Cancer is a prevalent disease among humans and animals, affecting millions of lives across the globe. It can be caused in a variety of ways and can affect virtually every part of our bodies, ranging from skin cancer caused by prolonged exposure to the sun’s harmful UV rays to lung cancer that results from carcinogenic substances smokers inhale. However, plants do not die of cancer despite sometimes being exposed to the sun for over a thousand years – and they do not use any sunscreens!

Humans and animals who live to a certain age are very likely to get cancer one day. We see this situation mostly in our pets which have been specially bred and protected from predators and diseases. Cancer has become part of our lives and remains a top world health priority. The probability of prostate cancer is roughly 80% in 80-year-olds, 90% in 90-year-olds, and 100% in 100-year-olds. However, these statistics yet again do not apply to trees.

What is cancer?

Cancer is a disease caused by the uncontrolled growth of cells that have become abnormal in a part of the body. These abnormal cells are not foreign invaders that have entered our bodies from outside but are instead our own cells. However, in time, various factors such as radiation, viruses, and chemical substances that they are exposed to cause the accumulation of errors, or mutations, in the genetic codes of cells. Some of them then acquire very different characteristics and become alien to their own body.

With old age, errors arise in the genetic code in an increased rate when our cells divide by copying their own DNA. External factors, such as “free radicals” and various radiations that affect our DNA, play a role in these errors. For young people, when there are too many errors in a cell’s genome, a process called “apoptosis” takes place after which faulty cells die before they can multiply in a potentially cancerous manner and forming a tumor. However, sometimes these accumulated errors cause the cell’s growth process to become stuck in the “on” position, and the cell begins to grow and divide continuously. Cells that emerge with out-of-control divisions ignore the commands coming from the healthy cells of the body, continue to grow and reproduce according to the erroneous commands from the cell’s disrupted genome. This situation lasts until death.

What is a tumor?

Cell growths that result from defective genome proliferation will eventually form a mass called a tumor. Some cells grow very slowly and stop at a certain size after a while and do not spread anymore and are called benign tumors. Masses formed by fast-growing, defective (cancerous) cells are known as malignant tumors. Cells that detach from malignant tumors and grow rapidly can attach to another organ where they will begin to grow again when they enter the bloodstream. The process by which cancerous cells start from a tumor and spread all over the body to different organs is known as metastasis.

Why does this process not happen in plants?

One of the most destructive features of cancer when it enters metastasis is the mobility of malignant cells to varying degrees according to their type. Blood vessels, i.e. the transportation pathways of the circulatory system, act like a highway for cancer cells. As the blood vessels surround the entire body, a single cancerous cell can travel to and settle almost anywhere in the body, from the toes to the head.

Plant cells have a vital feature that is different from human and animal cells. In plants, cells do not change their locations because their cells are surrounded by a very rigid, strong, and impenetrable wall outside of normal plasma membranes. Cell walls are made of cellulose, which constitutes the main substance of plants, and form the wooden structures that ensure the plants stand upright and harden while at the same time locking each cell in place and preventing it from migrating within the organism.

Another important difference that is unique to plants is that they do not have blood circulation in which cells are carried; they have a circulatory system in which only water and food are carried. This system is often used to pump water from the roots to the leaves and to transport organic products such as sugar, which is a product of photosynthesis, from the leaves down. Therefore, there are no blood cells or immune system cells in these carrier channels, which are known as wood and roe tubes (xylem and phloem), in plants.

In addition, animal cells are specifically employed in tissues and organs such as muscle, bone, liver, and skin during embryonic development. Thus, when they divide only new cells of the same type are created. Tumors that occur in animal tissues can metastasize into different tissues and disrupt different organs. We can think of animal and human biology as a very complex system in which each cell, tissue, and organ has a task and purpose. In such a system, all elements work in cooperation for the continuation of life. This system is of a kind of irreducible complexity. A human being cannot live without organs like brain, heart, or lungs, while plants, on the other hand, have fewer simpler internal structures which are not as vital. When plant cells divide, they retain their ability to form new cells of any type. This is called totipotency.

In plants, every necessary structure can be recreated from the few tissues they have. For this reason, a gardener can grow new plants from the roots, branches, or leaf parts of a plant.

Plants are equipped with very powerful antioxidants to protect them from the sun’s harmful rays and mutations that may be caused by radiation. Therefore, tumors can develop only due to bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, and insects. For example, in a situation that we can call “information confusion” that occurs when Agrobacterium Tumefaciens bacteria insert some of its DNA into the plant’s DNA, an anomaly occurs in the plant’s genome. Cells that go through a rapid growth process and form tumors are not normally classified as cancer, since they simply remain in that area and cannot be transported elsewhere. Since the tumors cannot spread to the whole plant, they may cause only minor distress at most in a specific area rather than a fatal disease such as cancer. Just as the plant continues to grow around a rock that it encounters, it grows around the tumor as well. The tumor can continue to grow for years, but does not spread to the rest of the plant, meaning there is no metastasis.

In summary, plants can also be cancerous, but a cancerous tumor is not a deadly threat to a plant, as its cells are immobile and do not have vital and complex organs like humans and animals. Thanks to the cellulose walls gifted to the them, plants continue their role in the ecosystem by continuing to grow with healthy cells around the tumor as if nothing had happened.

References

• Luis Villazon. “Can a plant die of cancer?” www.sciencefocus.com/nature/can-a-plant-die-of-cancer
• Sam Westreich. “Do Plants Get Cancer?” medium.com/@westwise/do-plants-get-cancer-60eb435c6d1a
• Stuart Thompson. “Plants couldn’t run away from Chernobyl—but that’s what saved them. Why plants don’t get cancer.” www.popsci.com/chernobyl-plants-radiation-cancer

Serge and I were buddies. Our interests were largely similar. We were both interested in Oriental mysticism, travel literature, art, architecture, and ceramics. 

“The mystical part about making pots is whether you are in a good state when you make them, or anything else. Trying to achieve a good state by throwing pots as a therapeutic undertaking must be difficult. No, the state comes first and everything else follows,” I suggested.

“Sounds rather obvious,” Serge said.

“That’s the trouble, really. We expect our jobs, our hobbies and everything else we do, to give us peace. Of course, we must do our work with our minds, but the mind had better be in abeyance or you have no chance of creating anything worthwhile.”

“But artistic aspirations…?”

“I like basic aesthetics. Slender pots appeal to me more than fat ones. A fairly minimalist approach is evident. A traditional Japanese house delights me. I too, of course, wish to be empty.”

“How about architecture?” he asked.

“It is about form, which by necessity is governed by function. I greatly admire architects and I can feel their dilemma when attempting to combine form and function. The great architects give us spaces that are comfortable for our interior worlds. “

“But empty…?” Serge prodded.

“I suppose I mean the ability, the luck or grace to receive vision. I am convinced that any artistic endeavor begins with an inner vision. A quiet mind is almost a prerequisite. Then comes the work of getting stuff made, which I contend is the job of the mind. I once read that Mozart claimed to have seen music floating before him; he then had the task of getting it all down as sheet music.”

“So you equate throwing pots with a mechanical process,” Serge said.

