I think, therefore I am.

For this weeks post, I decided to tickle the scholar in all of us, by sharing a very thought provoking article written for The American Scholar by Robert Lanza. Dr. Lanza has done EXTENSIVE work on "the cell of cells" aka stem cells, and is part of the reason that this science has not been tossed by government! Dr. Lanza showed that stem cells can be extracted without killing the embryo. Recently he got stem cells to grow into retinal cells, having hope for some forms of blindness. He is VP of the respected the research giant Advanced Cell Technology which has numerous accolades for the important work they do.

They are focused with theraputic stem cell research, not reproductive (cloning), so don't be turned off immediately by their work. That is one thing that has severely bothered me with criticisms of stem cell research. People are so worried that we are going to clone a human, and therefore become alienated to the idea of stem cell research without factoring in the INNUMERABLE solutions that this research can provide if given the proper funding and support. Anyhow...

His article is very provocative and engaging, and I found that it really gets one to think about 'what we know' in a very different light. I think though that he will be crucified by much of the scientific community, because what he offers is a very different than the solution of the common scientific community to the question of life and its origin.

To read the article : : click here : :

Some of the ideas which were most appealing to me included this statement:
" Most of these comprehensive theories are no more than stories that fail to take into account one crucial factor: we are creating them. It is the biological creature that makes observations, names what it observes, and creates stories. Science has not succeeded in confronting the element of existence that is at once most familiar and most mysterious—conscious experience. "

We can only understand reality in so much as we perceive it. Classic example of this is those that thought the world was flat disk. That was relative reality for them, and it was true in so much as they could observe it. Nowadays, we pride ourselves in how far we've come in our perception of how things are and will be, but we fail to see that this is only true as far as our ability allows us to perceive reality. We are so quick to discount things that we can't understand empirically, without realizing that perhaps we don't understand because we have not yet learned how to observe the phenomenon.

In all, the article is amazing, and Dr. Lanza has nailed most of my sentiments and feelings concerning 'modern science' by means of succinct thoughts in a very cogent paper. Hats off to him, for a very telling paper.

Music:
Vanoni Ornella - L'Appuntamento
So, the song is in Italtian, and I have no idea what is being said, but I love the melody and 5$ to the person who spots what movie this is from. It's been sitting on my hard drive for a while, wanted to share. Good mellow evnin' drive tune.