9, 247 (1999).

M. E. Heilman, "The impact of situational factors on personnel decisions concerning women: Varying the sex composition of the applicant pool." Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 26, 386 (1980).

M. E. Heilman, "Description and prescription: How Gender Stereotypes Prevent Women's Ascent Up the Organizational Ladder." Journal of Social Issues 57 , 657 (2001).

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Report, "A Study on the Status of Women Faculty in Science at MIT." The MIT Faculty Newsletter XI, 4 (1999).

P. R. Sackett et al., "Tokenism in performance evaluation: The effects of work group representation on male-female and White-Black differences in performance ratings." Journal of Applied Psychology 76, 263 (1991).

D. B. Turban et al., " Role of Protégé Personality in Receipt of Mentoring and Career Success." Academy of Management Journal 37, 688 (1994).

Photo (top): A. Kotok

Text corrected, 2 February 2010.

Stephanie Pfirman is Hirschorn Professor and chair of the environmental science department at Barnard College and a member of Columbia University's Earth Institute (EI) ADVANCE program, both in New York City. Caryn J. Block is an associate professor of social-organizational psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University. Robin Bell is Doherty Senior Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia and a member of the university's EI ADVANCE program. Loriann Roberson is a professor of psychology and education in the Social-Organizational Psychology Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Patricia Culligan is a professor of civil engineering and engineering mechanics and a member of the EI ADVANCE program.

10.1126/science.caredit.a1000011

The Sun is a Variable Star

Solar Dynamics Observatory: The 'Variable Sun' Mission

February 5, 2010: For some years now, an unorthodox idea has been gaining favor among astronomers. It contradicts old teachings and unsettles thoughtful observers, especially climatologists.

"The sun," explains Lika Guhathakurta of NASA headquarters in Washington DC, "is a variable star."

But it looks so constant...

That's only a limitation of the human eye. Modern telescopes and spacecraft have penetrated the sun's blinding glare and found a maelstrom of unpredictable turmoil. Solar flares explode with the power of a billion atomic bombs. Clouds of magnetized gas (CMEs) big enough to swallow planets break away from the stellar surface. Holes in the sun's atmosphere spew million mile-per-hour gusts of solar wind.

And those are the things that can happen in just one day.

Over longer periods of decades to centuries, solar activity waxes and wanes with a complex rhythm that researchers are still sorting out. The most famous "beat" is the 11-year sunspot cycle, described in many texts as a regular, clockwork process. In fact, it seems to have a mind of its own.

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"It's not even 11 years," says Guhathakurtha. "The cycle ranges in length from 9 to 12 years. Some cycles are intense, with many sunspots and solar flares; others are mild, with relatively little solar activity. In the 17th century, during a period called the 'Maunder Minimum,' the cycle appeared to stop altogether for about 70 years and no one knows why."

There is no need to go so far back in time, however, to find an example of the cycle's unpredictability. Right now the sun is climbing out of a century-class solar minimum that almost no one anticipated.

"The depth of the solar minimum in 2008-2009 really took us by surprise," says sunspot expert David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "It highlights how far we still have to go to successfully forecast solar activity."

That's a problem, because human society is increasingly vulnerable to solar flare ups. Modern people depend on a network of interconnected high-tech systems for the basics of daily life. Smart power grids, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services, emergency radio communications—they can all be knocked out by intense solar activity. According to a 2008 study by the National Academy of Sciences, a century-class solar storm could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina.

Right: Areas of the USA vulnerable to power system collapse in response to an extreme geomagnetic storm. Source: National Academy of Sciences. [more]

"Understanding solar variability is crucial," says space scientist Judith Lean of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC. "Our modern way of life depends upon it."

Enter the Solar Dynamics Observatory—"SDO" for short—slated to launch on Feb. 9, 2010, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

SDO is designed to probe solar variability unlike any other mission in NASA history. It will observe the sun faster, deeper, and in greater detail than previous observatories, breaking barriers of time-scale and clarity that have long blocked progress in solar physics.

Above: These sunspot magnetic fields are about to erupt. SDO will take pictures like this, only much better, with 10-times HD resolution, big and crisp enough to fill the screen of an IMAX theatre. [movie]

Guhathakurta believes that "SDO is going to revolutionize our view of the sun."

