Entertain a Thought!

"Cogito ergo sum." I think, therefore I am. This is how the French philosopher Rene Decartes, long ago, put the starting clue for a long branch of philosophy called epistemology, which tries to understand how is it that we know what we know and how do we justify what we assert. We all have this percept of being "in charge"; of knowing what we are, what the world around us is made of and what happened yesterday or is expected to happen tomorrow. But, is this even remotely true? Prisoners of our vision Credit: Pxfuel . Anyone who has taken high school –or even middle school- physics will know that light is but a thin strip of the electromagnetic spectrum. X-ray, radio waves, microwaves and gamma rays are all but because it's what we can perceive, but it really holds no special qualities. If the survival of mammals was optimized by X-rays, then that would be what we perceive, and it would be virtually impossible for us to understand what it...

Hello folks, Avicenna portrait.  Credit:  Wikimedia Commons .  I've been reading recently a book and came by this account of Avicenna's (Ibn Sina) death. The  detailed account of his physical illness is remarkable. Ibn Sina is one of my heroes, and one that inspired me early on to start my life in the medical field. When you read this account, just notice that the colon was called "Kawlong" in the early Arabic literature. What I understood is that he had some colon issue (I.O? Ulcerative colitis? Acute appendicitis? who knows!) and he got himself drug-induced peptic ulcer which probably perforated, leading him into septicemia and convulsions, after which he was killed by opium overdose!! I'll leave you with the actual text. You'll be surprised to find some funny stuff at the beginning and end if you know what I mean. " و كان الشيخ قوي القوى كلها, و كانت قوة المجامعة من قواه الشهوانية, أقوى و أغلب, و كان كثيرا ما يشتغل به فأثر في...

The adventure starts at the mirror. Oh yes, this is where I met him. I stood there and opened my eyes to this strange being staring back at me; imitating my moves, replying with the same words I use to ask him questions… Credit: pxfuel . And the closer I looked, the more perplexed I became, for he was no longer one. He was many. MANY!! Billions and billions of them staring back at me! Colonies and colonies of cells, each with a different shape and differentiation, yet all under the control of the grand designer … the DNA. For he has managed to make them all his slaves. He has made billions of himself … And utilized those poor cells for his own advantage. I saw them there standing strong as ever, bound by the matrix, nourished by the vessels … Yet I heard their desperate screams. "HELP!" But I could not help, for the DNA master has taken over, and I can only watch with sympathy as the agony continued. And then … with the blink of an eye … it vanished! I s...

Ever failed to organize an argument or support your point of view? Ever wondered why some people are very persuasive even when they defend an incorrect point of view? Ever been unable to form a full picture about a situation because of the difficult decisions involved?! If so then you need to train yourself to think critically. Critical thinking is not necessarily about “criticism” as the name might suggest. It is about the way in which one analyses situations, argues own opinion, assesses evidence, presents own thoughts and handles difficult decisions. Someone with good critical thinking skills will be able to take a leading role and handle stress with mastery. A critical thinker is objective in perspective, democratic in nature towards other opinions and has a clear long-term objective. Someone with fine critical thinking skills is positive, dynamic and is educated. A critical thinker makes use of knowledge gained in any discipline to handle a seemingly-irrelevant s...

A couple of years ago, particularly during the holiday between  the first and second year in college, I decided to watch a neuroscience course called Understanding the Brain  for the neuroscientist Jeanette Norden. It's a great course, especially to those who would like to get a philosophical and thought-provoking introduction to the field before getting loaded with the details of neuroanatomy and physiology. Credit: Wikimedia Commons . I was quite surprised at the fact that I never quite thought about such primitive questions as "how do I see things?" and even where the "seat of thinking" lied. Now, after two years of reading and listening of lectures and videos on the subject, I know why. It all stems from our tendency to introspect.We assume that there's a little man (or homunculus , if you prefer the proper term) inside our heads that represents the real "us" who actually analyses the data,  external to the actual hardware ...

Credit: Mohamed Mahmoud Hassan . The past ... Our perception of time is one of the great testimonies to our faulty sensations and imperfect perception of reality. We all have this perception that we live in the present; that we are aware of what goes on around us, as it happens, in real time. But if you think about it, is this truly the case? Let's start with the easy one. Suppose you're watching a live show on TV. It takes a second or slightly less for the microwave radiation used to transmit the signal to the satellite and resend it to your receiving dish. Then it takes a fraction of a second, albeit very short, for the signal to get converted to an electrical signal that travels down the cables, gets reproduced into a visual signal on your TV screen. So technically, you are watching what DID happen a few seconds in the recording studio, not what is happening at the moment. Look up into the heavens on a clear night sky and open your mouth in awe, for what ...

Hello! Credit: Wikimedia Commons . Have you ever thought of (and I mean,  really contemplated) your blood as a solution? Have you ever thought of your cells as a solvent containing dissolved electrolytes and solutes. i.e. as a lipid containers with a jelly protoplasm and a fine meshwork of actin polymers to hold them together? Have you ever thought of your limbs as mere layers of proteins and lipid, organized in various mixes and shapes to form the muscles you move with and the skin that covers them? Have you ever, at your deepest moment of emotionality, looked back and contemplated how your pounding heart is a mere pump? Have you ever thought of your thorax and abdomen as containing a cavity? Have you TRULY ever tried to imagine that the food that passes your pharynx still has a long way to go down a muscular tube? Have you ever thought of your hormones, transduction cascades, DNA replication, protein synthesis and cellular movement as chemic...

Hello there, Recently I've been preoccupied with the following question: Why do human bacteria produce exotoxins?! After all, if they are lingering happily with the nutrients at the site of infection, why harm the organism that harbors them?! Credit: Wikimedia Commons . What struck me even more is that I haven't asked such a simple and rather primitive question earlier! why do bacteria produce exotoxins? " did not do so because they subconsciously think that "bacteria are bad, so it's natural that they harm us!" . And after a moment of thought, I started to realize that this stems from our human tendency to polarize things and to take things to the extremes, being content with the simplest explanations that satisfy our child-like brains. People are either good or bad! This all-or-none mentality has been engraved into us from our early childhood, as a natural biological safety measure. As children, many of us saw our parents as the ultim...