The realities of 'reality'

The realities of ‘reality’ Why does reality still pique our curiosity? Why have we yet to find ourselves 200,000 years later? What is the fate of reality?

Part I It All Starts from Within FRITZ DUFOUR, MBA, DESS Published March 16, 2018

TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………..3 Why I decided to write this series…………………………………………………………4 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..5 Chapter I. Perception and our senses in the interpretation of reality……………………..9 1. About perception…………………………………………………………………………..10 2. The visible five senses…………………………………………………………………….11 3. The invisible five senses…………………………………………………………………..21

Chapter II. Role of the brain in the interpretation of reality…………………………….24 Chapter III. The mind, ultimate maker of reality………………………………………...35 1. Psychology before World War II: an overview………………………………………….38 2. Psychology after World War II: an overview……………………………………………44

Chapter IV. What is reality? A proposed explanation through five questions…………..52 1. What are things and why do they look different from one another?.................................55 2. What is life and its origins?...............................................................................................60 a. The meaning of life…………………………………………………………………..63 b. The origins of life…………………………………………………………………….69 3. What is death?....................................................................................................................84 a. Definition of death…………………………………………………………………...85 b. Near-death experience (NDE)………………………………………………………..89 c. Life after death……………………………………………………………………….92 4. What is superstition?........................................................................................................100 a. Definition of superstition…………………………………………………………...100 b. Mythology Vs. Superstition………………………………………………………...103 c. Can superstition alter reality?....................................................................................104 d. Can black magic alter reality?....................................................................................115 5. What is space and are we alone in the universe?.............................................................125 a. What is space?............................................................................................................126 i. The Sun and our galaxy, the Milky Way……………………………………….127 ii. Birth of planet Earth and the Moon…………………………………………….130 b. Are we alone in the universe?....................................................................................132 i. The Drake Equation…………………………………………………………….135

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...138 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………141 From the same author…………………………………………………………………...146

The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to dedicate this series to…

My late childhood friend Pierre-Bernard Jean who died in the prime of his life. Growing up, we would compete against each other to see who knew more between the two of us. In the process, he instilled in me the drive to be always learning, the thirst for knowledge, and the propensity to always doubt and wonder (the kind of stuff people usually copy from their academically proficient siblings instead of from next-door neighbors). At times, the “intellectual” competition would undermine our friendship, but overall, it was a healthy one. So, thank you dear friend and may your soul rest in peace! …………………………. The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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WHY I DECIDED TO WRITE THIS SERIES What made me decide to write this series? Well, from the time I became aware of my surroundings (around two years old), there is one thing that has always been recurrent in my whole life: change. First, I was interested in the changes my body was subject to (new teeth, new size and height as the years went by, puberty, etc.). Then, I started to also notice that I was not the only one changing. My peers were also changing. My parents were changing (more gray hair, my mother became more lenient towards me and my siblings, etc.). By time I was 25 years old, I was able to take control of my own life by taking bold steps that could either change it for better or worse. By then, I was struck by the frantic pace at which my environment was changing, especially after moving to the United States. I started to really wonder, doubt, and try to fathom what makes up the core or the essence of our world: reality. My rationale was as follows: if humans disagree on almost everything, it’s probably because we don’t see reality the same way; and if that is the case, that means there must be more than one reality. What we call reality is probably either the product, the sum, the remainder, or the quotient of human species’ realities. But I realized that this mathematical approach of reality may not be a panacea. What if reality didn’t really exist? What if it was just wishful thinking? I know what you’re thinking. If you close your eyes and have someone pinch you, you’ll feel it and it will hurt. If you’re broke, your hands are tied, and you can’t pay your bills. Thus, that’s real. While I agree, but what if someone else cannot feel pain because they suffer from congenital insensitivity to pain? Does that mean they haven’t been pinched? Because the only way they can they can tell is if they keep their eyes open. My whole adult life has revolved around comparing, contrasting, and deducing. What strikes me the most is how different we are as a species. We are different not only because of our genetic makeups but also because of reality, commonly referred to as the environment. Reality starts with us individually and then changes us both individually and collectively. By now, I realize that my generation is in the process of replacing the generation that I’ve looked up to all my life (the baby boomers), and there are already three generations (Y, Z, and Alpha) behind mine (Generation X). If I’m lucky, I will probably witness the emergence of Generation Beta. Quite a change, isn’t? Each new generation has its own approach to reality and adds its own explanation to it by creating new realities in the process. Therefore, I decided to write this series in an effort to better understand and explain first, the complex notion of reality and the underlying causes of our divergence when it comes to the description of reality and, second, why what we think is reality may be nothing but an everchanging abstraction. Reality has been changing at a very fast pace lately. While science and technology continue to advance, the world is becoming increasingly vulnerable and fragile. Terrorism, border insecurity, natural disasters, poverty, to name a few, are major factors likely to affect and define our lifestyles, thus, impacting reality. The time couldn’t more appropriate to reflect on reality as the only reason why these problems exist is because we exist as a species. It was Jean-Paul Sartre who said, “Existence precedes essence”. This series is a look into the essence of reality: mankind, without which reality itself would not exist.


