10 August 2022

This Immense World


 

I’ve been reading a book a friend gave me called An Immense World, by the British science writer Ed Yong.  If the name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s a regular at The Atlantic, and won the Pulitzer for his writing about COVID over the past two years, an island of common sense and clarity in the general chaos of misinformation.  I might go so far as to say Ed Yong’s columns kept me sane. 

The central theme of An Immense World is how we encounter our immediate environment, how we separate the familiar from threat, how we register light, heat, pain, movement, and even magnetic fields – and by we, it includes every creature of the earth, the air, or the oceans.  The immense world is exactly that, not confined to our species alone.

Yong borrows a conceit called Umwelt from the German, the world which appears to us, and each of these worlds appears differently to different animals.  But our world feels to us like the whole world: since it’s all we know, he writes, we easily mistake it for all there is to know. 

Light is electromagnetic radiation.  Sound is pressure waves.  Smells are small molecules.  Our senses transform those signals into a sunrise, a voice, the scent of baking bread.  Biology tames physics.  It turns external stimuli into information we can act on, to eat, to find shelter, to survive, and reproduce, and to evolve.

[The above is not me writing; I’m paraphrasing Yong.]

No animal can respond to everything, too much information is as bad as too little.  We imagine it to be a superpower, that Spidey sense, but it would be overwhelming.  So each animal filters their signals at the source.  Which work to our advantage, which work against us?  Natural selection is the obvious mechanism.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

What fascinates me about this is how clearly it applies to human social interactions, how it’s a physical model for relationships, functional and not so.  If this is the way the brain works, the way it processes signals from the physical world, and makes them kinetic – fight or flight, for example – is this also the way the brain processes what we might call the less substantial world, language, ritual and religious belief, the interpretation of spirits, family and kinship?  Does it develop from our sensory input?

Yong has an example from neurobiology.  400 million years ago, certain species of fish left the water to live on land.  In the open air, they evolved to see longer distances than they could underwater, and he suggests this spurred a greater adaptive leap.  By seeing farther ahead they could think farther ahead; they could plan, instead of simply reacting to what was immediately in front of them. 

This isn’t biological determinism, that’s not where I’m going.  I’m talking about the common tendency we have to analyze other people’s behavior in terms of our own.  I see you acting in such-and-such a way, and if it were me, my motive or reason would be thus-and-so.  I therefore ascribe that motive or reason to you – and I’m totally off-base. 

The metaphor Yong puts forward (he credits Jakob von Uexküll, fabulous name) is a house with windows overlooking a garden, and each window has a different view, so our perspective of the garden shifts from window to window – a smell, a sound, a touch – but the garden we sense is the only real garden.  The garden from a tick’s point of view, or a bee’s, or a sparrow’s, will be different from ours, but just as real.  We’re each of us inside the house, looking out on a landscape.  The windows are of course our physical senses.  Is it plausible that the reach, or limits, of those senses, are reflected in the reach, or limits, of our imagination, our myth-making, our theology - our understanding of human destiny? 

Our world feels to us like the whole world, and if it’s all we know, we easily mistake it for all there is to know. 



4 comments:

  1. Interesting perspective. It sounds like a biological interpretation of quantum physics.

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  2. It's like the parable of the blind men & the elephant: "A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: "We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable". So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, "This being is like a thick snake". For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. As for another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant, "is a wall". Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear."

    And that is the human condition.

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  3. I’m fascinated sharks, especially hammerheads, can detect the minutest electrical fields, and that dolphins and whales have acute echo location. Birds and bees sense direction by magnetic particles in their tiny brains.

    But even humans have developed extra senses. A few people have developed an extra photoreceptor capable of seeing a color range the rest of us can’t. Some people can smell a far broader range of scents. Slightly more common are ‘super-tasters’ who can taste extra flavors. Speculation suggested George HW Bush Sr might have been a super-taster.

    Children and teens have an ability to hear frequencies adults generally can’t. For a long time, I was an exception. I could heard dog whistles and those so-called silent alarms, which used ultrasonic sound. Usually silent alarms are left on all the time, day and night on the theory 99.998% of the people can’t hear them… except some of us do. It was painful entering some stores that used those types of alarms. I had a friend who could also hear them. His company added a switch that allowed the ultrasonic mechanism to be turned off during working hours.

    It is a fascinating world.

    À propos of absolutely nothing, your mention of the garden window reminded me of a house I visited long ago. Every furnishing, every drape, wood frame, and carpet in its small living room was cream color, which was rather unique. But a picture window looked out upon a garden which burst with color. It was an astonishing experience. I visited again in winter and again, the snow outside the window made for an unusual sight. I wonder what those birds and bees would have made of it.

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