I explained: “One obviously must learn the mechanics. I spent a year at art school learning how to throw in series. I was fanatical and everyone said I was crazy because I never fired anything. I once worked on a Greek island and was made aware of Greek potters who have little or no artistic ambition. They see working with clay in the same way that a mechanic works on a car. I heard about one potter in Athens whose wheel head never stops turning. Balls of clay are usually weighed to make certain pots and one then places the ball on a stationary wheel head, gets the thing turning, throws the pot, stops the wheel and cuts off the pot to be placed on a board. The man in Athens simply grabs a chunk of clay of about the right weight, whacks it on to a running wheel head, centers and throws the pot and cuts it off and removes it while the wheel head is in motion. He does that all day long, hour after hour.”

“Wasn’t it the Bauhaus people who spoke about a machine for living?”

“Sure,” I said. “But for them function was an aim. The rest was a philosophy of de-cluttering. Décor art also has a function, I hope, because it can get people forgetting themselves, if only momentarily, which I believe is the best way to experience pleasure.”

“What do you mean by forgetting yourself to experience pleasure?”

“It is quite clear – and many doctors and psychologists agree – that the activity of the mind can be repressive. Mental activity is seldom conducive to healing if taken to an extreme. A patient’s first thoughts are naturally the stuff of concern and the need to seek help! If the patient can surrender his or her condition completely to the expertise of the doctor, the doctor’s task is simplified because the patient’s mind does not meddle with the doctor’s work. More important, the mind is placed in abeyance and permits, or releases, the flow of a natural healing process.”

Serge was confused. “But how does creativity come into it?” he asked.

“One could say that any flow of natural energy, meaning not mind-induced, could be pleasurable. But it is not simply a question of absolute faith in a doctor because the mind in this very complex world has often formed what in German is known as an Eigendynamic, a life of its own, which means that the mind could take control of a person’s life and becomes a personal, overriding function. That which should be a person’s servant has then reversed the roles.

“Most people find a feeling of equanimity in a state of passive focus. I once attended a concert featuring Ella Fitzgerald and a jazz trio. The lady was in such fine form that within a few minutes she had captured the attention, the hearts, and the minds, of the entire audience, thus giving them a release from self. The feeling of euphoria was utterly palpable. Any great artist can give this grace to people. To look at a Rembrandt, at least for the first time, can be stunning – meaning, the mind is stunned. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and many more, were capable of offering such grace. I would suggest that truly great artists are themselves in a state of mind abeyance, as mentioned above, when creating their pictures, sculpture, music, literature, and architecture. Great artists ‘receive’ rather than ‘conceive’ their works.

“We are encouraged to be selfless, to simply let go of the thoughts that constantly bug us and turn to what we instinctively know to be true. True art, design, architecture, and hopefully ceramics, can therefore not only be pleasing but also beneficial.”

“Is humankind sick?” he asked.

“Not at all but there does appear to be a widespread feeling of dissatisfaction as we travel down our days. We have little repose. You might say we don’t give ourselves a chance to be truly happy. Was it Krishnamurti who said that there is only one thing between you and God: you. Get out of the way.”

“So you think a mystical approach would be useful?”

“I really do believe that, but, naturally, one would need the time to get quiet. Having a family, a job, earning a living and all the rest is hardly conducive to achieving equanimity from the outset. I can now make ceramics at my leisure but I admire those creative people who are able to achieve great work within the hustle of daily life, especially the young ones.”

“Looking at the pictures, there seems to be an ‘Asian’ approach to your ceramics.”

I said: “The master-potter, Bernard Leach went to Asia to learn about ceramics. He returned to England in 1920 and brought the Japanese master, Shoji Hamada, with him. Hamada and Leach showed us the possibility of selfless pottery making. They constructed and fired a wood-burning kiln, which, opposed to the radiant heat of an electric kiln, brings out the inherent qualities of the clay beneath a glaze. This is achieved by reducing the air intake at a critical point during firing because, obviously, a naked flame requires oxygen to keep burning. Thus the flame starved of oxygen seeks oxygen in the glazes and the clay. The result is buttery textures and some marvelous hues. I have a potter friend, however, who studied with Leach and he said it took years to escape from his influence.”

“But what of selfless pottery?”

“Again, it is the state of having one’s mind in abeyance. Leach maintained that if six potters were to each make a simple tea bowl and one of the potters was in a quiet state the result would be noticeable. In fact, he said that eight out of ten observers would instinctively choose that one bowl.”

“This would seem to imply meditation,” Serge said.

“I have nothing against meditation, but I never did it.”

“So what is your approach?”

“I do nothing really special: just get quiet, relax, begin, and watch what happens. I’m sure many others are happy with the way they operate.”

“Is there a learning process, in all this?”

I told him, “It’s like learning to drive a car, which is initially undertaken as a mental process. Beginners tend to be nervous. Gear changes get snarled, the rear-view mirror is largely forgotten, and so on. The mechanical learning process gradually becomes internalized and a natural flow takes over. Gear changes and all of the other skills become automatic. When this has occurred the mind is set free to concentrate, although focus would be a better word, on what is coming at you on the road.”

“So how did you learn?”

“It may sound far-fetched but one might say that the hands learned what to do. There is a marvelous video on YouTube showing the jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan playing a number (Jumpin’ Jack). Jordan has the ability to play melody and bass simultaneously, somewhat in the way a pianist plays. Deep into his solo one sees Jordan looking down at his hands and there is a smile on his face that seems to say ‘…hey, you guys are really having a good time.’”

“Oh come on, jazz and a quiet mind?”

“Jazz means improvisation engendered by freedom. The freedom from self, conflict, and anything else that hinders creativity.”

“Of course it would be impertinent to speak for other artists but I love the idea of what the Japanese call Shibui. It is a feeling engendered by quiet reticence, something that gives pleasure for reasons beyond explanation. I suppose it means a special rightness about something. Since I am not a Mozart, I do not expect to stun or startle with my work. I am satisfied if a bit of Shibui arises through a combination of shapes and glazes.”

“Talking about shapes…” Serge said.

“As I said before I prefer slender pots; pots that narrow down to a small foot. This gives the pot an appearance of floating – is soaring too presumptuous? My bowls usually have a turned foot. It gives them a lightness that I find pleasing.”

“Have you not been copying the painter Giorgio Morandi with his still-life renderings of ceramic vessels, especially the fluted bottles or those with cut sides?”

“I had never heard of the man before you mentioned him,” I told my friend. “But Morandi does appeal. Thanks for introducing me to his work.”

“The glazes are obviously an enhancement!”

“True but there is a lot of science involved. I fire with an electric kiln because it was given to me as a gift. We are too strapped for cash to buy a preferred gas or wood-burning kiln. My glazes have therefore been things to overcome rather than just use.”

“Build your own kiln!”

“I would love to but for the time being I am where I am at. The electric kiln I use is not particularly large, 60x75x50 centimeters inside, and it does have its eccentricities. All potters have this problem and have adjusted their glaze recipes and firing cycles accordingly. After several test firings, I have been lucky to achieve a good off-white, a really luscious chocolate black, a rather startling blue, a gorgeous dark green thinning to brown on the edges. I also have a nice pale green, which is supposed to be a celadon, but never really came out that way. I am still looking for a classic Chinese tenmoku glaze that fires at 1250°. It is a wonderful black breaking to brown on thin edges.”

“Your glaze application sometimes seems somewhat free-form,” Serge said. “What is behind that?”

“Well, if you have ever tried to draw an arc or a circle you will see the distinct wobble of the line because of an unsure hand. Just swish the pencil around on the paper and the result is likely to be much more graceful. You may not achieve a perfect circle but the result will be more pleasing to the eye. Lord knows how Giotto did a perfect circle in the thirteenth century. Splash glazing is a sort of just do it endeavor. There is no foresight involved, I dribble a glaze on to a pot and…”

“Watch what happens?”