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INTRODUCTION If this year was the year 202018, meaning 200,000 years from now and I was writing about reality, where would I begin? What would be the basis that I would use for my arguments? Would I still be able to talk about philosophy, psychology, art, mathematics, chemistry, physics and quantum mechanics? Would I be able to talk about the brain and the mind the same way I do today? Would I be able to speculate about life and death? Would these topics still be relevant in the grand scheme of things? 200,000 years from now, would it still be necessary to speculate about reality anyway? Although the answers to such questions can be either ‘may be’ or ‘may be not’, one thing is certain: 200,000 years from now, humans, if we’re still around, will be different, so different that the disparity will be similar to an insect’s egg and the final stage of its metamorphosis: an imago, the larva and pupa stages being in between. Well, in terms of reality, when the first Homo Sapiens emerged 200,000 years ago, he had no idea what reality would be like today in 2018. His reality was limited to trying to survive in a harsh environment. He had to first learn how to make fire, gather, then grown his own food and hunt just to survive. Say our species is still around 200,000 years from now, what we are capable of in 2018, compared to what we will be capable of then is comparable to the first humans’ reality 200,000 years ago. The fact is, humans’ reality is not constant. It’s variable, fluid. Anecdotally, sometimes I subscribe to many newsletters which seem interesting a priori – they probably are – because I see them as a source of information. But, after a few weeks, I start losing interest and I stop reading them. I just delete the emails, thinking to myself “I can resume reading them anytime I want to and stay informed” After a while, although I do not open them, I realize that checking each of these emails and then click ‘delete’ three to five times a day was time consuming. Okay, now I open each one and click the ‘unsubscribe’ link. Sometimes I get a prompt saying: ‘It may be a few weeks before your email address is taken off our list.’ As I’m writing about this, I still receive newsletters to which I unsubscribed three months ago. Now, instead of a sentiment of satisfaction, gratification, and accomplishment felt initially, I get frustrated. My perception has changed, thus the reality that I envisioned upon subscribing. Many times, I have seen on television people whose realities have changed after a serious accident, or wounded veterans who have lost a limb, saying that their realities have changed and will never be the same again. There will never be another day like your first day on your job. When two people live together, no two days are alike not only because they each have their own reality, but also, they strive to ameliorate or cope with the joint reality they have created the day they decided to live under the same roof. These are just a few examples, among many, of how often and quickly what we think is reality can change, which makes exploring the underlying realities of reality a huge endeavor that requires us to go back in time to understand the present and be able to speculate about the future. Past generations attempted to define reality, the reality of their time. Sometimes they got it right, but The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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Introduction

most of the time, what they thought was reality was flawed, based on subsequent scientific theories. Therefore, our collective reality today will, arguably, be equally obsolete in the future. The big picture or what most of us tend to call reality changes according to the generation who is living it. This series looks at reality in different angles. It goes back and forth in time to explain the versatility of reality. Through the topics that I will discuss, I will attempt to explain why Man is still puzzled by reality after 200,000 years of existence. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Mammals had to wait for rocks, water, Insects, fishes, and reptiles to appear. We, humans, are mammals, but we emerged only 200,000 years ago. In other words, we are the last species of mammals to have emerged. For most species, from the Paleozoic era to the Cenozoic era, reality has not changed. They’re born, they grow and develop, they adapt to the environment, they reproduce, and die. Humans do quite the same things, but in between there is reality, which, of course, impact how we’re born, how we grow and develop, how we adapt to the environment, how we reproduce, and how we die. Of course, dying is what it is: dying, which is the same for all of us. I mean by dying, somatic death, which is the same for everyone, in the sense of cessation of all biological, physiological, and psychological activities, but the factors impacting how we all die may differ from one individual to the next, so do the factors involved in the way we grow and develop and the way we reproduce. As a species, we are all subject to the same basic physical and general requirements for survival: water, food, heat, oxygen, pressure, shelter, clothing, and healthcare. If these elements were all that we needed, then, we would be just like any other living beings in the biosphere. There would not be any difference between animals and humans. What makes us humans is precisely the ever-intriguing reality and the quest to understand it. From everything I said thus far, what would your answer be if I asked you: “What is reality?” I’m guessing that your first reaction would be first to mentally place yourself in the heart of the vastness of our world, then, envision a world that only exist in your mind before you can come up with a satisfying response. Even then, the reality that you would describe would be, in most instances, different from everybody else’s reality. If that is the case, reality is an abstraction, meaning something that is almost impossible to define what makes it true. Because we have been, for eons, trying to understand the world we live in, there is no doubt that we have a mind, which non-human species don’t have. Our mind shapes reality and is, at the same time, shaped by reality. There is a symbiotic relationship between us and reality. The mind makes sense of reality, which I will call the environment for now, thanks to the senses, which play the role of mediums. The awareness of the environment through the senses is called perception. We cannot perceive without our senses. They are a sine qua non condition for our mind to conceive and construe reality or the realities by which we are all surrounded. As important as our senses may be, this part I of the series gives more weight to the mind. We all see, hear, smell, taste, and touch pretty much the same way except in


