Ecological Intelligence (16 page)

The monists on the other hand, with whom the Dutch philosopher Spinoza (1632–1677) is most closely associated, believe that the physical and mental are aspects of the same reality organized in different ways. In the way that the brain can be understood to be a function of the body, they see the mind as a second-order function of the brain. In other words, in the way that a magnetic field emerges from electric currents in a coil of wire, mind emerges from neural activity in the form of mental fields. “Mental” or “psychiatric” conditions are therefore not in the mind, they are in the “body-mind.” When viewed in an evolutionary light, this connection is significant, the reason being that many of the above-mentioned psychiatric conditions, because of their link to survival-oriented emotion pathways, may, at some level, have been appropriate or even adaptive. The roots of these conditions are therefore not necessarily pathological. Because of this, it is important to point out the potential survival function of these conditions (even though they have become maladaptive). This approach goes a long way toward relieving these patients of a sense of guilt and hopelessness about themselves.

While my leanings are very much toward the monist school, I am nevertheless not entirely convinced by the reductive argument—the mind being ultimately reducible to the properties of neurons (nerve cells). As important as the neurons are, to pin the mind to our neurons will inevitably take us to the level of the genes and to the premise that our brains and our minds are purely genetic in their origin. I appreciate the significance of the genetic push, but, in the same way that electrons are pulled into an electromagnetic field, what about the pull of the environment in the shaping of our bodies, brains, and minds?

One of the best examples I know confirming the notion of the environmental pull involves the natural history of stem cells. Stem cells are the nonspecific, embryonic precursors or ancestors of every functional cell in our body. What happens to them—their functional destiny—depends on the physiological environment into which they are pushed or pulled. In other words, for a stem cell to become a brain cell, it has to be nurtured within a brain cell environment. The genetic predisposition (the push) to become a brain cell is simply not enough. It also needs a pull. The same goes for liver cells, heart cells, muscle cells, and so on. At this stage, the process of stem cell differentiation is not entirely understood, but the medical implications are profound. By infusing stem cells into irreparably damaged tissue, new growth of healthy cells can, in theory, be initiated.

It would appear, then, that the brain-mind relationship is not only genetically primed, but environmentally nurtured as well, or, as Spinoza poetically put it, “mind and matter are a double aspect of a single substance.”

THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE STRUCTURING OF OUR BRAINS

T
wo academics offer a compelling theory for the role of the environment in the ultimate structuring of our brains. They are Professor Judith Toronchuk of the Department of Psychology and Biology at Trinity Western University in British Columbia and George Ellis, professor of mathematics at the University of Cape Town, who won the prestigious Templeton Award in 2004 for his contributions to science and religion. To me, their thinking is a significant step toward the conventional support for a continuum of the waves, particles, and molecules of mind and matter. But first, some important biological background.

Every human being is made up of at least 10 trillion cells—more than the total number of stars in any known galaxy. The vast majority of these cells are neurons and their neuronal connections, a powerful reminder that we are a thinking, feeling, and sensory species. Every cell in our bodies has a nucleus. In each nucleus there are forty-six paired chromosomes (twenty-three from your father and twenty-three from your mother). Each chromosome is made up of packed helical strands of DNA, the carriers of our genes.

T
here are roughly 25,000 genes in every human cell. These genes are what we refer to as the human genome—the blueprint of the human animal. And as we now know, mammals of all species share more than 90 percent of our genome.

Ellis and Toronchuk believe that there are too few genes in the human genome to account for the disproportionately large number of nerve connections in our bodies. There are at least 10 billion such connections. They write:

Remembering that the information in the human genome has to cover the development of all other bodily structures as well as the brain, this is not a fraction of the information required to structure in detail any significant brain modules, let alone for the structuring of the brain as a whole.

Put simply, on the available information about how neuronal connections are established, it would appear that there are too few genes to account for the variety and complexity of these connections. What else then, other than our genes, could be the stimulus for the detailed structure of the neural connections? “Our environment,” they say. The question, of course, is not only how, but why?

Staying with Darwin’s principle of natural selection—organisms with characteristics that best fit them for survival are the ones that contribute most offspring to the next generation—they combine the ideas of neurobiologists Gerald Edelman and Jaak Panksepp to explain the brain-environment link. According to Edelman, our neurons with their connections are the structures that have best adapted to our environment and therefore they are the ones that account for the most numbers. This may sound rather simplistic, but remember that every functioning cell was at some stage in its early evolution an individual organism that, over millions of years of adaptation, became the cells that form the tissues, organs, and systems in the different plant and animal species on Earth today. The rules of natural selection apply not only to different species but to simple cells and their connections as well. In other words, without a dynamic environment there would be very little to adapt to and hence little need for the existing number, variety and complexity of neural connections. To me, this goes a long way toward explaining the why of the brain-environment link.

What about the how? This is where the invitation to think molecular or particular could help us. Think about it: every perception of an out-side event—hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching—is essentially the result of a disturbance in the particle field around us. Within the narrow parameters of human perception, we are not only sensitive to this disturbance but we are able to interpret and localize the source of it as well. In other words, in the same way that we consciously and unconsciously interpret the information given by our neurochemical systems and pathways, we also interpret the information transmitted along what could be described as particle pathways in the external environment. But there is more. Our perceptions, both internal and external, are always emotionally charged. Every interpretation of what is going on around us or within us is accompanied by a feeling. Our outer environment, therefore, is never merely a geographical setting. From positive to negative, every environmental encounter evokes a particular feeling—pleasure, awe, fascination, disappointment, sadness, fear, panic, disgust, anger, indifference, and so forth.