The revolution begins with high-speed photography. SDO will record IMAX-quality images of the sun every 10 seconds using a bank of multi-wavelength telescopes called the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA). For comparison, previous observatories have taken pictures at best every few minutes with resolutions akin to what you see on the web, not at a movie theatre. Researchers believe that SDO's rapid-fire cadence could have the same transformative effect on solar physics that the invention of high-speed photography had on many sciences in the 19th century.

SDO doesn't stop at the stellar surface. SDO's Helioseismic Magnetic Imager (HMI) can actually look inside the sun at the solar dynamo itself.

The solar dynamo is a network of deep plasma currents that generates the sun's tangled and sometimes explosive magnetic field. It regulates all forms of solar activity from the lightning-fast eruptions of solar flares to the slow decadal undulations of the sunspot cycle.

Right: An artist's concept of the solar dynamo. Movie #1, #2, #3.

"Understanding the inner workings of the solar dynamo has long been a 'holy grail' of solar physics," says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "HMI could finally deliver this to us."

The dynamo is hidden from view by about 140,000 miles of overlying hot gas. SDO penetrates the veil using a technique familiar to geologists—seismology. Just as geologists probe Earth's interior using waves generated by earthquakes, solar physicists can probe the sun's interior using acoustic waves generated by the sun's own boiling turbulence. HMI detects the waves, which researchers on Earth can transform into fairly clear pictures.

"It's a little like taking an ultrasound of a pregnant mother," Pesnell explains. "We can see 'the baby' right through the skin."

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Sidebar: 'Solar Constant' is an Oxymoron Astronomers were once so convinced of the sun's constancy, they called the irradiance of the sun "the solar constant," and they set out to measure it as they would any constant of Nature. By definition, the solar constant is the amount of solar energy deposited at the top of Earth's atmosphere in units of watts per meter-squared. All wavelengths of radiation are included—radio, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x-rays and so on. The approximate value of the solar constant is 1361 W/m2. Clouds, atmospheric absorption and other factors complicate measurements from Earth's surface, so NASA has taken the measuring devices to space. Today, VIRGO, ACRIM and SORCE are making measurements with precisions approaching 10 parts per million per year. Future instruments scheduled for flight on NASA's Glory and NOAA's NPOESS spacecraft aim for even higher precisions. To the amazement of many researchers, the solar constant has turned out to be not constant. "'Solar constant' is an oxymoron," says Judith Lean of the Naval Research Lab. "Satellite data show that the sun's total irradiance rises and falls with the sunspot cycle by a significant amount." Right: Measurements from the SORCE mission indicate that the variability of total solar irradiance has decreased over the past six years. [larger image] [movie] At solar maximum, the sun is about 0.1% brighter than it is at solar minimum. That may not sound like much, but consider the following: A 0.1% change in 1361 W/m2 equals 1.4 Watts/m2. Averaging this number over the spherical Earth and correcting for Earth's reflectivity yields 0.24 Watts for every square meter of our planet. "Add it all up and you get a lot of energy," says Lean. "How this might affect weather and climate is a matter of—at times passionate—debate." Because SDO specializes in extreme ultraviolet wavelengths, it won't be making direct measurements of the total solar irradiance, which requires sensitivity across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Nevertheless, a combination of data from SDO and other spacecraft could shed new light on this important topic—and perhaps reveal other oxymorons as well.

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SDO: The Variable Sun Mission (Continued)

Finally – and of most immediate relevance for Earth--SDO will observe the sun at wavelengths where the sun is most variable, the extreme ultraviolet (EUV). EUV photons are high-energy cousins of regular UV rays that cause sunburns. Fortunately, our atmosphere blocks solar EUV; otherwise a day at the beach could be fatal. In space, solar EUV emission is easy to detect and arguably the most sensitive indicator of solar activity.

"If human eyes could see EUV wavelengths, no one would doubt that the sun is a variable star," says Tom Woods of the University of Colorado in Boulder.

During a solar flare, the sun's extreme ultraviolet output can vary by factors of hundreds to thousands in a matter of seconds. Surges of EUV photons heat Earth's upper atmosphere, causing the atmosphere to "puff up" and drag down low-orbiting satellites. EUV rays also break apart atoms and molecules, creating a layer of ions in the upper atmosphere that can severely disturb radio signals. According to Judith Lean, "EUV controls Earth's environment throughout the entire atmosphere above about 100 km."