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Introduction

case of anomalies. But, we interpret reality differently because there is more difference in the way we see the world than in the way we are aware of it. This book is the first of a series that considers the many aspects of reality. I call it ‘It all starts from within’ because reality starts with each of us individually and independently. It starts from our inner self before evolving into what I would call the collective reality, meaning a generally agreed upon state in which groups of people, entire nations, or the whole world believe. That reality includes beliefs, cultures, ideologies, etc. As we change and adapt to our environment, our reality changes as well. New realities emerge. No need to say, for example, that by the time I publish, God willing, the last book of this series, what I think is reality will have changed a great deal. No matter how long we live, life will always seem short. It is because of reality’s protean nature. Billy Graham, for example, died at the age of 99. But, he always saw life as a brief experience of which we should take advantage to the fullest. He said once: “‘What is the greatest surprise you have found about life?’ a university student asked me several years ago. ‘Its brevity’ I replied without hesitation. … Time moves so quickly, and no matter who we are or what we have done, the time will come when our lives will be over. As Jesus said, ‘As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work’. … Life is short, and every day is a gift from God.” This part I of the series looks at the basics, meaning what makes reality or the quest to understand it possible. Why is reality forever tethered to our existence? It includes four main chapters. Chapter one is about perception and our senses. It demonstrates how perception is impossible without our senses. Whatever angle of reality that’s being analyzed, one or more of our senses plays a momentous role in its understanding. This chapter is a prelude as to why reality presents itself in different ways, shapes, or forms depending on who is looking at it. The ways our senses and our perception work are proof that we can talk about the realities of reality, the title of this series. My perception of something may be different from yours of the same thing. Perception should never be generalized because, as you will see, it can be deceiving at times. Say, for example, my reality is distorted by one my senses, that does not mean your reality will consequently suffer the same fate. In chapter one, I demonstrate that perception and the senses are where it all starts. Chapter two considers the role of the brain in the making of reality. It delves into how the brain can make the mind behave a certain way under certain circumstances. Let’s say that it looks at the physical brain and the role its different parts play in the making of reality. The mechanical role played by the brain is subject to change as we age but may also be compromised following an accident or a disease. In both cases, the reality we’re accustomed to changes as well. Both the anatomy and the physiology of the brain need to be optimal. Chapter two, thus, looks at how the brain is formed, its anatomy, and how it functions.


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Introduction

Chapter three looks at the mind, which I call the ultimate maker of reality. This chapter describes the mind as that intangible component of the brain and where reality or all realities stem from after, of course, being picked up by the senses and the brain. I think there are two types of mind: the psychological mind and the philosophical mind. The psychological mind is responsible for how we behave or react to reality, while the philosophical mind is used when trying to fathom reality. I thought it’s better to separate the two. Therefore, I consider only the psychological mind in chapter trois. The philosophical mind will be considered in future publications. Chapter three looks into the psychological feedback. It considers how psychology, as a science, came about, the different schools of thought in terms of reality, and the two main periods in the history of psychology: before World War II and after World War II. Chapter four, the bulk of this part I, attempts to define reality itself after it’s perceived by our senses, analyzed by our brain, and processed by our mind. There is a fine line between our brain and our mind, and which one plays a more important role is debatable. In fact, many people tend to use the two interchangeably. It shows that what we think is reality is a product of our mind, which chapter three looks at in details and describes as the ultimate maker of reality. If perception depends on our senses, our mind depends on our brain. I consider five questions in my attempt to answer the question: what is reality? The questions considered in chapter four are just examples of how we, as a species, concerned about our environment and consistently wonder about reality as a whole, but also about the many components of reality that I will call realities. Chapter four is a prelude to what will be considered in future publications, which will look at reality with more rigor and precision. From chapter one to chapter four, you will have the opportunity to explore the intangible and subjective side of reality. I consider these chapters as the pillar of my work on reality not because of the topics that I discuss but because I put the emphasis on the one element without which there would not be reality: human being. From our senses and our perception, our brain and our mind, to the way we behave and react to our surroundings (psychology) and the way we try to make sense of it and explain it to others (philosophy), reality is deeply embedded in each of us and, who knows, when we look outward, what we see may, in most cases, be just a representation of ourselves.

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CHAPTER 1 PERCEPTION AND THE SENSES IN THE INTERPRETATION OF REALITY Our senses and perception ability do make a huge difference in the interpretation of reality. But, these two parameters, despite their importance are not failproof. The goal of the discussion that follows is to prove both the importance of our senses and perception but also their imperfection. But, before I start, what would your answer be if I ask you, assuming that you believe in angels, this metaphysical question: would you rather be an angel or a man (human being)? Whether your answer is ‘angel’ or ‘man’, it stemmed from how you perceive an angel or a man. Let’s suppose you picked ‘angel’ because angels are believed to have a positive image. But is Man really at a disadvantage when compared to Angels? According to conventional wisdom, and especially Plato's great chain of being, Angels are superior to man. Or are they? God created man to his image. All men are born with free will, meaning the right to do whatever he likes and, of course, face the consequences. Angels do not have free will. Angels are asexual. Their mission is to convey messages between God and men, and also to “keep an eye” on each and every one of us. Lacking bodies, the angels are without senses, perception, and imagination. Not being immersed in time and motion, they do not reason or think discursively as men do by reasoning from premises to conclusion. Whereas "human intellects," according to Aquinas, "obtain their perfection in the knowledge of truth by a kind of movement and discursive intellectual operation ... as they advance from one known thing to another," the angels, "from the knowledge of a known principle ... straightway perceive as known all its consequent conclusions ... with no discursive process at all." Their knowledge is intuitive and immediate, not by means of concepts abstracted from experience or otherwise formed, but through the archetypal ideas infused in them at their creation by God. That is why, Aquinas goes on to say, angels "are called intellectual beings" as contrasted with such rational natures as "human souls which acquire knowledge of truth discursively." Another question we should ask ourselves is: are angels intrinsically good? The word “angelic” usually has the connotation of perfect moral goodness, but that must not lead us to' forget that the demons are angelic in their nature although of a diabolical or evil will. Nor should the fact of Satan's subservience to God causes us to forget that Christian theology tries not to underestimate the power of the devil in his goings and comings on earth. Satan tried to tempt even Christ, and throughout the New Testament the destruction of the diabolical influence over men occupies a prominent place. Finally, Lucifer wasn’t just any angel. Before he fell from the Kingdom of God, he was an Archangel – an angel of high rank – who is different from a cherub, an angel of lower class. This is an example of how perception may be confused with reality sometimes. All human beings have perception but do not see reality the same way precisely because of how each of us uses our perception.