D
rawing on Jaak Panksepp’s descriptions of the hard-wired primary emotion-command pathways in mammalian brains, Ellis and Toronchuk suggest that the large number of neural connections over and above those that are genetically primed are determined by our ongoing emotional responses to our inner and outer environments. Communicated via external particle pathways of light, sound, smell, and touch to the internal emotion pathways and centers of our brains, the outer environment, because it is a constant source of subjective, survival-oriented information, shapes our immune and endocrine systems. It is a switchboard of emotional triggers that sculpt and mould not only our behavior but the structure and function of our brains as well. Looked at in this light, our entire existence is dependent on this interaction with the environment. Our minds therefore exist to make sense not only of the neurochemical information of our bodies, but as a precondition for regulating and making sense of the waves and particles that connect us to the objects and events in the world around us. Poetically, if the eye looks, then the mind sees. If the ear hears, the mind listens. And it does so
feelingly
. Through mind, we can conjure an image of ourselves, we can turn objects into symbols and a life into a narrative. The mind, which includes a tiny, conscious portion known as the ego, has evolved not only to reach out into the world but to be receptive to that which is reaching for us.

The notion of a mindfield as an interplay of ideas, dreams, intentions, and like-mindedness is an echo of what archaeologist and excom-municated Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin courageously referred to as the noosphere in his 1959 book,
The Phenomenon of Man
. The noosphere is a thinking layer or a field of thought. He imagined it as a layer over and above the biosphere, emerging from the first moment that a living creature became aware that it was aware. It was a quantum leap of consciousness. Suddenly, there existed on Earth a creature who understood the concept of time, mortality, individuality, relationship, and belonging. According to Teilhard, from that moment, near the end of the Tertiary period—only a million and a half years ago—the world took a giant evolutionary step forward. Rilke would have said it took a step “out of its house.” From that moment, the world began to enter a new age. Better still, says Teilhard, it began to find its soul.

If that first acknowledgment of kinship, belonging, and home was the first conscious act of soul, then, to me, that first act of reaching out into a world beyond oneself, to an invisible world of possibilities and interlocking forces, was the first spiritual act. It was the beginning of a newfound awareness that, like the biological matrix from which it had evolved and from which it was imminent, sought to continue itself. The relationship between subject and object would change forever. It was the beginning of a field in which a collective consciousness would become increasingly prominent. Human thoughts, ideas, and intentions had not only taken wing, but they were destined to interact also. Poetically, the human animal had extended a long arm into the world.

In a brilliant piece of analysis, Karl Popper, in his account of the evolution of life, of man, and of civilizations, took a closer look at the interplay between subject and object. He proposed that we live in an objective world of material things such as sticks, stones, brains, and so on, and a subjective world of minds—an inner world of thoughts, feelings, and interpretations of the objective world. He then proposed a further world consisting of objective products of the mind, all of which shape or influence the existence of the living creature. Examples of this in the animal world, writes Bryan Magee, “are nests built by birds, honeycombs, spider webs, etc., all of these structures existing outside the body of the creature and which function to help the organism to solve its problems.” Some of these structures are abstract, such as the social organization of termites or the patterns of communication in different species.

The evolutionary significance of tangible and abstract creations in the human world, particularly those that are associated with the transformation of the physical environment (the wheel, modern technology, and medicines to name a few) is that they then acquire central importance in the environment to which we then have to adapt ourselves. In other words, we are drawn to and influenced by our creations. They become part of the field of influence. Such creations, said Popper, include abstract creations like language, ethics, law, philosophy, religion, the sciences, the arts, and institutions. Once “out there,” he wrote, “these structures, in the human world at least, can be examined, evaluated, criticized, revised and when wholly unexpected discoveries are made within them, revolutionized.” It is a world that refers to our entire intellectual heritage, including our cultural heritage, and, as Magee writes, “it is through our interaction with this world that we become selves,” or, if you like, we become truly human. Our creatureliness manifests itself. How else could this reflective interplay occur if not via the same field or particle pathways that inform us about everything in our environment?

C
ommon to both Teilhard and Popper, as I see it, is the notion that the human psyche exists not only in here, so to speak, but out there as well. The psychological significance of this notion is profound. Unconfined to our skulls and to what is immediate, our geographical and cultural environment has become a dynamic extension of the psyche into which we project our autobiographical and collective selves. The world, in the process of human evolution, has become less of a stage and more of a mirror. It is an extension of a deep sense of belonging, for we identify with all manner of worldly creations, from animals and trees to people and places. And lest we forget, because we often don’t like what we see in ourselves, the world is also the target of our negative projections.

FIELDS OF INFLUENCE

W
hat follows are propositions from philosopher-scientists that deserve attention for one reason more than any other—they are exploring ideas that could transform the way we think about learning, intelligence, and consciousness. In their own way, they are exploring the notion of a mindfield. What is clear is that these theorists have a great love and respect for science.

The first of these theorists is botanist and author Rupert Sheldrake. Sheldrake has been interested in field theories for a long time. At Cambridge University in the 1980s, while doing research on the development of plants, he revisited the age-old question of how plants grow from simple embryos into the characteristic form of their species. How do the leaves of willows, palms, and roses take up their shapes, he asked? These were questions concerning the subject of morphogenesis (from the Greek
morph
, or “form,” and
genesis
, or “coming into being”), the coming into being of form—apparently one of the great unsolved mysteries of biology.