0) “OPEN ANYbiology textbook, and you’ll encounter 0)an artistic rendering of a perfectly round cell…” This I like, the fact that they make the jump from the book representations , which are usually nonsense models of nature’s reality, to the material and forces reality and acknowledge the fact that most modeled cell representations are rubbish, that they are not nicely round or square or cylindrical and so forth but that they each really have their own individual morphology. Each and everyone of them… Sadly enough it are these kinds of erroneous representations most people keep in their mind and not the reality of what- if they have seen it- the real deal in a microscope during the cytology and histology practice…
Think of it for a second, a cell alone in a watery environment when it ‘replicates’ what does that mean? It is an internal reorganization of material at disposition, do you really think it could have an exact reorganization to the point that you get two daughter cells with the exact same Form in number or organelles size and function or molecules? Dream on.
The so called cell replication is in the constituents dimension the molecules an internal reorganization and not a replication!
The word ‘division’ but worse ‘replication’ induces the idea that it is an exact copy, which it can never be …never, because it is physically impossible in biological conditions. Anyway the writer of the article acknowledges that they are not perfectly round copies of each other, balm for my mind and old heart, so eager to read on I go…
1) “1) Even with cells of the same type, no two are shaped alike, let alone truly round. “We were surprised,” says Wiegraebe.” Yes that is clear and can’t actually be otherwise if you understand nature’s principles to at least some degree…but than trouble in Paradise rises like a bad itch that crawls up just after an insect bite or stitch on the ankles… “We were surprised,” says Wiegraebe.
Say what? Say again please??? First sign that the conviction of the book nonsense, and “Polly says: Good morning “ education dominates over the sense of reality out there… But ok don’t jump on our horses, at least he has seen it and made the jump over to reality, and it brought him over his educational bias, so maybe a little in the box but not so deeply embedded that he can’t see over the edge of the box anymore…
“Most people can only see what they know” so I am surprised that he was surprised but ok let us read on because it still looks like a great article…but my attention is aroused now to be careful and read slowly and critically like a wolf goes into unknown territory one paw forwards but the whole body ready to react with flight or fight if necessary…
0) “OPEN ANYbiology textbook, and you’ll encounter 0)an artistic rendering of a perfectly round cell…” This I like, the fact that they make the jump from the book representations , which are usually nonsense models of nature’s reality, to the material and forces reality and acknowledge the fact that most modeled cell representations are rubbish, that they are not nicely round or square or cylindrical and so forth but that they each really have their own individual morphology. Each and everyone of them… Sadly enough it are these kinds of erroneous representations most people keep in their mind and not the reality of what- if they have seen it- the real deal in a microscope during the cytology and histology practice…
Think of it for a second, a cell alone in a watery environment when it ‘replicates’ what does that mean? It is an internal reorganization of material at disposition, do you really think it could have an exact reorganization to the point that you get two daughter cells with the exact same Form in number or organelles size and function or molecules? Dream on.
The so called cell replication is in the constituents dimension the molecules an internal reorganization and not a replication!
The word ‘division’ but worse ‘replication’ induces the idea that it is an exact copy, which it can never be …never, because it is physically impossible in biological conditions. Anyway the writer of the article acknowledges that they are not perfectly round copies of each other, balm for my mind and old heart, so eager to read on I go…
1) “1) Even with cells of the same type, no two are shaped alike, let alone truly round. “We were surprised,” says Wiegraebe.” Yes that is clear and can’t actually be otherwise if you understand nature’s principles to at least some degree…but than trouble in Paradise rises like a bad itch that crawls up just after an insect bite or stitch on the ankles… “We were surprised,” says Wiegraebe.