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1. About perception Perception is innate. We are all born with it. The new born, although not yet aware of his environment shows perception, or reflex. To be clear, let me point out that there is a difference between perception and reflex. The new born may show reflex instead of perception. The Apgar score, for example, is used to quickly assess and summarize the health of a baby immediately after birth. It was invented in 1952 by Virginia Apgar, an anesthesiologist who wanted to study the effects of obstetric anesthesia on babies. To determine the Apgar scale, the baby is evaluated on five factors by using a scale from zero to two. The figures obtained are then summed up. The five factors are based on words stemmed from a backronym: Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, and Respiration (APGAR). The last four factors may be considered as reflexes as the new born has no control over them. The Babkin reflex and the Babinski reflex are often used to test newborns’ reflexes. The Babkin reflex involves pressing a baby’s palm to see whether he will open his mouth or twist his head, while the Babinski reflex involves striking the sole of the baby’s foot to see if the big toe will move upward or toward the top surface of the foot. More reflexes are usually acquired as we develop. Walking, eating, breathing, etc. are all reflexes. Sometimes we talk about instinct or habit instead. Reflexes may manifest themselves without us paying too much attention to them. But, perception is a different story. It requires a voluntary effort on our part and involves the direct participation of our brain. So, what is perception? There are several definitions of perception. 1) It's the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses. For example, the normal limits to human perception; 2) It's the awareness of something through the senses. Example: the perception of pain; 3) The neurophysiological processes, including memory, by which an organism becomes aware of and interprets external stimuli. This definition of perception is illustrated by the following two examples: ‘When the critical stimulus is compatible with the first response, the corresponding code is occupied, and perception of that stimulus is impaired.’ and ‘It sometimes seems that all that is required to produce a durable long-term memory is perception of a meaningful stimulus event.’ 4) The way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted. Example: ‘Hollywood's perception of the tastes of the American public’; and 5) Intuitive understanding and insight, as in ‘He wouldn't have accepted,’ she said with unusual perception.’ Etymologically, perception comes from Late Middle English: from Latin perceptio(n-), from the verb percipere ‘seize, understand’. From that, we can easily deduce that perception is not reality, although the latter relies heavily on perception. Think of perception as an eyepiece that allows us to observe reality. Perception is not reality, which is prone to distortion no matter how effective and reliable the eyepiece is. The reason for that is because what we perceive through our senses goes through the brain and is interpreted by our mind. Non-living organisms have no awareness, thus no sense of reality because they have no senses that would allow them to perceive, no brain, and no mind. Reality requires the following steps to materialize: Senses  Perception  Brain  Mind  Reality. They are all mutually dependent. The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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2. The visible five senses One of the first things I learned in school (Kindergarten) was to locate and name my senses. And throughout my academic career, I took it for a fact, like everybody else, that we all have five senses, period. I became accustomed to how they work and have been making them work for me ever since. But, what is a sense? In plain English, it’s what (a mechanism or a faculty) allows me to react according to the information that I receive or perceive from my external or internal environments. Rarely do I question the efficiency of my senses. But, you’d be surprised how often and easily your senses can trick you. First, let’s consider our sense of taste, which is the chemical sense that allows us to detect flavors. “Taste or degustation is triggered by chemical stimuli. As food is chewed, its chemicals act as the stimuli for taste, breaking down into molecules, mixing with saliva, and infiltrating the areas that contain the receptors. Activation of the taste buds triggers nerve impulses that travel to the brain and are there transformed into sensations of taste. Because of their relatively “toxic” environment, taste buds live short lives, being replaced about every ten days. The sense of smell often works in conjunction with our sense of taste by combining sensations to achieve the perception of flavor. In fact, the olfactory sense actually contributes more to the perception of specific flavors than does the sense of taste. This phenomenon is commonly demonstrated in people whose sense of taste becomes dulled by colds. It has also been investigated in laboratory research, including tests in which subjects detected little taste in such strong substances as peppermint, onions, and cinnamon when their noses were congested. When a person eats, chemical stimuli taken in through chewing and swallowing pass through an opening in the palate at the back of the mouth and move toward receptor cells located at the top of the nasal cavity, where they are converted to olfactory nerve impulses that travel to the brain, just as the impulses from olfactory stimuli taken in through the nose. The olfactory and gustatory pathways are known to converge in various parts of the brain, although it is not known exactly how the two systems work together.” (Strickland, 2001) Our sense of taste can easily trick us. For example, If I put something in my mouth with the intent of swallowing it, be it a liquid or a solid, it can either be sweet, salty, sour, or bitter. That’s what we all learned. There are four kinds of flavor. But, what if there were more flavors? It is a possibility. The reality that we all accept when it comes to flavors stemmed from the fact that human beings are built to detect only four flavors thanks to the specialized taste buds located on the surface and on the side of our tongues. It’s possible that we, as a species, later evolve to detect more flavors, or fewer. It’s usually difficult, even impossible, for our taste buds to tell real foods and fake foods apart. We are all subject to fall prey to the food industry somewhere along the line. Foods and flavors are being imitated across the board. Most of us have heard of or tasted imitation cheese, imitation bacon, imitation vanilla extract (I use that one on a regular basis), etc. Nowadays, people try, to the best of their ability, to avoid pure sugar, and have chosen artificial sweeteners instead. Our mind tells us that anything that tastes like sugar must contain at least some kind of The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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Chapter I

