I always want to post about my idea and some stuff, but looking for things to post and writing it down and even more, Translating into English are truly tough one.
Are you familiar with this cute little worm called "elegant nematode" in short.
This little creature is too elegant to have a name like this, you want to see how it looks like?
(출처 : web.science.uu.nl)
Well? my apologies, if you get a bad moment. Actually, I personally do not like any kind of worms, except this elegant worm makes me see him with adorable heart.
It has its scientific name as "Caenorhabditis elegans", or you could call it "C. elegans", and it is classfied as nematode which means tape-like shape of their bodies.
I googled "elegance" in Korean and shows this result, it's a tiny(?) difference.
Just think of them as a lovely one for scientists studying nematodes.
What makes C. elegans so important worm to post things like this?
C. elegans is an only creature has an fully-known genetic map and every single cells of his or her body.
S. branner who won a novel prize in 2002 and his companions recognized the creature and drew a whole map of genes in 1974.
C. elegans is an 1mm-sized worm and consists of 900 to 1000 cells, so it makes easier for them to study.
After all, C. elegans serves as a model organism for studying biology and researches in medical field such as disease or aging process.
We scientists focused this C. elegans recently, because a fully-known map of neurons and synapses called "Connectome" has revealed.
(Source : www.scientificamerican.com)
This 3D-reconstructed image shows us 302 neurons and about 7000 synapses of C. elegans. Amazing? You could compare this image with the above one.
Scientists thought that they understand the neurological structure of C. elegans, so understanding human's own map was just a matter of time, and furthermore, they believe that human being's activities including mental and spiritual world will be understood by studying C. elegans's "Connectome", although the fact remains that human being's structure of nerves are 90 billions cells.
Currently, most researches using C. elegans are based on Connectome, but the result so far is vague. This is what I want to say today.
This handsome man is a "Lucretius", a father of "Materialism"
Scientists are often fell in love with materialism.
Materialism is an idea that the outside world is composed of materials, even mental activities are just a reflection of material conditions.
Honestly, modern civilization is the best heritage of materialism. Trying to understand natural phenomenon as a material's mutual action let the civilization advance.
Scientists believed that researches of C. elegans could give a bunch of informations to them, cause they knew the sturcture which explains the function.
However, This is in a stalemate because of lack of fruitful studies.
The reason is,
- Even if the neurons and synapses are countable, there is an complexity of pathways connecting neurons and synpases, it is hard to formulate a hypothesis and verify this.
- Also, unlike neurons, synapses are changeable throughout time, the cause-and-effect relationship of studies are uncertain.
Now, Could you believe that human being's mental activities are gonna understood by scientists? Even if we faces the fact that only 300 neurons connections are an obstacle and let everyone down to the bottom?
Civilization is improving incredibly fast, but also mountains we should've go over it getting higher than ever.
Funny pictures I found. It's a joke of "Idealism", poses a counterpart of materialism.
(출처 : Wikipedia)
This honorable man is George Berkeley, could be told as a representative of idealism.
His philosophy is "To be is to be perceived" and he denied a material world outside of human consciousness, Emphasizing that human consciousness is superior than a material world.
Sometimes I highly doubt that the belief of making all things possible, escpecially studying and focusing on deep inside of science, and I tried to accept that by non-logical thinking, cause it makes me feel better.
What do you think?
Do you think that we could explain our mental activities if human's brain structure is known to everyone?
Do you think that Robots will have their own mental world through implementing them a human-like brain structure?
Do you think that understaing C. elegans is one of the solution to neurological science?
Confrontation between scientific and philosophical agonies is in progress.
This is a poor posting I think, but I would be glad if I could give you a little anguish inside your mind..
Thanks for your reading.