“Right,” I said. “It is again the idea of not really putting one’s mind into a thing. Otherwise I dip my pots into a bucket of glaze in the usual way. Of course, large vessels must have a glaze poured over them, but it is still uncontrolled.”

“Clay?”

“The stoneware clay I use has been great help in achieving texture, although it is not very easy to throw. I mix two clays, with and without grog. The clay is speckled with pyrite and it looks good on the unglazed parts of a pot. The pyrite also shows through the glazes, especially in the off-white.”

“There seems to be lifestyle aspect in what you do.”

“I got around to it a bit late but consider myself lucky. We have a nice old house and a small pottery room. The garden is up and running. My marriage seems to be good, although I am definitely not going to ask her opinion about that. How you live, where you live, and what you do are largely a matter of circumstance for most people. An organized human environment is rather required.”

“Do you remember us talking about Francesco Patrizi, the author of many works of philosophy and the arts?”

“That’s right. He was looking for perfection of a sort,” I said.

“Patrizi wrote a book tantalizingly called The Happy Town. The work is Utopian and an attempt to counter Thomas More’s notion of separating church and state. Patrizi proposed the integration of both. He was born into the nobility in Croatia in 1529 and had the time and inclination to consider the improvement of the world around him. La città felice was written in 1551 in Padua and was printed in Venice in 1553, when Patrizi was only 22 years old. His book proposes a topographical situation that is obviously seen as the Croatian town of Cres in its deep, protective bay, and is about achieving an ideal state. We are confronted with a man who wished to create order, but it was order-imposed. His architectural notions encompassed ‘…straight streets to enhance winds in the hot season’ and ‘…streets meandering like a river to divert winds in the winter months.’ There were to be squares and institutional buildings for commerce, but his main thrust was the stuff of social order. Fabrizi proposed two social groups, the nobility, composed of soldiers and the priesthood, and workers and peasants forming a second group. This second group in The Happy Town were not actually meant to be happy but were only to serve and ‘…not to attain a state of bliss.’”

“Ho hum for Fabrizi. Thomas More was really a humanist, someone who cared.”

“Exactly!” Serge said. “Patrizi was an architect who wished to tell people what is good for them. One debatable point about art could be about what it does to people. Should art bring people to quiet reflection – bliss would be an exaggeration in my case – or should it provoke? Personally, getting people all riled up doesn’t make sense to me.”

“So what is the message?”

“Not offending anyone’s sensibilities, which means offering stuff that calms rather than antagonizes.”

“Your method…?”

“Get quiet, relax, begin.”   

“And watch what happens?”

“That’s about it.”

Artificial photosynthesis transforms CO₂ into liquefiable fuels

Yu and Jain. Plasmonic photosynthesis of C1–C3 hydrocarbons from carbon dioxide assisted by an ionic liquid. Nature Communications, May 2019.

Scientists have recently established a reliable “artificial photosynthesis” paradigm to produce fuels from water, carbon dioxide, and visible light. With the help of sunlight, chemical reactions between water and CO₂ are catalyzed in plants to generate and store solar energy in the form of glucose. This process is called photosynthesis. In the new study, the researchers developed an artificial process that uses the same mechanisms of natural photosynthesis to convert CO₂ and water into liquid fuel by using electron-rich gold nanoparticles as a catalyst. Gold nanoparticles function in the same role as chlorophyll in natural photosynthesis in the absorbing of light and transferring electrons and protons to catalyze the chemical reactions between CO₂ and water. They are known to be efficient at absorbing light and do not break down or degrade like other metals. The energy stored in the bonds of the hydrocarbon fuel can be freed by the conventional method of combustion or by new-generation, environmentally-friendly power fuel cells, thus producing electrical current. By converting CO₂ into more complex molecules like propane, green-energy technology is now one step closer to using excess CO₂ to store solar energy for use when the sun is not shining and in times of peak demand. While the development of this CO₂-to-liquid fuel may be exciting for proponents of green-energy technology, the artificial photosynthesis process is nowhere near as efficient as it is in plants. New methods should be developed to increase the efficiency of the catalysts and downstream chemical reactions at much higher scales.

Brain area that watches for walls identified

Henriksson et al. Rapid Invariant Encoding of Scene Layout in Human OPA. Neuron, May 2019.

Neuroscientists have identified the part of the human brain whose duty is to help us perceive the barriers which define the navigable space around us, such as walls or ceilings, so that so we can avoid bumping into things and navigate safely through our environment. By way of vision we have an almost instant sense of where we are in space. Although this process feels effortless, it requires the coordinated activity of multiple brain regions and neurons working together to give us this sense of our surroundings. This process has remained unknown. But thanks to a new study, we are a step closer to solving the puzzle. Using cutting-edge brain-imaging technologies, researchers examined the mental responses of volunteers as they were shown images of various three-dimensional scenes. The images depicted a typical room with three walls, a ceiling, and a floor, but then were abruptly changed by the removal of a wall or a ceiling. By doing this repeatedly, the team could pinpoint how the participant’s brain encoded every scene. In the brain scans of the volunteers, one brain area called the occipital place area (OPA) clearly stood out. OPA activity represented the geometry of the scenes and activity patterns, reflected the presence or absence of each component, such as a ceiling or a wall, and projected a detailed picture of the overall configuration. Interestingly, OPA seemed to ignore the surface appearance of the various components such as colors or textures in order to focus only on the geometric patterns. The OPA managed to perform all the necessary computations needed to get a sense of a room’s layout extremely fast – in just 100 milliseconds. In the future, the research team plans to incorporate virtual reality technology to create more realistic 3D environments for participants to experience, hopefully achieving much deeper insights into how our brains process and makes sense of the visual information.

Gut segments are organized by function

Esterházy D. et al. Compartmentalized gut lymph node drainage dictates adaptive immune responses. Nature, April 2019.

As food enters our intestine, it goes through a windy and lengthy journey. A new study provides new insights into how our intestines maximize nutrient uptake while protecting the body from potentially dangerous invading microbes. At first glance, the intestines appear to have a uniform tissue structure. But when scientists looked at them closer, they found that our food-processing canal seems to consist of multiple compartments that pace the immune system’s reactions to the food passing through. Scientists uncovered these functional intestine segments in mice when they examined the intestinal structures called gut draining lymph nodes, which orchestrate immune responses. The researchers found that nodes in different parts of the intestines had different cell composition, and they saw different immune responses between segments when they challenged the mice with a pathogen. They observed less aggressive defenses in the first segments where nutrients are absorbed, and more forceful responses at the end, where pathogens are eliminated. Researchers plan to exploit these immunological differences between the gut segments for treating gastrointestinal disorders. For example, by targeting immune-suppressing drugs to the specific gut segment where they’ll have the most effect, it might be possible to dampen their side-effects. The spectrum of immune responses along the intestines could also be used to make new and better oral vaccines. Thus far, scientists’ efforts to design oral vaccines have been hampered by the difficulty of generating a robust immune response; it is possible that the muted immune response at the beginning of the intestines might be part of the reason why oral vaccines tend to be less effective than injections. Thus, targeting the distant end of the intestine might be much more efficient way of inducing the immune response required.