Say what? Say again please??? First sign that the conviction of the book nonsense, and “Polly says: Good morning “ education dominates over the sense of reality out there… But ok don’t jump on our horses, at least he has seen it and made the jump over to reality, and it brought him over his educational bias, so maybe a little in the box but not so deeply embedded that he can’t see over the edge of the box anymore…
“Most people can only see what they know” so I am surprised that he was surprised but ok let us read on because it still looks like a great article…but my attention is aroused now to be careful and read slowly and critically like a wolf goes into unknown territory one paw forwards but the whole body ready to react with flight or fight if necessary…
“How do they differentiate into brain, muscle, or any of the other approximately 200 different human cell types?” A question is always good, not parting from a conviction but starting from a question… but the aroused ‘wolfs’ carefulness is suddenly peaking to a higher amplitude now…
Because of the way this sentence is constructed and the words chosen - it carries many implications and consequences, which make me extremely suspicious now… But let us give it the benefit of doubt because this article was written by someone else maybe a scientific journalist (just guessing? *) and not by the researcher himself…
And as they say in Italian “Traduttore traditore” (Translating is betraying), both the researcher and the journalist speak the same language yes, but the article is still the ‘translation’ from one mind through its mouth and then picked up by another ear and retranslated into another mind which then retranslates it once more in order to put it on paper and so making it definitive…Chiseled in stone so to speak: the eternal problem of written transmission, that is why my preference goes to the oral transmission live with possibility for immediate feedback as to eliminate as much as possible the miscomprehension’s …
So which message am I reading, the scientist or the translations – betrayals of the journalist?
* I try to look it up on their website and this what they tell about themselves: “Undark is a non-profit, editorially independent digital magazine exploring the intersection of science and society. It is published with generous funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, through its Knight Science Journalism Fellowship Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts.”
Thus my guess stays a guess but it looks like Chris Parker the writer of the article is indeed a scientific journalist, it does not tickle me that much to start a complete investigation because that is not what this whole thing is about, but it is a sign on the wall of my Italian saying suspicion “Traduttore traditore”.
I can only react to what is suggested, and its consequences, so this is on the sentence not the person!
“How do they differentiate into brain, muscle, or any of the other approximately 200 different human cell types?”
First of all let us take it step by step in this sentence, and I start with the shortest comments because it is easier: approximately 200 types of DIFFERENTIATED cells that we find in the human body. DIFFERENTIATED not different!!!!
Maybe this is a language problem, as I am not an native English speaker but different is just a fact, that can come from anywhere? It smells like ‘genetic’ Polly says good morning or epigenetic stuff (which, in se, is less dramatic because it encloses the environment) or ‘the big One from upstairs’ for that matter? Unsatisfactory…
Differentiated means acknowledging the processes, which are many interactions, it is not just a strange coincidence but a PROCESS that goes in steps, which are very probably the result of many interactions between system and environment or cells and their environment small and bigger… and all that with its own hierarchy and chronology… Still highly disturbing to my naturalist brain, how can you hope to understand the cell without incorporating also your attention on its environment small and big? So the biggest boulder or disturbing hindrance is out, my brain finds its balance and my world is at peace again.
The second biggest inconsistency is the jump from one type of differentiated cell to a complete organ? Sorry but this a no go, cell’s are constituted by biomolecules, the cell is the resultant of the molecules position and their form and their interactions with each other in their direct and indirect environment, and the same can be said for the next dimension or level the tissue, it is the resultant of its constituents: many cells and their direct and indirect environment, the organ or the next dimensional complexity level is the resultant of several tissues as constituents and their position and their form and their interactions with each other in their direct and indirect environment.
Each dimensional jump consists of thousands of constituents, billions of positional interferences, each individually with their specific FORM and zillions of interactions all happening at the same moment and interfering…. This is high level complexity and adaptive to that dumbed down to a laughable sentence with such jumps that it’s not even laughable but actually denigrating…
Thirdly by dumbing it down and jumping over the “unseen” tissue dimension in this sentence, it has as consequence that the link is impossible to see for the reader. For the easy comprehension take your favorite book or movie and you just get the first shot or sentence and the last one, what does this do to the process the whole story? Exactly that is the consequence of this sentence choice of words and tinkering them together in this way…it is highly suggestive rubbish that does not say anything actually.