Perception and the Senses

The Visible Senses

sugar. That’s the reality we believe in ever since we were little. Splenda, for instance, tastes just like sugar, but it’s not. I use Splenda on a regular basis too, even after I found out how it’s made. To make Splenda, they replace the Hydrogen and the Oxygen molecules by chlorine. Because the body cannot break down the newly created molecule, no calories are produced. When people read the nutrition facts on the packaging and they see “0 calorie”, that motivates them to consume the product. But chlorine is a toxic product. Another artificial sweetener is Sweet & Low, which is Toluene-based. Toluene, also known as toluol, is a colorless, water-insoluble liquid with the smell associated with paint thinners. It is a mono-substituted benzene derivative and is derived from petroleum. Composition of our sense of taste The food industry can basically create any kind of foods and flavors by mixing fat, sugar, and other chemicals in the right proportions. The end result is real because our sense of taste tells us so. But, this is in fact a distorted reality, one that is suggested to us by our sense of taste and that we eventually accept for reality. Finally, if our sense of taste can distort reality, the latter can also be changed if we happen to lose our sense of taste. This usually occurs in old age when the taste buds can no longer detect tastes. The loss of the sense of taste is called ageusia. Now, let’s consider our sense of vision. “The human eye is sensitive to only a limited range of radiation, consisting of wavelengths between approximately 400 to 750 nanometers (billionths of a meter). The full spectrum of visible color is contained within this range, with violet at the low end and red at the high end. Light is converted into neural impulses by the eye, whose spherical shape is maintained by its outermost layer, the sclera. When a beam of light is reflected off an object, it first enters the eye through the cornea, a rounded transparent portion of the sclera that covers the pigmented iris. The iris constricts to control the amount of light entering the pupil, a round opening at the front of the eye. A short distance beyond the pupil, the light passes through the lens, a transparent oval structure whose curved surface bends and focuses the light wave into a narrower beam, which is received by the retina. When the retina receives an image, it is upside down because light rays from the top of the object are focused at the bottom of the retina, and vice versa. This upside-down image must be rearranged by the brain so that objects can be seen right side up. In order for the image to be focused properly, light rays from each of its points must converge at a point on the retina, rather than in front of or behind it. Aided by the surrounding muscles, the lens of the eye adjusts its shape to focus images properly on the retina so that objects viewed at different distances can be brought into focus, a process known as accommodation. As The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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The Visible Senses

people age, this process is impaired because the lens loses flexibility, and it becomes difficult to read or do close work without glasses. The retina, lining the back of the eye, consists of ten layers of cells containing photoreceptors (rods and cones) that convert the light waves to neural impulses through a photochemical reaction. Aside from the differences in shape suggested by their names, rod and cone cells contain different light-processing chemicals (photopigments), perform different functions, and are distributed differently within the retina. Cone cells, which provide color vision and enable us to distinguish details, adapt quickly to light and are most useful in adequate lighting. Rod cells, Anatomy of the eye which can pick up very small amounts of light but are not color-sensitive, are best suited for situations in which lighting is minimal. Because the rod cells are active at night or in dim lighting, it is difficult to distinguish colors under these circumstances. Cones are concentrated in the fovea, an area at the center of the retina, whereas rods are found only outside this area and become more numerous the farther they are from it. Thus, it is more difficult to distinguish colors when viewing objects at the periphery of one’s visual field. The photoreceptor cells of the retina generate an electrical force that triggers impulses in neighboring bipolar and ganglion cells. These impulses flow from the back layer of retinal cells to the front layer containing the fibers of the optic nerve, which leaves the eye though a part of the retina known as the optic disk. This area, which contains no receptor cells, creates a blind spot in each eye, whose effects are offset by using both eyes together and also by an illusion the brain creates to fill in this area when one eye is used alone. Branches of the optic nerve cross at a junction in the brain in front of the pituitary gland and underneath the frontal lobes called the optic chiasm and ascend into the brain itself. The nerve fibers extend to a part of the thalamus called the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), and neurons from the LGN relay their visual input to the primary visual cortex of both the left and right hemispheres of the brain, where the impulses are transformed into simple visual sensations. (Objects in the left visual field are viewed only through the right brain hemisphere, and vice versa.) The primary visual cortex then sends the impulses to neighboring association areas which add meaning or “associations” to them.” (Strickland, 2001)