Hizmet is a group of people that I have observed carry out the best of
Islamic ideals: kindness, hospitality, love, selfless service. They are
mainstream in their creed, as far as the Sunni Islamic school of thought
goes. They read the Qur’an; they pray five times a day; they fast. They’re
very spiritual people. They don’t push their beliefs, their Islamic
beliefs, on non-Muslims. That’s not what they’re out to do. They’re out to
serve the world, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. So in terms of being an
“un-Islamic cult,” Hizmet is anything but. What they really are, in my
opinion, is a true embodiment of the Islamic ideals of love and service to
the other. And I’ve never seen anything to suggest otherwise.

I’m a civil rights activist, a human rights activist; I don’t take my
marching orders from demagogues whether they are domestic or foreign,
whether they are elected or dictators. What I look at is the process, and
what troubles me in today’s Turkey is the process. Due process is the
arbiter between those who accuse and those who defend. It’s absent in
contemporary Turkey. And there has to be independent judiciary; it has to
be judges and a court that is not in anybody’s corner. What we’re seeing in
Turkey, unfortunately, is a situation where government is essentially run
by one party that acts as both the accuser/the prosecutor, the judge and
the executioner. And those who are accused don’t really have any leeway in
the system to defend themselves.

Those who know Hizmet, who have interacted with Hizmet, know Hizmet is the
farthest thing from violence. They’ve never promoted violence; they’ve
never accepted violence; they’ve been the first to condemn violence,
including a violent overtake of a Republic, a coup. They’ve condemned this
coup, and they’ve never promoted anything close to it. They’ve never been
involved in anything that is violent in nature.

Now that the accusation is there, we have to ask for proof. And, even if
there are individuals who may be associated with the Hizmet who were
involved in one crime or another, including a coup, the question becomes:
at what point do you incriminate an entire movement of millions of people,
volunteers who want to serve humanity through their Islamic ideals? Can we
condemn a teacher, a 24-year-old woman serving in some remote part of
Turkey, Pakistan, or Kazakhstan, or anywhere in the world where they build
schools in areas of underserved, underprivileged communities? How are these
souls devoted to service affiliated or associated with that particular
crime?

What you look at here is a witch hunt; it is “guilt by association.” These
are not in the tradition of liberal justice, liberal values that
democracies espouse.

And it’s exactly what is happening around the world when people in power
want to shut out those who are not in their pockets, those they can’t
control, or those whom they don’t like.

When a government is moving towards autocracy, when you’re becoming a
demagogue, when you become the “state” (l’état, c’est moi) and
when you shut out opposition, shut down media, imprison journalists, and
declare organizations, schools, mosques, or associations or universities or
charities, as terrorist organizations just by a signature, then I have to
say, that is incorrect, and that is problematic, and that is unjust!

And I’ll raise my voice, as a Muslim, as a human being, but also as a civil
rights and human rights activist, because civil rights and human rights are
not piecemeal. They cannot be divided; they cannot be allocated to one
group and then denied to another. I believe that ideals are only good and
are only meaningful if they apply to all human beings. It’s a belief in
blind due process, a blind independent judiciary, and having the procedures
and the processes of justice apply everywhere, equally, to all people.

When I read the news that [Hizmet] schools were being shut down in
Pakistan, it hurt, because Pakistan is in need of good schools, it’s in
need of education. We hear about radicalization, we hear about illiteracy,
we hear about the lack of education in parts of the country – same in the
United States, same in the world. And anyone who is putting themselves into
service to build schools and educate young people is doing good in the
world. As someone who built an organization, I understand how much effort
this takes. I understand every wall that is painted, every nail that is
hammered into that wall, every computer that is bought and connected, every
chair and every table, and then all of the content that comes along with a
good education. It takes so much to build a single classroom, let alone a
whole organization. And here you have a school of many classrooms, and then
you have a movement of many schools. One signature, for political pressure
or for personal gain, shuts it all down.

It’s so hard to build. It’s so easy to destroy. And we, Muslim-Americans
and people of conscience, have to raise our voices and say, “We don’t stand
for that!”

Ahmed Rehab, CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), Chicago

This article has first been published in the special issue of the Fountain Magazine © Blue Dome Press

The oral cavity is one of the many systems that is perfectly designed while a fetus develops in a mother’s womb

The first event that takes place inside the mother’s womb is the union of sperm and egg to form into a single cell which later takes the shape of an embryo by rapid division and development. This embryological development occurs in three stages.

In the first of these stages (2-5 weeks), the fertilized egg (zygote) proliferates by dividing and planting itself to the womb wall (implantation). During the advance of the zygote towards the womb, some biochemical signals are sent in order to make the mother sense this situation. Via these signals, the mother’s body is prepared to supply the necessary nutrients to this cellular mass. When these biochemical signals reach the ovaries, various hormones are secreted and the ovulation that occurs during monthly periods is ceased.

During the second stage (5-6 weeks), major activities are started inside the cellular mass, which is now in the form of an embryo. The developmental process of organ and system generation from cells begins.

And during the third stage (from the 8^th week until birth), the embryo has become a fetus, and its facial and bodily structures have begun to be immaculately shaped (Figure-1).

How do organs develop?

Tissues and organs of the embryo, which morphologically starts to look like a human, develop from three layers, which are called the ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm. While the baby continues to come to life inside the mother’s womb, the cranial and facial regions, along with oral cavity, start to form via the development of cells in the area called the neural crest. This development is the result of perfectly corresponding functions in between the epithelium and outer mesenchyme, which results in the facial skeleton and formation of teeth.

Jaw and facial development occur during the 4-12 weeks in the womb. By the end of the 10^th week, the face can be seen with an ultrasonographic examination.

The nose forms at this point. Mid and lateral nose projections develop. A forehead projection called the “frontonasal protrusion” forms in between the two sided mid nose projections. These projections initially develop towards the lower direction because of the volume of the tongue. Later, after the palate has begun to form, and with the growth of the lower jaw and the downward extension of the tongue, like an open-close bridge, the lower and upper jaw join at the midline by rising upward. This union takes place from front to back, like closing a zipper, stage by stage.

This way, the oral cavity and the surrounding structures (tongue, teeth, etc.) that will enable speech and taste are knit, loop by loop, inside the mother’s womb. (Figure 1-2)

Due to the complexity of this process, if there happens to be any failure in the merging, some anomalies can form, such as split lips or palates. These splits are anomalies present at birth. Such lip or palate splits may arise during this phase of the pregnancy because of various negative factors: they can stem from inter-family marriages, diseases that the mother experiences during the first three months of the pregnancy (especially measles or toxoplasmosis), exposure to radiation, alcohol consumption during pregnancy, or various drugs the mother uses. These anomalies need to be corrected by plastic surgeons, upper respiratory tract specialists, and orthodontists.

Despite these anomalies, most of the time, babies are born with their oral cavities in perfect working order – which is extraordinary given the complexity of the process.

Reference

Oral R. J, Goldman H.M. Thoma’s oral Pathology.The CV Mosby Comp. St. Louis.

Figure-1: Ultrasonographic image of the facial region of a fetus in the mothers womb.

Figure-2: Upper jaw bone

Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman’s work on intuition reveals an important categorization of human thinking: one takes place effortlessly, immediately after the stimulus and without the command or approval of the self; the other one takes time and effort, and requires approval and guidance from deeper consciousness. The former is called System 1, or fast thinking, and the latter is called System 2, or slow thinking^[2].

System 1 handles basic tasks like walking, breathing, and calculations like determining the value of 2 x 2, while System 2 takes on more complicated, abstract decision making tasks, such as recognizing a face that hasn’t been seen for a long time, making investment decisions, and calculations such as multiplying multiple digit numbers, e.g., 435 x 23. Many of our mistakes, Kahneman says, occur when exhaustion or other factors cause System 1 to do jobs better suited for System 2.