"EUV is where the action is," agrees Woods.

That's why Woods and colleagues built an extreme ultraviolet sensor for SDO called the EUV Variability Experiment ("EVE"). "EVE gives us the highest time resolution (10 sec) and the highest spectral resolution (<>

Woods expects EVE to reveal how fast the sun can change—"we really don't know," he points out—and to surprise astronomers with the size of the outbursts.

EVE, AIA, HMI. For the next five years, the Solar Dynamics Observatory will use these instruments to redefine our star and its potential for variability. What unorthodox ideas will they beam back? Old teachings beware!

Constraint propagation: A completely new take on souls

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Ambigamy

Insights for the Deeply Romantic and Deeply Skeptical

by Jeremy Sherman, Ph.D.

Constraint propagation: A completely new take on souls

Constraint propagation: A completely new take on souls

Published on November 4, 2009

This post is a response to Broken Symmetry: Nobel physicist explains why you miss old places, friends by Jeremy Sherman, Ph.D.

It's not true about the 21 grams. That was an error in measurement back in 1907 when Duncan McDougall claimed to have weighed a soul. There's no weight loss with death, which is fine with most people because we've long assumed the soul was a weightless, sizeless, timeless substance anyway. Still, weightless, size-less, timeless substances are scientific dead ends. If there's no way to detect a thing, then there's no way for science to get a grip on it. That's fine with most fans of the soul. Science should keep its hands off souls. But it's not OK with scientists. The dead end forces them to look for another explanation for why living bodies act so differently from dead ones.They have a new explanation, but it's not a thing. It is, in fact weightless and sizeless, but not timeless or a substance. I don't mean to be mysterious. I'm talking science so let me be concrete.Picture a small pile of metal. A machinist shapes it up and voila you've got, let's say, a lock and key. It's great. It's got function. It serves your purposes. Much more so than a small pile of metal. So what did you add that made it functional? Oxford professor Michael Polanyi says nothing was added. What makes it functional is not an addition but a subtraction. A pile of metal can take all sorts of forms. You can pile it this way; you can pile it that way. Locks and keys are highly constrained. Machinists make the parts with what they call "low tolerances" meaning a lot of constraint and specificity on their shapes and sizes so that the parts interact with each other just so. As a result, the lock and key do fewer things, not more than the pile did. When the lock and key get old and worn out, they lose function, but, Polanyi points out, they do so by gaining more possibilities, more configurations of the parts or technically, more "degrees of freedom." In other words the parts get looser than they were. Now the old clunker can jam or the key flops around. A broken machine does more things, not less. We prefer our machines highly constrained. An unreliable computer has more behaviors, more states it can be in. A reliable one has less, only the behaviors we want. The weightless, sizeless non-substance that makes things functional is constraint. You can't talk about the weight of the states the lock and key can't be in. You can't talk about the size of the states they can't be in. The states they can't be in aren't some added substance. But you can talk about time because constraint is a difference that occurs over time: Before, a loose pile of metal; after, a constrained lock and key, after, again a loose lock and key. I used to have an unreliable computer. I'm not saying whose operating system it ran, but I'll tell you it was way too versatile for me. I was amazed by the sheer variety of ways it would act. It seemed to invent new creative ways of bombing every day. For example, at the drop of a hat it would do blue screens which I'll grant was clever but not what I wanted when writing under a deadline. I wanted it to behave itself, to show some self-constraint. One day I got out of my blue-lighted chair and dropped down to the competitor's store. I had heard that their computers were less versatile. They did fewer things like blue screening. That was fine with me. I didn't need versatility; I needed functional constraint. I bought one and it's been a good three years for me and my much more limited computer. As a result, I've become more constrained too. I love my replacement computer by which I mean to say I'm constrained by it. I'd even say loyal, addicted and domesticated to it. Before, if you asked me what kind of computer I wanted, I'd have been more flexible. Now, I'm less flexible. I want only the kind I have. It is, what in business we call a proprietary good, one you shop for by brand. You accept no substitutes. In other words, you're constrained by it. My computer's makers likes it that way. They wants me to be as loyal, addicted and domesticated as I am. And now that the likes of me are buying their products, their employees go to work and rather than working on just anything all day, they're highly constrained too. They're constrained to working on how to make things that are constrained the way people like me want them to be. That way we customers will become that much more loyal, addicted and domesticated to their products. In other words more constrained. And then also if a friend asks me what kind of computer to buy, I won't say "Oh, I don't know," or name any of a dozen other brands. I'll be constrained to saying this brand. And in that way the constraint spreads or propagates. And what has this got to do with souls? Constraint and constraint propagation apply all the way up and down, with differences along the way that mark the shift from physics to chemistry, to biology to psychology sociology. At the bottom, if you read my article about Broken Symmetry, you'll find constraint even there. Remember, as the balanced broomstick tips over, the more it tips the more it tips? Before it tips, it is balanced symmetrically. It could tip in any direction. After it tips, its tip-able direction is highly and increasingly constrained. Your body is not a machine made by a man or, I'll argue, a creator. At least for scientists to fulfill their (constrained) obligation, they can't settle for saying the soul is a weightless, size-less, time-less substance that is made by a bigger fancier weightless, size-less, time-less substance. We can't therefore treat a living soulful being as the equivalent of lock and key made by the machinist. Still, in its functionality, your body and even your mind are like the lock and key if only in that they do consist of parts that are highly constrained to and by each other, and to their context. As the great philosopher Emannuel Kant said, "The definition of an organic body is that it is a body, every part of which is there for the sake of the other (reciprocally as end, and at the same time, means)” In later articles I'll talk more about how Kant's "means and ends" business relates to constraint, constraint propagation, causality, the origin of life, and souls, and also to missing the sweet souls that come and go in our lives. In the mean time, if this article constrains your thinking even a little, let it be by encouraging you to tip less toward explaining all behaviors as caused by new things and more toward explanations based on constraint. The leading researcher in this area, Terrence Deacon says, the whole is not more than the sum of its parts, its less. In other words, when parts start interacting with each other as wholes, they constrain each other. The whole lock does less things than the pile of metal pieces can do. And I know I know, this material is likely to give a reader a headache. That's the way it is with novel constraints sometimes, like the ones imposed by new counter-intuitive ideas. I'll do my best to keep these reflections grounded. And after all, it might be worth the effort. Researchers like Deacon are coming at old mysteries from new angles that might finally split them open, explaining lots.