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Based on the above description of our sense of vision, can we say if the reality that we perceive is precise? In other words, is the reality that we see real? We see colors the way we do because our sight is built a certain way. The human’s sense of vision is sophisticated, but we cannot see ultraviolet rays, while bees can. Research shows that crocodiles see colors as various shades of gray. Unlike humans who have three different color sensitive cone cells in their retina (red, green and blue) dogs have only two (yellow and blue). That begs the question: is what I can see, hear, smell, taste and touch absolute reality or a reality that exists only in my mind? Absolute reality is the ultimate reality as it is in itself unaffected by the perception or knowledge of any finite being. Things are now getting a bit complicated. But let’s not panic. Instead, let’s consider a few more examples. Say, I have two apples: one small and green, the other big and red. What makes me see the first one green and the second one red? If I close my eyes and have someone move the apples around, will I be able to tell which one is green, and which one is red, or which one is small, and which one is big without touching them? When my eyes are open, I can see their colors because of the way light affects my retina. Someone who suffers from color blindness – the inability to distinguish between Decorated walls reveal how colored light influences what we see. shades of red and green – may not be Photo credit: American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) able to tell the two apples apart in terms of color. The colors of the apples change depending on who is looking at them: a person with normal vision, a person with color blindness, or a crocodile? Between closing and opening my eyes, having a colorblind individual or a crocodile look at the apples, have their shapes and sizes been affected or changed? Obviously, the answer is no. In that case, the colors of the apples, which vary according to who is looking, constitute ‘phenomena’ or the secondary qualities of the apples or the human experience of the apples, whereas, their shapes and sizes, which cannot change, no matter who is looking, are rather ‘noumena’ or the primary qualities of the apples. In other words, their colors are a perceived reality, whereas their shapes and sizes are an absolute reality. The ability to see color is called color vision, which is “a function of the brain’s ability to interpret the complex way in which light is reflected off every object in nature. What the human eye sees as color is actually an effect of the stimulation of different parts of the brain’s visual system by the varying wavelengths of light … Because each person’s neurons are unique, each of The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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us sees color somewhat differently. Color blindness, an inherited condition which affects more men than women, has two varieties: monochromats lack all cone receptors and cannot see any color; dichromats lack either red-green or blue-yellow cone receptors and cannot perceive hues in those respective ranges. Another phenomenon, known as color weakness or anomalous trichromat, refers to the situation where a person can perceive a given color, but needs greater intensity of the associated wavelength in order to see it normally.” (Strickland, 2001). We can extend this to anything perceived by any of our five (visible) senses (the other invisible five being: equilibrioception, proprioception, thermoception, nociception, and interoception – see below). Hallucinations are perceived by our eyes, and the person who is experiencing a hallucination could swear it is reality. The reality is, hallucinations are not reality. Hallucinations are not always pathologic. In fact, most of the time, hallucinations are experienced by healthy individuals. I bet you can have a hallucination right now if you want to. Just look at something black or white. Do you see two different colors? I can guess your answer. It is ‘yes’. Well, that’s wrong! Black and white are not colors. Black objects absorb all the colors of the visible spectrum and reflects none of them to the eyes. Black does not reflect light. White objects also absorb all the colors but may reflect them to the eyes or through a prism for instance. White reflects light. Same goes for people with fair skin and whose veins appear blue below the skin. Nobody has blue veins. The fact is a dark skin does not reflect light, while a fair skin does. But, after hitting our blood, the light waves come out blue, which indicates that the blood that’s being observed is close to our eyes. A similar phenomenon can be observed when looking at an object through a spectroscope. The light waves will appear blue or red depending on whether the object is moving towards or away from us (see example below). Optical illusions abound. Examples include, but are not limited to: alpenglow, rainbow, diffraction, refraction, mirage, sundog, hologram, etc. The bottom line is our sight plays tricks on us. Most humans (myself by the way) are fascinated by extraterrestrial life. Say, we are visited by an alien civilization, if they have sight, will they see our world the same way we see it? Will they see yellow as our yellow, or blue as our blue? Same goes if we visit their planet. We might not see their world the same way they see it. Sometimes, although there is a well-defined reference for what we observe, its interpretations or meanings may vary. For example, let’s consider pentagrams (five-pointed stars drawn with five straight strokes). They have been used throughout history to represent a multitude of things and ideas. Christians, mathematicians, and occultists found different purposes in their use. For a Christian, a pentagram might represent the five wounds of Jesus, while Pythagoreans considered it a sign of mathematical perfection. For occultists, however, it’s a magical symbol. As I explained above, if a sense can deform reality, the latter can also be changed by the loss of sense. The loss of the sight is called blindness. How about our sense of hearing? Hearing is the ability to hear sounds. Strickland (2001) describes the ear as the receptive organ for hearing and which has three major parts: the outer, middle, and The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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inner