Dear ToKers,
Gregg has asked me to introduce myself in anticipation of my contribution
to the April meeting. I am a Professor of Pediatrics, Ob-Gyn and
Evolutionary Medicine at UCLA. I have a PhD in Experimental Medicine from
McGill University, my first Faculty position was at Harvard Medical School,
then at U Maryland, and now at UCLA.
I began an email correspondence with Gregg several months ago, finding
common ground between us in our mutual desire to bring new order to both
psychology and biology/medicine. My current perspective emerged via the
realization that I could exploit the cell biology of embryonic development
and phylogeny (my research career) to trace the evolution of the mammalian
lung back to its unicellular origins. But when I turned to the evolution
literature on developmental biology, or EvoDevo, there was literally *no
cell biology*, initially due to a historic glitch caused by the absence of
cell science to propel evolutionary biology in the 19th century; so instead
the evolutionists embraced genetics, and never let go. But cell biology
underpins all of contemporary biology and medicine. I have made efforts
since that realization to introduce my cell biologic perspective on
evolutionary biology to the evolution of physiologic traits such as the
lung, kidney, skin and bone.
There are certain key concepts that have helped me to recapitulate
physiologic evolution from the unicellular state forward, primarily the
principle of cell-cell communication mediated by growth factors and their
receptors as the mechanism for embryologic structure and function, to which
I have contributed beginning in the early 1970s. That, in combination with
the observation that evolution is a series of pre-adaptations or
exaptations or co-options, offering the opportunity to see the
interrelationships between different physiologic adaptations based on
cell-cell communication mechanisms. But above all, the theory that the
cellular internalization of external factors in the environment such as
ions, gases, heavy metals, bacteria, gravitational forces,
compartmentalizing them and making them useful as physiologic traits is key
to understanding the origins of life, not as the Anthropic Principle that
sees us *in this environment*, but rather the realization that *we are ‘of’
this environment. The *“Endosymbiotic Theory” can be understood based on
the unicellular origins of life and the subsequent cell-cell communication
mechanisms that fostered complicated physiology of multicellular organisms.
I mention all of this because I am of the opinion that all of the organs of
the body, including the brain/perceptual consciousness evolved in tandem
with the visceral organs. For example, there was a big breakthrough in
understanding the evolution of the brain back in 2003 (Holland ND. Early
central nervous system evolution: an era of skin brains? Nat Rev Neurosci.
2003 Aug;4(8):617-27) when Holland showed that there was a continuum from
the central nervous system of worms to vertebrates based on its
phylogenetic origins in the skin, or the skin-brain hypothesis. The skin is
a highly underappreciated organ, which was hypothesized to be the origin of
all complicated physiology in vertebrates (Torday and Rehan. Evolution, the
Logic of Biology. Wiley-Blackwell, 2017).
It is here that I share interests with the folks on this lis. I know Gregg
has become quite interested in the view of the human as an extended cell
and the braiin as the skin, folded inward. I have been able to exploit the
idea that the first cell evolved from the immersion of lipids in water,
both components coming from the frozen asteroids that pelted the early
Earth before there was an atmosphere that could oxidize them. But that
raises the question as to what was the basis for the spontaneous formation
of lipid-based protocells? Traditionally, that has been attributed to the
self-referential, self-organizational properties of life, giving rise to
the First Principles of Physiology (FPP), which were generated by the
protocell defined by its lipid membrane, distinguishing the internal and
external ‘environments’. The FPP are constituted by negative entropy, or
negative Free Energy within the cell, chemiosmosis, the most primitive way
of generating bioenergy, intracellular membranes partitioning negative and
positive ions on either side of them to generate an electrical current to
sustain negentropy, and homeostasis as the monitoring mechanism for the
interrelationship between the entropy within and outside of the cell.
I have hypothesized that the origin of self-referential self-organization
was the Singularity of the Big Bang, given that for every action there is
an equal and opposite reaction (Newton’s Third Law of Motion). With that
cellular molecular mechanistic linkage from contemporary physiology,
referring all the way back to its origins in the Singularity/Big Bang, I
have speculated that that is the origin and continuum of Consciousness
itself, or the Hard Problem (David Chalmers), how we ‘know that we
know’. Hameroff
and Penrose have speculated that the brain integrates information through
the microtubules of the cytoskeleton of neurons. Yet all cells have
cytoskeletons, so it is feasible that there is integration of the somatic
and CNS microtubules, which Head and Holmes [1911], and more recently Haggard
and Wolpert referred to as "Disorders of Body Scheme?"
The other breakthrough idea that may form common ground between physiology
and psychology is the concept of the ‘Phenotype as Agent’ (Phenotype as
Agent for Epigenetic Inheritance.
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov_pubmed_27399791&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=9b6-Whll2uErOHRlZZa8ChznUHOERyKe4VKjG2ay8IM&s=0WNA0rZjxBg3g7BZYjz7NwLopdPMNFoaiEOI3van09U&e= > Torday JS, Miller WB. Biology
(Basel). 2016 Jul 8;5(3)). That notion emerged from the hypothesis that the
unicell was the first Niche Construction (NC), NC being the concept that
organisms generate their own immediate environments. So by combining
endosymbiosis with NC, hypothesizing that the unicell internalized its
environment (The Cell as the First Niche Construction.
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov_pubmed_27136594&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=9b6-Whll2uErOHRlZZa8ChznUHOERyKe4VKjG2ay8IM&s=NyrSjKZhogyEQf8D8Kz05MmildVpKMLOmoRbTJ8GJdc&e= > Torday JS. Biology (Basel).
2016 Apr 28;5(2)) as described above, that the process of evolution can be
seen as a continuum from its origins to present day physiology,
consciousness being the manifestation of that process at the level of being
aware of one’s surroundings, both internal and external.
Just to be more concrete, as mentioned, the cytoskeleton may act as the
structure within the cell that acts to communicate between cells throughout
the body. Penrose has shown that anesthetics bind to the catalytic site
within tubulin, inhibiting its formation, linking the cytoskeleton to
consciousness. And when yeast, primitive unicellular relatives of
vertebrates, are put in zero gravity they lose their abilities to polarize
(unaware of up/down/left/right) and cannot reproduce due to collapse of
their cytoskeleton. So depriving this organism of its sense of gravity
renders it dissociated from its ‘consciousness’ of its surroundings, i.e.
it is unconscious. Thus the putative link between the cytoskeleton,
consciousness and Cosmic Consciousness.
This way of thinking about the continuum from physiology to our immediate
perceptual consciousness of being, to the Consciousness of the Cosmos,
conventionally referred to as something greater than ourselves, as the
product of the iterative internalization of the environment, or the
endosymbiosis referred to above, offers an opportunity to understand these
processes mechanistically. And as I have proposed to Gregg, the ‘joints’ in
his ToK can be understood as part and parcel of the same continuum
mechanistically, merging his scheme with mine. For example, I have
previously used the cell-molecular approach to ‘predict’ the evolution of
endothermy (A central theory of biology.
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov_pubmed_25911556&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=9b6-Whll2uErOHRlZZa8ChznUHOERyKe4VKjG2ay8IM&s=H-CqJb-JiKg0wEsfV0Zyab7VRT69LWebGj5yeqZJB8I&e= > Torday JS. Med Hypotheses.
2015 Jul;85(1):49-57), largely based on the opposite effects of physiologic
stress on ‘fight or flight’ versus meditation/hibernation. Such ideas may
help to further elucidate the nature of consciousness, and the continual
line from the Bigh Bang, through the FPP of the unicell, all the way to
this email exchange.....Please don't hesitate to
comment/critique......Best, John Torday
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