Broken Symmetry: Nobel physicist explains why you miss old places, friends

Broken Symmetry: Nobel Physicists explain why you miss old places, friends.

Published on November 1, 2009

This post is a response to Emergence research: Just how did matter become mattering? by Jeremy Sherman, Ph.D.

The bittersweet sad intense pain of missing a place, a person, a crew, a time.

What's with that? How does that happen? Here's a take on it you probably haven't heard before.

I'll start way back with the big bang. If everything was all concentrated and homogeneous at the origin, how did our universe ever get so lumpy, with separate things like stars and planets, you and me? The 2008 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to scientists who identified the source as broken symmetry. A first pass explanation of their idea is simple.

You know how you can easily balance a broomstick on the palm of your hand? If it's centered, symmetrically upright, it tends to stay there. But if it tips asymmetrically toward one direction, then it becomes increasingly difficult to balance. The symmetry was broken. The tipped get tippier.

The butterfly effect is the most familiar version of this. Remember it? Conceivably a butterfly's wings flapping could lead to major shifts in weather patterns. People latched onto that idea as evidence of uncertainty and the potential for miracles. We like ideas that suggest that life has chutes-and-ladder-like qualities, so it's not just stepwise plodding. It gives us hope of rag-to-riches leverage but also allows that if we don't end up fulfilling our ambitions we have an explanation that makes it not our fault: "I tried, but life has surprising shoots and I fell down one."

Shoots and ladders aside, the butterfly effect is really about broken symmetry, how a little thing can start a big thing. How just as a slight tip can cause the broomstick to fall or how a shout can cause an avalanche. Think of it also as the way a meteorite passing the earth could fall under our gravitational influence, being taken off course. The closer it gets to the earth, the stronger the earth's gravitational pull. That's broken symmetry too.