ear. The pinna or outer ear—the part of the ear attached to the head, funnels sound waves through the outer ear. The sound waves pass down the auditory canal to the middle ear, where they strike the tympanic membrane, or eardrum, causing it to vibrate. These vibrations are picked up by three small bones (ossicles) in the middle ear named for their shapes: the malleus (hammer), incus (anvil), and stapes (stirrup). The stirrup is attached to a thin membrane called the oval window, which is much smaller than the eardrum and consequently receives more pressure. As the oval window vibrates from the increased pressure, the fluid in the coiled, tubular cochlea (inner ear) begins to vibrate the membrane of the cochlea (basilar membrane) which, in turn, bends fine, hair like cells on its Auditory system surface. These auditory receptors Photo credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology generate miniature electrical forces which trigger nerve impulses that then travel via the auditory nerve, first to the thalamus and then to the primary auditory cortex in the temporal lobe of the brain. Here, transformed into auditory but meaningless sensations, the impulses are relayed to association areas of the brain which convert them into meaningful sounds by examining the activity patterns of the neurons, or nerve cells, to determine sound frequencies. Although the ear changes sound waves into neural impulses, it is the brain that actually “hears,” or perceives the sound as meaningful. The auditory system contains about 25,000 cochlear neurons that can process a wide range of sounds. The sounds we hear are determined by two characteristics of sound waves: their amplitude (the difference in air pressure between the peak and baseline of a wave) and their frequency (the number of waves that pass by a given point every second). Loudness of sound is influenced by a complex relationship between the wavelength and amplitude of the wave; the greater the amplitude, the faster the neurons fire impulses to the brain, and the louder the sound that is heard. Loudness of sound is usually expressed in decibels (dB). A whisper is about 30 dB, normal conversation is about 60 dB, and a subway train is about 90 dB. Sounds above 120 dB are generally painful the human ear. The loudest rock band on record was measured at 160 dB. Pitch (how high or low a tone sounds) is a function of frequency. Sounds with high frequencies are heard as having a high pitch; those with low frequencies are heard as low-pitched. The normal frequency range of human hearing is 20 to 20,000 Hz. Frequencies of some commonly heard sounds include the human voice (120 to approximately 1,100 Hz), middle C on the piano (256 Hz), and the highest note on the piano (4,100 Hz). Differences in frequency are discerned, or coded, by the human ear in two ways, frequency matching and place. The lowest sound frequencies are coded by frequency matching, duplicating The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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the frequency with the firing rate of auditory nerve fibers. Frequencies in the low to moderate range are coded both by frequency matching and by the place on the basilar membrane where the sound wave peaks. High frequencies are coded solely by the placement of the wave peak. If we tend to take for reality what we taste or see, we behave the same way when it comes to what we hear. An example is the noticeable difference in the pitch of a car’s klaxon as it’s coming towards us and after it passes by us. The sound is louder as the car approaches but gradually fades away after the car passes by us. That does not mean that the driver has released the klaxon a bit. In this type of motion, sound waves behave the same way as light waves do. The high pitch we hear as the car approaches comes from the compression of the waves against our eardrums. If these were light waves, they would have been blue on a spectroscope. The sound seems to subside gradually because it’s moving away from our eardrums. The waves would have appeared red on a spectroscope if they were light waves, shifting from blue to red. The shifting of a car klaxon’s pitch from high to low as it’s passes by us is called Doppler effect, named after the Austrian physicist Christian Doppler, who described the phenomenon in 1842. Although we hear a lower frequency of the sound, the real frequency remains the same. Therefore, what we perceive as reality after the car passes by is, in fact, flawed. It is an illusion. Another common example of auditory hallucination is auditory illusion or the hearing of sounds that are not really present. One of the first signs of schizophrenia, for instance, is the report of hearing voices by the patient. However, auditory illusions, like hallucinations, are not always pathological. The misunderstanding of a pronounced word, for example, is an auditory illusion. In linguistics, paronyms caused auditory illusions all the time. Paronyms are words that sound or are written almost the same way but have different meanings. Their close pronunciations or spellings lead people to use them as synonyms. Examples of paronyms include, but are not limited to: alternately and alternatively; collision and collusion; conjuncture and conjecture; excise and exercise; prolepsis and proslepsis; continuous and contiguous; affect and effect; upmost and utmost, etc. Another type of common auditory illusion – again, a sound that only you can report hearing – is tinnitus. According to the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, over 50 million Americans have experienced tinnitus or head noises, which is the perception of sound without an external source being present. The academy reported that tinnitus is not a disease in itself but a common symptom, and because it involves the perception of sound or sounds, it is commonly associated with the hearing system. In fact, various parts of the hearing system, including the inner ear, are often responsible for this symptom...Most of the time, the tinnitus is subjective—that is, the tinnitus is heard only by the individual. Rarely, tinnitus is “objective,” meaning that the examiner can actually listen and hear the sounds the patient hears. The fact is our hearing can distort reality, but its absence brings irreversible change to reality, as it’s the case for the senses of taste and sight. Hearing loss is called deafness.