Brain as an organ, as a combination of tissues, themselves as a combination of many differentiated cells and positional relationships with all their specific interactions between system and environment has little to do in many ways with muscles…for my dedicated babble-readers:
Brain is clearly a frontier tissue which is another form that has little to do with muscles which are inner tissue.
A completely different way of behaving, a different story (hierarchy and chronology) and totally different type of interactions with their environment.
How can you suggest that, with so many dwellings and dumbing down in one sentence?
My ardor to read is cooling down rapidly for this article by this sentence, it’s cooling down as fast as is rising my discomfort and disappointment, a beautiful and cool picture does not compensate this writing style…for me at least. But I don’t give up yet, although what I just wrote down happened in a split second in my brain, and activated the according reactions and thoughts …
“Even more fundamentally, how do these little bags of water and chemicals turn a set of DNA instructions into a dynamic living creature capable of autonomous and coordinated behaviors?”
What ? Please don’t even say again, this is it, that part of the sentence just runs down the temperature to deep Siberian sub zero conditions that makes continuing to read impossible for me… Why? How does whoever (remember still don’t know if this is the researcher or the journalist?) even dare to use in such an even dumber sentence than the previous one such a pile of rubbish and then use the word “FUNDAMENTALLY”?
Fundamentally, the word itself suggests ‘fundament’ in the Cambridge dictionary online this gives: fundament noun [C] (BASIS) the most important facts, ideas, etc. from which something is developed
Fundament from the Latin “Fundatio” to establish or foundation, quite basic and important if you are going to establish or construct something whatever it is, also an idea or enunciate a concept, and if your fundament is wrong or faulty, biased from the beginning, the whole construction will be erroneous per definition.
In fractal mathematics any slightest error, bias or fault in the basic algorithm or fundament algorithm is going to increase by each iteration (dimensional increase or replication) and be of bigger consequence for the end result.
Ok, this is maybe too “principle oriented” for many, in an easier living picture language:
“The tower of Pisa, as a living picture: if the ground you build on is unstable and thus your fundament wrongly chosen or biased from start, the whole construction will carry the consequence of this, and it will be worse the higher you go (increasing the dimensions and complexity of the whole)
The Pisa tower is not such a bad example, the building started to go uneven from the moment they started the construction of the second floor (second iteration of the fractal, if you want) but they persisted for another sloppy 300 years with their construction, although they saw the fundament was a no go.
Luckily for us tourists today there where two wars that interrupted the construction process for a while…otherwise the thing would have collapsed long ago.
Now they had rest periods and time to adapt the weight distribution and solidify where necessary for the whole failure to defy the laws of gravity and the laws of rheology apparently but that is only an illusion that will hold for some time…. Okay, back to our hot potato the rubbish sentence…
Second shock: “how do these little bags of water and chemicals” how can one be so ignorant to use this common language or image, which is typical of ‘Polly says good morning education’?
Cell’s are not little bags of water, you simpleton whoever told this to you, or implanted it in the emptiness you think is a brain, a reasoning instrument, is a simpleton too! Go one level deeper, no, two levels for structured thinking people…
Water is the fundamental organizing factor: by its bipolar or dipolar behavior, water molecules self-organize into a kind of electrical force field that divides the world in majorly two types of substances: polar or not.
Polar means they can deal or share at least a part of the water force field…like in the Star War movie….The FORCE
The apolars are pushed away by that force field, no choice, not try to make friends or allies, just pushed away…tensio-active forces ever heard of that? Ever asked why or where this comes from? Water is the culprit, the driving force, the organizer.
Cell membranes are mainly constituted by phospholipids, a strange molecule that is partly polar (the phosphor part) and mainly apolar (the double fatty acid chains part) and as thus or consequence if they are in a water environment, it is the water force field (polar) that organizes or pushes them! There is no glue whatsoever in the cell membrane, it only holds its organization because there is water on the inside and outside that pushes the apolar fatty acid chains away towards each other….little bags of water…