With the big bang everything flew apart. It would have flown apart evenly but the tiniest little micro-variation got things tipping. Not falling over as like the broomstick but comparable. The universe got lumpy by the same basic process that made our moon. The moon formed when a meteor hit the earth kicking up an enormous dust cloud. Imagine that the dust started out almost evenly distributed, but little variations caused the gravitational pull in some regions to be greater than in others. The dense grew denser. And now most of that dust is concentrated in that great lump of green cheese. A little difference in distribution causes a big difference in concentrations. Broken symmetry explains seperateness and difference.

There's broken symmetry in thought and culture too. You meet someone, fall under their gravitational influence, start hanging out, fall further. For good or ill--it could be the love of your life or a heroin dealer. Either way a little tipping becomes a lot. And these days we're rarely tipped in just one direction. In ancient tribal days, you could be born into a tribe that tipped you strongly into its ways there, in the tribe you would stay for all your days. Now, we're under diverse influences. You move a thousand miles to be with your new partner, but miss your old town and people. You design your whole life around a job you love and then they lay you off and you have to find a new place to orbit.

Broken symmetry implies something really fundamental about the universe but also about your life. If the universe is lumpy, then this notion that we are all one and that everything is connected needs to be refined. We are all one but some of us are more one than others of us. Everything is connected but not equally. There are plenty of people who have negligible influence on you. They are off in their own lumpy region under their own influences. They're not part of your tribe and therefore are different from you. But then you happen to meet. You've been on independent pages a long time so you start out on different pages. But vive la difference, you like each other. Being with each other you start to influence each other. But lumpy life that it is, you're not just under their influence. You've got other influences operating on you from before and they still tug. So you miss what you had even while your drawn into what you're having. We are all planets under changing influences falling in with some and tearing away from others. Something like that.

There's more to this story of course. In particular I'll want to say more about influence. How does influence happen? For that we get into another one of these new scientific concepts: Constraint propagation.

Jan 13, 2010 03:00 PM in Energy & Sustainability | Post a comment

Paleontologist Peter Ward's "Medea hypothesis": Life is out to get you

By John Matson

What if the only thing life has to fear is life itself?

At a lecture Monday evening at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, paleontologist Peter D. Ward laid out the argument that life as we know it serves to make Earth less habitable—a downward spiral that might spell the eventual end of life on the planet. Ward, a professor at the University of Washington, calls this the Medea hypothesis, named for the murderous mother of Greek mythology. It is a direct challenge to scientist and futurist James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, which asserts that life constantly tweaks the dials on Earth's control systems to keep the planet in a nice, habitable homeostasis.

Ward has a recent book on the subject, The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? (Princeton University Press, 2009). To illustrate the difference between his theory and Lovelock's, the traveling Ward, in town to make the media rounds for his book, used a hotel analogy for Earth. Gaians, Ward says, think that hotel guests are likely to repaint their rooms and leave fresh flowers before checking out, whereas Medeans think that guests are liable to throw furniture out the window, trashing the room like Keith Moon in his prime.

At the lecture, moderator Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astronomer and the director of the museum's Hayden Planetarium, struggled to define the work of the polymath Ward, finally settling on "paleobiogeoastronomer."

And indeed, Ward's dour claim rests on analyses of carbon isotopes, paleofossils, asteroid impact rates and geologic formations. Most of the mass extinctions in history, Ward says, were caused by microorganisms, not by asteroid or comet impacts. Here is how: When Earth warms to the point that it no longer has cold poles and warm tropics, as the result of geologically released greenhouse gases, the oceans stop mixing. Without mixing, only the uppermost layer of the ocean remains oxygenated, and anaerobic bacteria that produce poisonous hydrogen sulfide gas thrive. Before long, the level of hydrogen sulfide in the atmosphere becomes lethal, simultaneously poisoning living creatures and shredding the ozone layer. "This is life killing itself off," Ward says.

As with today's climate crisis, carbon dioxide is the culprit in the ultimately catastrophic warming. Of course, the ultimate source of Earth's massive die-offs wasn't anthropogenic or even the fault of life—Ward points to volcanic floods that churned out enough CO₂ to shut down ocean mixing driven by temperature differentials. But thanks to the actions of humankind, the delicate balance that keeps Earth habitable is once again in danger. "All you need is enough [warming] to reduce the temperature difference between the poles and the equator, and the whole system goes down," Ward says.