System 1 thinking is highly prone to error and it usually results in mistakes, most of which can be avoided if System 2 thinking is employed. Each individual is responsible for determining if a situation calls for fast or slow thinking. Age, education, and economic and social status have effects on whether System 1 and System 2 are employed properly.

When System 1 and System 2 thinking mechanisms are considered in the social context, it provides a whole new dimension in analyzing social issues, their solutions and public policies. Although System 1 and System 2 thinking are pertinent to individuals, society in general may be greatly affected by how people in decision and/or policy making positions employ those systems, since such decisions, good or bad, are consequential with regards to their likely impact on the betterment of society.

Kahneman’s study gives us a good understanding of the mechanisms employed in the human decision making process. Various factors that cause people to use System 1 when System 2 is a better fit have been studied; however, what motivates people using System 2 remains opaque, despite its crucial role in our personal life and in society at large.

When Kahneman was asked what the simplest, most straightforward advice he would give to someone who wants to make sure they are not ceding certain, important System 2 decisions and calculations to System 1, his answer was, “Slow down, sleep on it, and ask your most brutal and least empathetic close friends … who understand your feeling but are not overly impressed by them”^[3].

Such discoveries of human behavioral patterns remind us of a tradition that has been promoted throughout history in sacred texts and the works of scholars. This tradition is called consultation. The theological motivation for the institution of consultation is the result of one’s acceptance of his/her limits and/or humbleness, and the hope that thanks to this acceptance of not knowing all the aspects of a subject, God, the All-Knowing, will show the right way and lead him/her to the path that is best.

The Proverbs refer to persons who do things with counsel as prudent men: “Among the proud there are always contentions: but they that do all things with counsel, are ruled by wisdom”^[4]. The significance of consultation is made obvious in the Qur’an by naming a chapter Consultation (Ash-Shura); the chapter emphasizes the role of consultation in personal and social life [5]. Another verse suggests utilizing consultation in public affairs^[6].

The prominent 20th century scholar Said Nursi makes a point on consultation in his unique way: “… each individual in a true, sincere union can also see with the eyes of other brothers and sisters, and hear with their ears. It is as if each of the ten persons in true solidarity and unity has the value and power of seeing with twenty eyes, thinking with ten intellects, hearing with twenty ears …”^[7].

System 1 thinking has greater control over our judgments, especially in the presence of intense emotions such as excitement and anger. It is not uncommon that we regret the promises we make within the excitement of a moment or the things we say when we are angry. Abu Dharr reported something along these lines: Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said to us, “If one of you is angry when he is standing, let him sit down so that the anger will leave him; otherwise, let him lie down”^[8]. Changes such as switching positions can buy just enough time for System 2 to kick in. The devil is in details, think before you speak, and think twice before you act – these are some of the idioms and proverbs that guide us on how to keep a healthy balance between fast and slow thinking.

The risk of error in our decisions and judgments can be alleviated as we move from Thinking Fast to Thinking Slow – and even further to Thinking Together, i.e. consulting with relevant parties. In a sense, humbleness is the key attribute that prevents us from making “fast” decisions without due reflection and encourages us to consult with others, and hence, make better decisions on issues that challenge us.

Gokhan Aydin is a graduate student at Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, RF/Microwave Lab. Syracuse University.

REFERENCES

1. Herbert A. Simon, Models of Man: Social and Rational. New York: Wiley and Sons, Inc.
2. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2013
3. Jesse Signal, Daniel Kahneman’s Gripe with Behavioral Economics, www.thedailybeast.com
4. Proverbs 13:10.
5. The Holy Quran, Chapter 42, Verse 38, Translation by Ali Unal
6. The Holy Quran, Al Imran, 159, Translation by Ali Unal
7. The Twenty-First Gleam, The Gleams, by BSN, Tugra Books, New Jersey, 2008
8. Abu Dawud, 4782

I am sure that there are a lot of people who’ve found themselves in a similar situation to the man above. Unfortunately, most of us are usually not aware of the things happening in this universe. One of the things we tend to overlook is the cleanliness of nature. This is a topic which needs to be considered carefully, but I will just touch on some important aspects of this issue.

First, let’s look at the oceans. The oceans cover three-fourths of the Earth’s surface. There is a bigger world under the ocean than above it. This huge mass hosts jelly fish and tuna, dolphins and octopus, crabs and plankton, sea stars and sea plants. Currently, there are 120,000 species living in the ocean. This is just the number of the species, and doesn’t account for how many variations there are within each species. When we consider the number of living organisms, there are millions of them. Every single day, lots of these organisms die. If there are millions of organisms and thousands of them die each day, then why cannot we see them on the surface of the ocean? Even if these dead organisms are very small, such as plankton, which has a size range from 0.2 m to 20mm, when millions of their dead bodies cluster on the surface, we should be able to see them. The answer lies in a perfect arrangement. For example, the job of cleaning the dead bodies of plankton (also the live bodies!) is performed by fish, sharks, and whales. A large percentage of the daily diet of these animals depends on plankton. Since these animals perform their job well, it is impossible to see any dirt that would have been caused by the dead plankton.

It might seem easy to get rid of the dead bodies of plankton, because they are small organisms. But what about big animals such as whales? What happens to dead whales? Let’s consider the cleaning of dead whales. When a whale dies, its dead body sinks to the bottom of the ocean. This is called a “whale fall” by scientists. There are a lot of species whose diet depends on dead whales. In 1988, a group of researchers at the University of Hawaii found that there are at least 12,490 single organisms which supply their daily diet from a whale fall in the deep North Pacific Ocean. After bigger organisms, such as fish, finish their job, which includes eating the flesh of the dead whale, the other cleaners come to the scene to perform their roles. At this part of the fall, bacteria play a key role in cleaning the bones left from the whale fall. This is not as easy as it might seem. Actually, it takes several years to really clean the dead body from the bottom of the ocean. This is not just a cleaning process at all. While the whale fall is being cleaned from the bottom of the ocean, the ecosystem is supported by the energy from the dead whale.

This cleaning process is not only seen in the oceans, but also on the land. Even though it is more apparent than undersea, we are not totally aware of the cleaning process on land. Decomposition is the chain of events by which a dead organism breaks down to its smaller parts. We must stop here and ask this question: “What would happen if these dead organisms stayed on the land forever?”

So let’s look at what happens to a dead animal on land.

When an organism dies, the process of decomposition starts shortly after its death. There are some stages in the decomposition of an animal. Shortly after the death of the organism, the enzymes in the cytoplasm of the cells start to break down the tissues. This process is called autolysis. It is one of the stages of decomposition in which bacteria plays a role. Bacteria start to break down the tissues. This is called putrefaction. Bacteria are not the only players who have roles in this process. Besides them, some fungi, insects, and even some carnivores are also involved. Live animals, water, air, and temperature (higher temperatures increase the decomposition rate) also help this process. During this time, fungi and bacteria, by using compounds from the dead organisms, convert carbon to carbon dioxide and organic nitrogen to ammonium (NH4+), and so they contribute to both the Carbon and Nitrogen Cycle. After this process is done, many organisms living in the ecosystem have benefitted. At the end of this cycle, soil is enriched with new nutrients which will help the new plants to grow up and the Carbon and Nitrogen cycles are enhanced.

