December 27, 2018 Thursday
Bedtime Story
Some Insights to Mind of Carl Woese
Last night I promised to return to some
insights of Carl Woese and so we go into them straightaway:
“Yes, Darwin is back, but in the company of
scientists who can see much further into the depths of biology than was
possible heretofore.
It is no longer a “10,000 species of birds”
view of evolution – evolution seen as a procession of forms.
The concern is now with the process of
evolution itself.
I see the question of biological
organization taking two prominent directions today.
The first is the evolution of the
(proteinaceous) cellular organization, which includes sub-questions such as the
evolution of the translation apparatus and the genetic code, and the origin and
the nature of the hierarchies of control that fine-tune and precisely
interrelate the panoply of cellular processes the constitute cells.
It also includes the question of the number
of different basic cell types that exist on earth today: did all modern cells
come from a single ancestral cellular organization?
The second major direction involves the
nature of the global ecosystem.
Bacteria are the major organisms on this
planet – in numbers, in total mass, in importance to the global balances.
Thus, it is microbial ecology, that is most
in need of development (exactly what Craig Venter had the foresight for), both in
terms of facts needed to understand it, and in terms of framework in which to
interpret them.”
He goes on to add another important view of
his regarding the role of biology (or perhaps more of microbiology considering
the kind of reverence he had for the microbes) for us humans.
“What was formally recognized in physics
needs now to be recognized in biology: science serves a dual function.
On the one hand it is society’s servant,
attacking the applied problems posed by society.
On the other hand, it function’s as
society’s teacher, helping the latter to understand its world and itself.
It is the latter function that is
effectively missing today.”
As the microbiologist Carl Woese has
brought up the subject of biological organization so let me tell you little
more about it as it is another one of my favorite subjects which is though
taught generally in schools but not with the required emphasis that it deserves.
In schooling the idea of biological
organization is more implied rather than stated specifically and emphatically.
Biological organization is described in
terms of hierarchy of levels of increasing complexities.
The “object” at each level is composed of
all the matter described in its lower levels.
The other important concept in the story of
biological organization is the concept of emergence.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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