Thankfully, perhaps, such dire predictions for climate change—not displacement, war or even famine but a nearly wholesale elimination of life of Earth—rest on equally dire forecasts for CO₂ levels. Whereas many experts set 350 parts per million as the maximum acceptable level for atmospheric CO₂ (today's atmosphere is at about 390 ppm), Ward says that these warming-driven catastrophes arise at about 1,000 ppm. That's not to say that things won't get ugly along the way, with arable land disappearing and rising seas rewriting maps of the world, but there may at least be some air to breathe for another two centuries or so.

As for fixes, Ward did not have any ready answers other than hoping that currently iffy technologies can take off. Practicable nuclear fusion would help a lot, as would advances in bioengineering. "We can convince microbes to do some very interesting things," he says, pointing specifically to their promise in systems to produce food and fuel. Ward is aware that betting on currently untenable technologies as the way out may seem like pie-in-the sky dreaming. "Look, if you don't have hope, you don't do anything," he says. "You go out and get a drink."

Cover image: Princeton University Press

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From the January 2010 Scientific American Magazine | 12 comments

The Nuclear Doomsday Clock Still Ticks

As long as opportunities and excuscientific americanses for nuclear aggression persist, the world will never be safe from annihilation

By Lawrence M. Krauss

Early last October the Nobel Prize committee announced that it was awarding Barack Obama the Peace Prize for his “vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.” At the same time, in counterpoint to that news, it was reported that the director of India’s 1998 nuclear testing program had called for new tests. That move provoked fears of escalation, in case it motivated Pakistan and China to recommence testing and made it even harder for the U.S. to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Although some 150 countries have ratified the treaty, neither the U.S., China nor India has yet done so.

The chair of India’s Atomic Energy Commission has stated that his nation does not need to carry out any more tests; one can only hope that India’s policy makers agree and that by the time this essay appears, the world will not yet have taken one more step toward the brink.

Such news underscores that nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation won’t be going away soon. On January 13 and 14 the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is hosting in New York City its first annual Doomsday Clock Symposium, where a decision regarding the setting of the minute hand on its famous Doomsday Clock will be made. The clock has served for nearly 65 years as an international symbol of the level of risk that the world faces from nuclear weapons and, more recently, from all potentially globally destructive technologies.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I am co-chair, along with physicist Leon Lederman, of the board of sponsors of the Bulletin, a group formed by Albert Einstein in 1946, with J. Robert Oppenheimer as its chair. But my purpose here is not to promote the Bulletin itself but rather what it stands for.

No issue carries more importance to the long-term health and security of humanity than the effort to reduce and, perhaps one day, rid the world of nuclear weapons. The U.S. can and should take a leading role in this effort, but until recently, President Obama’s verbiage aside, our actions have done far too little to encourage this goal, and quite frankly we have too often discouraged it.

We live in a dangerous world, and actions by countries such as Iran and North Korea need to be monitored carefully, but the response should be commensurate with the threat.

President Obama was correct to end the planned installation of a missile defense system in Poland, not merely because Iran does not possess ICBMs capable of carrying nuclear warheads but because the proposed missile defense system, a mirror of the flawed one currently installed in the U.S., does not work and never has. Commissioning an unworkable defense against a nonexistent threat, especially when such a system in Eastern Europe clearly increased other international tensions with Russia, made no strategic sense. The mobile short-range missile defense system proposed as an alternative is more likely to function against any actual threat from Iran.

Still, President Obama’s hopes for a nuclear-free world cannot be met if we continue to act as if the U.S. should have an unfettered monopoly on such weapons. How can we expect other countries to show restraint when we have not yet ratified the CTBT, even though we can verify compliance effectively and our own nuclear arsenal does not need testing? How can we hope for a safer world when the U.S. and Russia have between them more than 10,000 nuclear weapons, with perhaps 1,000 still on trigger alert, despite the absence of any credible, justifying threat?

We have lived in a world where nuclear weapons have not been used against a civilian population in more than 60 years. I am not optimistic that this nuclear truce will last another 60. But until we honestly recognize the threat and minimize the opportunity and motivation for governments or terrorist organizations to carry out such an act, we continue to increase the odds that it will one day happen. As Einstein said 65 years ago, after the explosion of the first nuclear weapon, “Everything has changed, save the way we think.” We need to take his words to heart now more than ever.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Lawrence M. Krauss, a theoretical physicist, commentator and book author, is Foundation Professor