By looking at the processes above, as well as other cycles (e.g. the Carbon cycle), it can be said that the Earth has its own recycling system. While modern societies have only recently understood the importance of recycling, Earth has been using this system thanks to the arrangements given to it.

The things shown here are just some examples of the extraordinary systems existing on the Earth. These systems have always been like this, since the very beginning of the universe. These perfects systems in nature perform their tasks without any human help. The only thing for us to do is to appreciate this harmony, understand its value, and keep it going for the next generations.

“Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning”
William A. Ward

When I visited my family last time, I realized that my two-year old nephew, who could not speak fluently and knew only a few words, wanted to learn about everything he saw. For instance, while I was using an iPhone, he wanted me to show him how to unlock its screen. I taught him how; he tried to use it and started asking questions about the applications: What is that? What is it doing? In fact, he sometimes couldn’t speak, but he implied what he wanted to ask. Moreover, he could easily learn and repeat what I said and did.

He is a curious bundle of joy, and so are most toddlers. I believe that if toddlers – who are usually defined as being between the ages of one and three – don’t lose their curiosity, each of them will grow into accomplished members of our future’s intellectual society.

Curiosity: What is it?

Curiosity basically means a desire to know or learn. Dr. Reiss states that curiosity is one of the 16 basic desires which guide human behaviors, and comes from the need to learn^[1]. Curiosity triggers various questions about events around us, and in a broader perspective, about the universe. The interaction between the desire to learn and the universe usually brings about scientific development. So, curiosity is the key to learning and science. And talking about children, curiosity is imperative to their learning.

“What is that?” is a phrase that is usually heard from a toddler who can speak at least a few words. Toddlers have a great curiosity to understand what happens around them. They are new in this world and everything grabs their attention. Because of this curiosity, they want to learn. According to Bruce Perry, there is a big learning cycle [2], which starts with curiosity and exploration, and goes on to discovery, pleasure, repetition, mastery, new skills, confidence, self esteem, security and more exploration. While one of the main characteristics of mankind is learning by curiosity early in his life, as time passes, his curiosity fades. What causes this change? Why does it fade away? Can it be delayed? What can be done to invigorate his passion for learning, exploring and discovering if it fades? How can schools, as a secondary environment for learning after the family, be designed so that the initial curiosity is not lost?

Why does curiosity fade?

The eagerness of children to scientifically understand the world is restrained by various factors. These factors vary due to the complex nature of human beings and the environment they live in. The three significant and common factors are fear, disapproval, and absence^[2].

One of the common factors is fear that can arise implicitly or explicitly. The definition of fear is “a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid”^[3]. It causes uncomfortable conditions for people. When experiencing fear, a human cannot act normally until either the fear subsides or he deals with the cause of the fear. For example, parenting styles, events that cause internal family distress, violence, a teacher’s disciplinary style, restrictions, rules, and an unhealthy classroom environment can be some of the reasons behind fear. Human curiosity is fostered by healthy, comfortable environments^[4].

The second factor behind fading curiosity is disapproval. If a child is raised by phrases that start with “don’t,” he will learn not to do things. He will not be eager to attempt to learn new, different ways. For instance: If a child is raised by saying don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t get dirty, don’t take that apart, don’t touch, don’t, don’t, and don’t… To learn, they need to try these things. These attempts can be wrong or not essential, but children achieve a great sense of learning by doing.

The last, but certainly not least factor, of losing curiosity is absence. The meaning of absence is that the child has no sense of safety and opportunity to share new discoveries. The existence of caring people around them provides the optimal environment for exploration, discovering new things and increasing the capacity of sharing one’s discoveries. This is because of the sense of safety.

Invigorating faded curiosity

In terms of renewing curiosity for a child who has lost his passion for examination and critical observation of the world, we can start by eliminating the reasons for faded curiosity: fear, disapproval and absence. Eliminating these factors will give children a chance to reconstruct their passion, safety, and courage to repair their lost and curiosity to learn.

One who is responsible for a child needs to recognize individual differences in them, and to encourage their unique kinds of curiosity. Each individual is recognized as a different world; therefore, each individual has his or her own unique framework about the world. In some points, there can be similar and overlapping ideas but it does not mean their conceptual framework is the same. Curiosity triggers them to enhance their conceptual framework by learning with understanding. So we need to let them run after their different styles of learning, which will help them to advance in a discipline without enforcement. By doing so, children feel free to choose their area of interest and with a strong sense of their curiosity, they will move forward in that discipline.

At this point, we come up with a question: what can be done for timid children? Being timid does not mean that they are not curious. They just require more encouragement and reinforcement to feel safe and familiar with situations.

Generally, parents or teachers assume that some creative attempts of children are failures; thus, we need to redefine “failure.” If a child wants to learn to jump rope, which is not an easy task for younger children, he or she can do it hundreds of times, and trip every one of them. On one hand, this can be defined as failure; on the other hand, parents can think that it is a determination to reach success and that these trials and trips are necessary to develop that skill.

Another mistake, which can hinder a child’s curiosity, is that parents mostly make a judgment about a child’s larger personality rather than their specific behaviors. If we continue on the same example: jump rope, to encourage and reinforce them to learn, we can judge their behavior and lead them how to overcome it rather than critiquing their personality.

New approaches in the scientific environment in Curiosity is a common topic, not only for children but also within scientific communities. Through curiosity, human beings start to understand the universe and realize its wonderful and unique design. When you scientifically dig deeper into the environment and the world, your astonishment will increase about how perfectly designed things are. For instance: while I was watching a documentary, a man was interested in cobra snakes, and he dedicated 40 years of his life to exploring snake’s hidden and mysterious world. He was still so excited about talking about snakes and the details of their life; moreover, he mentioned that he needed to do more exploration to master his knowledge about snakes. You can easily catch the point: 40 years to explore only snakes, but it is not enough.

To raise a scientifically literate generation, to make them well skilled in understanding the world and willing to explore the world and universe, just like the man who is interested in snakes, the classroom environment needs to change. There should be a focus on the students and their learning with understanding, rather than being teacher-centered and based on rote learning. The United States and other countries have passed various reform acts in education to have more student-centered classrooms and better environments for learning with understanding. The most popular term in reform acts is inquiry. Although a century has passed since first appearance of the term “inquiry” in the science-education literature, there is no compromise on inquiry; you can find a lot of definition and different types of inquiry.

Inquiry-Based Learning

In a general perspective, inquiry is not only a method to teaching science, but also a result of teaching science. Learners have hands-on and minds-on activities both during the process, and after teaching and learning; learners should be able to imply new situations of scientific inquiry in their daily life. The inquiry should start with curiosity and a question about phenomena. Curiosity and the questioning phase start with some awareness of phenomena, and continue with experiments, research, observations, designs, and so on. Moreover, according to previous activities, students have some evidence, results, or assumptions to answer the initial questions, then give an explanation in keeping with his or her findings. Students need to make a comparison between his or her answers, peers, and the larger scientific literature, and also be able to justify their findings and answers.

After this process, the student learns both the scientific concepts and scientific process, and, as a member of a scientifically-literate society, uses it in new conditions in daily life. This process is a kind of imitation of what scientists do in their research. Moreover, these activities provide high retention later in the learning process. Increasing average retention rates would make students more proficient with science, keep them familiar with scientific content, and the scientific method; thus, they may keep their curiosity vigorous to sustain their scientific readings and investigations. By doing so, little students are going to be little scientists based on the strength of their curiosity.

