I present an abstract of a paper, "Biology, Bioelectricity, and
the Nervous System", which I would like to have considered by
others of a scientific bent. The paper is at once challenging and soporific. It is challenging because the material is quite cross
disciplinary, and involves the history and the philosophy of science
as well as knowledge about paleoanthropology, medicine,
evolutionary theory, and physics. It is soporific because it is often
technical or esoteric, so that few will grasp its entirety, and many
will set it aside unfinished.
The paper begins with a discussion of the attempt by
biologists, most notably Ernst Mayr of Harvard, to qualify biology as
scientific by specifying what qualifies as science. The paper points
out that even by this specification biology does not qualify as
science, and that the Mayrian notion that biology has escaped the
millstone of Descartes is incorrect. The paper points out how Mayr's
own biological prejudices against the notion of discontinuity in
vertebrate and mammalian speciation flow from his desire to
maintain the barrier between biology and physics. This issue is
returned to in the epilogue. It is one of the theses of this paper that Descartes and Newton still exercise a strong influence over
biological thought, especially in the idea that only the first of the
four fundamental forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetism, the
strong force, the weak force) is considered pertinent to biology, that
creatures are thought of as mechanisms, and that is what
biochemists look for. It is pointed out that this outlook is
especially characteristic of thinking about the nervous system, the
lack of a model of the functional organization of that system still
being what Mayr calls a bottleneck in biological thought.
In the first part of the paper, NEUROLOGY, ELECTRICITY AND
THE NATURE OF NERVE IMPULSE PROPAGATION, a history of medical
electricity is presented simultaneously with a discussion of how the
thinking of physicists was changing with regard to the nature of
electricity. It is pointed out that most of the conclusions with regard to the use of electrical stimulation to simulate nervous
functioning were made before the electron was even hypothesized,
the rest were made before the nature of the electron was understood
by physicists. In this section is a discussion of the galvanic/faradic
distinction - that is, the difference between AC and DC in terms of
electron behavior, and how medicine failed to grasp the significance
of polarity of electrical charge on chemical reactions, especially
those involving neurotransmitters.
The next section, VIEWS OF NERVOUS SYSTEM FUNCTIONING,
starts with a discussion of how medical/neurological views of
nervous functioning and electricity solidified in 1870, long before
the physicists understood the nature of electricity. These ideas
were institutionalized in the name of Sir Charles Sherrington, the
father of modern neuro-physiology, in the first part of this century. It is stated that even Peter Medawar observes as recently as 1983
that neurology can do nothing more than it could do 100 years
earlier. Thorough discussion of the role of the ignorance of
electricity's functioning upon 19th century speculation about
nervous functioning is presented. It is shown how the structure of
neuroanatomy was misinterpreted in its functioning prior to and in
the first part of the 20th century because the working of electricity
was not yet even understood by physicists, even though it was
already being used by engineers. It is pointed out in this section
that traditional explanations of nervous functioning were never
questioned, and were even awarded a Nobel Prize in 1963 for a bit of
work by Sir John Eccles, Hodgkin and Huxley that is an affront to all
philosophers of science and physicists, but is still taught as
doctrine today. Neurologists insist on retaining a view of the nervous system that leaves it in an impoverished state with regard
to possibly being an information processing system, and
neuroscientists no longer question sciosophistic explanations of
nerve impulse propagation that leave their discipline the most inept
branch of clinical medicine. In the next section, THE FUNCTIONING OF
THE NERVOUS SYSTEM BASED UPON AN EXAMINATION OF ITS
STRUCTURE AND CONSIDERATION OF THE NATURE OF BIOELECTRICITY,
the effects on organic molecules and the origins of life, and on extra
and intracellular chemistry of electrical charge, are detailed. This
is especially crucial for understanding motor functioning, and for
seeing 'behavior' as the result of the movement of electrical charge,
not the intervention of mind and consciousness in a dualistic world.
For the biologists and their mechanisms, 'energy' and 'information'
meant molecular momentum and some anthropomorphic form of cellular intelligence. For the physicists it meant direct current and
electrolysis. In this section is also discussed the
electronmicroscopic structure of muscle and how it legislates
against Sherrington's own 'reflex activity of the spinal cord',
reflexes being something that every neurologist knows how to check
for, and how useless such things are for diagnosis and treatment. In
addition, parallels between atrophy and aging are discussed as well
as the possibility that some paralysis resulting from CNS trauma
are do to deterioration of the muscle and not irreversible CNS
damage.
In the next section, NERVOUS SYSTEM FUNCTIONING,
COMPLEXITY, AND STIMULATION, the relation between motor activity
and brain complexity is clearly staked out. In addition, organism
behavior as well as the functioning of the organism's cells are hypothesized to be dependent upon the same laws of nature, the
movement of electrochemical energy, rather than the cells being
electrochemical while the organism has a consciousness or some
'vital' force within it. With this in mind it is detailed how the CNS
and the body may be maintained by the introduction of electrical
charge via transcutaneous electrode, thereby preventing or curing
chronic and degenerative illnesses and aging.
Finally, in the epilogue it is discussed once again how Mayr's
views of the continuity of genetic change and vertebrate speciation
conflict not only with the fossil record (which is more supportive of
the views of Gould and Eldridge with their 'punctuated equilibria'),
but with a view of the nervous system which holds that nervous
system complexity is better indicated by the number of emergent
axons from that system, whether centrally or peripherally, than relative brain and body weights and cranial capacities. The number
of axons is associated with the ganglia and alpha motor neurons,
with the addition of pairs of these due to 'systemic mutations', an
idea expressly disdained by Mayr. It is stated, in conclusion, that
this approach to the nervous system is right in line with the calls of
Gerald Edelman, Nobel Laureate and director of the Neurosciences
Institute and chairman of the Department of Neurobiology at the
Scripps Research Institute, calls for 'a theory of how morphology
arises and how it is changed during evolution'; 'how alterations in
form, either in the whole animal or at microscopic levels of brain,
evolution; Mayr calls it 'macroevolution'.
I would greatly appreciate the comments and criticisms of
anyone who has the patience and perseverance to finish this paper
and to ruminate over the ideas presented therein. This is just the
proffered foundation of a theory, an hypothesis which can overturn
its competition from the orthodox neurological community by resort to electronmicroscopic muscle biopsies which will overrule the
clinical manual of neuroanatomy, flawed as it is, with regard to
spinal reflexes being posited as responsible for the spasticity and
rigidity of the spinal injured. I would like someday, having gotten
this considered, to answer the 'so what?' of the issue as it relates
to clinical application to chronic and degenerative illnesses and the
aging process.
For a copy of this paper binhexed please write to
gokelly at delphi.com