To sum it up, curiosity is a significant factor for learning and science; it’s an essential part of human behavior. Most of the explorations, inventions and discoveries originate with curiosity. But curiosity is not a static power; most of us can lose our curiosity about the universe and the world because of various reasons, including fear, disapproval, and absence. To invigorate faded curiosity we need to eliminate the factors that are the reason for such lapses. Moreover, parents and teachers should be careful about individual differences, and we need to redefine the term “failure.” Finally, curiosity is the feature of scientific communities that are eager to understand the world and the universe. If their scientific method, which is known as “learning with inquiry,” can be applied in the classroom, children can follow the mysteries of the world and universe. Throughout little students’ journey, and during their studies, curiosity, as a wick in a candle, will enlighten our world. Let them to keep their candle sparkling!

References

1- Reiss, Steven (March 5, 2002). Who am I? The 16 Basic Desires that Motivate Our Actions and Define Our Personalities. Berkley Trade. ISBN 978-0425183403.

2- Perry, Bruce Duncan. http://teacher.scholastic.com/professional/bruceperry/curiosity.htm

3- http://dictionary.reference.com/

4- Berlyne, D. E. 1960. Conflict, Arousal, and Curiosity. New York: McGrawhill.

Science is the systematic study of the behavior of certain phenomena (that is, regularities, uniformities) in the physical universe. Scientific study is based on observation, experimentation, measurement, and the formulation of universal laws that describe these facts and phenomena in general terms and enable prediction.

The process of describing regularities (i.e. things that happen in a particular way) is incomplete and never exhaustive because regularities are not exact and deterministic. There is actually quite a lot of approximation and simplification involved in this process. If an exact equation is desired, then these scientific laws, which are useful for prediction, must be formulated in mathematical terms; this represents the whole business of science.

The huge popularity of science is due to its practical results, such as the previous technological examples stated previously. Science is about studying regularities in the material world and describing those regularities in order to make predictions and to make possible the technology that we use daily possible.

It is important to stress that describing and making use of science is not about explaining, but rather using it to make sense of something; here, description is not to be confused with explanation. Therefore, science is about describing, not explaining. The moment a scientist talks about the meaning behind a law or regularity in nature and our ability to benefit from it, he is no longer talking science and he is venturing into the realm of metaphysics and the philosophy of science. Just because someone is a great scientist, it does not mean that he has a deeper insight into the meaning of the laws of the physical world and universe.

What science seeks to explain

Science does not answer questions of meaning or questions of agency (like, who is doing what for what reason? What is responsible for a given regularity?) and we cannot criticize science for not dealing with these questions. They may be important questions but it’s not the responsibility of the field of science to answer these questions. For example, consider the Law of Gravity. We drop a pen and it falls. Why did it fall? Because of gravity.

We observe that, without exception, the pen always falls when we lift it and drop it. Then we call the conjunction between performing an action and its regularity the law of gravity. This means that the law of gravity is simply the name we have given to this regularity; however, it does not mean that the pen is falling because of gravity. Gravity is the name given to the process, not an explanation for it, but in our minds both the name and the explanation for the phenomenon have become one and the same.

The question arises: Is it logically justified to explain an experience through a causal law that is derived through the same experience?

In the beginning, when scientists started asking these questions, it was unclear what the difference was between description and explanation. For a long time science was thought to be a venture competing with religion in providing answers for life.

Regarding natural laws, 19th century American philosopher Charles Peirce stresses on the point that natural laws serve as a description of natural events, not as explanations of these very events: “no law of nature makes a stone fall, or a Leyden jar to discharge, or a steam engine to work.”¹

A law of nature left to its self would be quite analogous to a court without a sheriff. A court in that predicament might probably be able to induce some citizen to act as sheriff; but until it had so provided itself with an officer who, unlike itself, could not discourse authoritatively but who could put forth the strong arm, its law might be the perfection of human reason but would remain mere fireworks. Just so, let a law of nature – say the law of gravitation – remain a mere uniformity – a mere formula establishing a relation between terms – and what in the world would induce a stone, which is not a term nor a concept but just a plain thing, to act in conformity to that uniformity?²

The law of gravity is just a formula, just a name. It cannot make a stone act in accordance to it.

It is important to note that the notion of law is closely related to issues of agency and also to the affinity of the human mind to perceive natural phenomena and the possibility of finding patterns in nature beyond science (i.e. how is it that we are so in tune to what is happening in the world that we can pick up all these regularities?). These issues announce the “greatness” of science. When it comes to the affinity of the human mind to realize recurrent patterns in the universe, Peirce says:

. . . the mind of man is strongly adapted to the comprehension of the world; at least, so far as this goes, that certain conceptions, highly important for such a comprehension, naturally arise in the mind; and, without such a tendency, the mind could never have had any development at all.³

Therefore, there would be no science if one could not grasp the regularities.

In our scientific inquiry, it is reasonable for us to be searching out these regularities and hoping that they will remain stable, but we cannot assume that we have explained how or why such regularities or laws are in effect. It may also be reasonable to say that there are regularities and we hope that these regularities and so-called universal laws will come into effect in the future so that technology can be made from predictions. There can only be hope, and not certainty, because science is based on observation and there may be some instances where the same observation may not occur.Even though science is based on exactitude, there is still a measure of hope and faith involved.

A scientific law states a repeated observation about nature. How do we come to the conclusion that we have a scientific law? Several events occur, (not just to the researcher) that hold to certain regularities, according to a certain pattern, and a generalized statement is formed. The process of generalization from a limited number of observations to form a universal statement or law is called the process of induction, or looking at a certain number of events and saying that things are going to happen all the time. The assumption under the process of induction is that the more observations made about a particular phenomenon, the more it will reinforce the law.

There is only one way for such an assumption to be true, and it has nothing to do with the number of observations. We assume a relationship or connection between the object and what occurs, the cause and effect. The assumption is that there is a necessary connection between the cause and the effect. One must be able to explain this connection in a logical way, not as something that depends solely on observation but something that necessitates the event. If this is unable to be done, if it is only based on observations, then induction is a problem. In formulating a scientific law, generalizations made through the method of induction are problematic.

Because of induction, the basic application of our inductive reasoning is twofold: firstly we think we can describe what we have seen by the use of universal laws, and secondly, that we can use these established laws in predicting what we will see. There is, however, a problem with the mechanics of the inductive process. Are we justified in formulating these universal laws simply on the basis of a discrete number of past observations that have been made?

For example, based on the scientific observation of planetary motion, we could suggest that “the sun will rise every day.” However, just because the sun has risen in the past, it does not mean that it will continue to do so either tomorrow or the next day. So the induction based on the number of occurrences of a particular phenomenon is illogical. There is no guarantee that we will ever see the sun rise again. The sense of faith we have in the scientific laws of planetary motions is based on the supposition that some kind of necessity has caused the sun to rise in the past and will therefore continue to cause the sun to rise in the future. We assume that the connection between the cause and the effect are necessarily related. To use another common example, everyone in Europe thought the statement “All swans are white” was true because every swan that they had ever seen was white. However, when travelers came back from Australia and New Zealand, they reported having seen black swans, thus providing a real life example of how induction can falter. This observation negated the previous generalizations.This brings us to the issue of causality.

Causality is the relationship between an event (the cause) and a second event (the effect), where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first. In relation to one another, induction only has to work sometimes whereas causality always has to work. It has little to do with the number of occurrences; it has to work for each cause-effect relationship. The consequence of this model of the world is that empirical knowledge is connected to the causal relations between objects and events. According to this view, the logic of scientific discovery is inductive. In other words, it infers universal laws from particular statements.

The logic of induction proceeds as follows: First, it conjectures that induction is valid, and then concludes that causation is true. Whereas, from the point of view of logic, it is just the other way around; induction can be justified only by proving that causation is logically valid i.e., that the relation between cause and effect is necessary. Induction is therefore logically not a justified method to attain universality. As the Australian-British philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper observes, scientific induction is “logically inadmissible,” that scientific “theories are, therefore, never empirically verifiable.”⁴

Can we count on the laws of nature? It depends. We can have faith in them; we can hope that they will continue to hold in the future but there exists no logical certainty. But we cannot prove that they will remain true because we cannot observe something that will occur in the future (the dogma of the experiment).

The British philosopher Bertrand Russell calls the dogma of induction, the “biggest scandal of philosophy.” He provides the example of a farmer and his chicken. The chicken notices that the farmer comes every day to feed it. It predicts that the farmer would continue to bring food every day. According to the principle of induction, each feeding event added justification to its prediction. Then one day the farmer came and wrung the chicken’s neck. Russell’s point is that induction cannot justify any conclusions!

Critical problems with the method of induction have been in discussion long before the more recent debates, and are often connected with the concept of causality. The same issue was also at the center of a heated debate among Muslim philosophers and theologians as early as the 12th century. This critical problem with the method of induction was also pointed out earlier by the 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume. Hume stated that when we observe two events to be causally related, say a seed (a) resulting in the growth of a shoot or tree (b), what we in fact observe is only a contingent conjunction of two events. That is, the causation that we think we perceive is not actually “out there in the world” for us to observe. When we see two events and judge them to be causally related, it is merely through a habit of the mind, something we project onto the world. A necessary causal link, as such, is not guaranteed. Hume writes:

Were any object presented to us, and were we required to pronounce concerning the effect, which will result from it, without consulting past observation; after what manner, I beseech you, must the mind proceed in this operation? It must invent or imagine some event, which it ascribes to the object as its effect; and it is plain that this invention must be entirely arbitrary. The mind can never possibly find the effect in the supposed cause, by the most accurate scrutiny and examination. For the effect is totally different from the cause, and consequently can never be discovered in it.⁵

This means that causal laws of nature are not true logically and there is no concrete evidence that these will continue to hold in the future. We simply cannot postulate universal laws that tell us the way the world irrefutably is and will always be unless we have some good reason to trust such generalizations. And even if we could trust such universal laws as “the sun will always rise,” it is not clear how many times we would need to see the sun rise in order to justify proposing this law. Scientific observation, although detailed and informative, has no claim to being the irrefutable truth of the matter.

The solution

Sir Karl Popper offered a potential solution to this problem by thinking about the way we do science in a new light. Popper turned science on its head by claiming that we are looking at science in the wrong way. Instead of looking to science to provide us with theories that are definitive and true, Popper said that we should be looking to science to provide us with theories that we have failed to prove false for a very long time. This approach to science is referred to as “Falsificationism.” Less of a solution and more of a shortcut, it is a tool which we are allowed to use in the game of science. He describes the Falsification approach by noting that for the scientific method to be rational, it must make claims to knowledge that is logically sound. That is, science is not about making grand universal laws, but about the examination of individual observations. According to the model of falsification, science is concerned with evaluating and refining. What we commonly think of as scientific claims to knowledge, are only hypotheses that we accept till they are proved wrong.

Fundamentally, Popper accepts that science can never provide us with complete 100% certainty, but he claims that this is not really a problem because it is not actually science’s job. The purpose of science is to provide us with a theory that is likely to be true based on the fact that we haven’t yet managed to prove it wrong. One unfortunate consequence of this, however, is that you can only ever be certain of the things that you have proved wrong. We know, for example, that the world definitely is not flat. The problem with this fact is that, although certain, it is not particularly useful to know that something is definitely false. For Popper, the best we can hope for is that a given claim is corroborated at one instance in time and if we presume otherwise, we are begging the question of the uniformity of nature: that what has always been, will (for apparently no good reason) continue to be.

To recapitulate, science does not deal with explanation; this is the realm of metaphysics. How we explain things depends on our beliefs and world view.

Dr. Yamina Mermer is a member of the Scriptural Reasoning Group based at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, UK.
Dr. Eren Tatari is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Rollins College, Florida.

Footnotes

1. Online Past Masters text, The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, (University of Virginia E-text Center), 1.323. (The online texts is drawn from The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vols. I-VI ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931-1935), Vols. VII-VIII ed. Arthur W. Burks (same publisher, 1958).
2. Ibid., 5.48.
3. Ibid., 6. 417.
4. Popper, Karl. (1959). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Hutchinson & Co. (Original work published in 1935).
5. Hume, David. (1772). An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Hackett Publishing Co.

What possible similarities could there exist between a human and a tree? Interestingly, the open wounds of human beings and trees are subject to the same laws and are healed in similar ways.

Have you ever wondered what kinds of similarities exist between human skin and the bark of a tree?

Trees are subject to major and minor injuries just like humans are. These injuries could be the result of a broken branch, insect infestation, animal damage, fire and human related damages. These kinds of injuries can lead to the infection of a plant which can cause rotting and damage to the transport tissues like phloem (nutrients) and xylem (water) by microorganisms and insects (bacteria, fungi, parasites).

Fluid excretion in wounds and development of scar tissue

Blood serum is secreted in human wounds, whereas gum and resin type fluids are secreted in various trees (Figure 2 and 3). Serum plays an important role in sterilization of the wound, along with blood coagulation. Defense mechanisms in trees involve excretion of different fluids (resin in needle-leaf trees, gum in broadleaf trees) that are synthesized via composition of various chemicals. The most important feature of these fluids is that with their special chemical make up, they can protect the wound from organisms like bacteria, fungi, and insects that are potentially harmful to the tree. These fluids also feature coagulation like the human serum; they congeal and solidify after excretion and trigger a biological healing process while physically covering the wounded area.

Wounds are repaired with new connective tissue cells (fibroblasts) in humans and by callus in trees. Healing of the wound following the coagulation takes place with proliferation of cells in this region (epithelialization). First, epithelial cells wrap the wound via proliferation. New transport tissue is developed during this process. Next, fibroblasts that are in charge of wound repair are transferred into coagulate via this transport tissue. Fibroblasts synthesize collagen protein of the required fiber structure needed for the wound repair. Injured area is woven with these, and recovers its former shape in time depending on the size of the wound.

Healing is granted through timely reproduction, transformation and maturation of paranchimatic cells that make up the callus, when only a portion of tree bark is damaged. Paranchimatic cells are fused side by side and they form a thick elevation of callus tissue around the wound (Figure 4). At the end, these are activated for the development of a new, healthy cambium and bark. Cambium tissue is responsible for vertical and lateral growth of a tree therefore it is vitally important that it does not suffer any damage. This tissue in growth season proceeds from the perimeter of the wound towards the center for a complete healing. The productive efficiency of the tree medium can speed up or slow down the curing process similar to humans.

The reality is that all living things are created with a dress suited for their environments so that their bodies can be protected from negative elements from the outside world. Organisms are armored from many harmful physical (mechanical, extreme temperatures, light etc.) and chemical effects with this perfectly bestowed dress as a manifestation of the divine compassion in the universe just as in the case of the wounds of humans, animals and plants which are subject to the similar laws found in nature.