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Next is our sense of smell or olfaction, which is the sense that perceives odors through our nose and olfactory nerves. “Olfaction is one of the two chemical senses: smell and taste. Both arise from interaction between chemical and receptor cells. In olfaction, the chemical is volatile, or airborne. Breathed in through the nostrils or taken in via the throat by chewing and swallowing, it passes through either the nose or an opening in the palate at the back of the mouth and moves toward receptor cells located in the lining of the nasal passage. As the chemical moves past the Photo credit: Therespiratorysystem.com receptor cells, part of it is absorbed into the uppermost surface of the nasal passages called the olfactory epithelium, located at the top of the nasal cavity. There, two one-inch-square patches of tissue covered with mucus dissolve the chemical, stimulating the receptors, which lie under the mucus. The chemical molecules bind to the receptors, triggering impulses that travel to the brain. There are thousands of different receptors in the cells of the nasal cavity that can detect as many as10,000 different odors. Each receptor contains hair-like structures, or cilia, which are probably the initial point of contact with olfactory stimuli. Research suggests that the sensitivity of the olfactory system is related to the number of both receptors and cilia. For example, a dog has 20 times as many receptor cells as a human and over 10 times as many cilia per receptor.” (Strickland, 2001). Our sense of smell is not exempt from creating a false sense of reality. Have you ever heard of phantosmia? It’s an olfactory hallucination. According to the Mayo Clinic, an olfactory hallucination (phantosmia) makes you detect smells that aren't really present in your environment. The odors detected in phantosmia vary from person to person and may be foul or pleasant. They can occur in one or both nostrils. The phantom smell may seem to always be present or it may come and go. Phantosmia may occur after a head injury or upper respiratory infection. It can also be caused by temporal lobe seizures, inflamed sinuses, brain tumors and Parkinson's disease. Sometimes, something can smell differently to different people, or something can even smell different depending on the circumstances. Take a cologne for example. It might smell different depending on who is wearing it. We don’t have the same body chemistry, and the pH of our skins – which is different – has an effect on the smell. Moreover, the cologne’s smell may interact with other surrounding smells. Thus, what we smell may not reflect reality, as we would like to think it does. Moreover, can we smell everything? I previously said that our sense of taste can only detect four flavors: sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. Well, as to our sense of smell, our The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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nose can roughly detect ten types of smell: fragrant, woody/resinous, fruity (non-citrus), chemical, minty/peppermint, sweet, popcorn, lemon, pungent and decayed, which begs the question: can we smell our environment in its entirety? The answer is obviously no. Our nose is not developed enough to achieve such a feat. Thus, through our nose, we only have a limited sense of what reality truly is. We all know that our sense of smell pales in comparison to dogs’ sense of smell. Among things that dogs can detect are pheromones, elevated blood sugar level or hyperglycemia, and cancer to name a few. Our sense of smell, although limited, plays an important role in our interaction with reality. It may trick us from time to time, but its loss would throw us off guard. Such a loss is called anosmia. Finally, our sense of touch plays also a role in generating or creating realities. It is the cutaneous sense that allows us to feel pressure and related sensations such as temperature and pain. According to Strickland (2001), the sense of touch is located in the skin, which is composed of three layers: the epidermis, dermis, and hypodermis. Different types of sensory receptors, varying in size, shape, number, and distribution within the skin, are responsible for relaying information about pressure, temperature, and pain. The largest touch sensor, the Pacinian corpuscle, is located in the hypodermis, the innermost thick fatty layer of skin, which responds to vibration. Free nerve endings – neurons that originate in the spinal cord, enter and remain in the skin – transmit information about temperature and pain from their location at the bottom of the epidermis. Hair receptors in the dermis, which are wrapped around each follicle, respond to the pressure produced when the hairs are bent. All the sensory receptors respond not to continued pressure but rather to changes in pressure, adapting quickly to each new change, so that, for example, the skin is unaware of the continual pressure produced by clothes. Once stimulated by sensation, the Somatosensory system receptors trigger nerve impulses which travel to the somatosensory cortex in the parietal lobe of the brain, where they are transformed into sensations. Sensitivity to touch varies greatly among different parts of the body. Areas that are highly sensitive, such as the fingers and lips, correspond to a proportionately large area of the sensory cortex. Sensory receptors encode various types of information about objects with which the skin comes in contact. We can tell how heavy an object is by both the firing rate of The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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individual neurons and by the number of neurons stimulated. (Both the firing rate and the number of neurons are higher with a heavier object.) Changes in the firing rate of neurons tell us whether an object is stationary or vibrating, and the spatial organization of the neurons gives us information about its location. Who doesn’t appreciate their sense of touch? A day can’t go by without touching something. Our hands, feet, and skin reassure us that we still exist, and reality is there for us to interact with. In many occasions, I’ve seen people touching a freshly painted surface with the tip of their finger even though there is a sign saying, “fresh paint”. We sometimes use our hands and our skins as thermometers to feel the temperature of something. Also, it’s possible that people who are both blind and deaf use their fingers to understand and to function in the world. For instance, using the Tadoma speech reading method, a deaf-blind person can turn his fingers into hearing or vision by touching the lips or the jawline of the speaker. While this method can be used to ‘listen’ to spoken words, the Braille method is used exclusively to read and write, still by using the sense of touch. But, especially in the case of the Tadoma method, reality may be subject to distortion because it’s impossible to detect emotions that are expressed in the tone of someone’s voice. Our sense of touch is just as important as the other senses. If we use our hands to feel things or make things happen, it’s important to keep in mind that they are also vectors of germs. Our hands come in contact with these germs after toilet usage, by touching door knobs, or by shaking hands with someone else. Then, we become contaminated by touching our eyes, noses, or mouths. It’s important to note that our sense of touch is not limited only to the hands, but to the whole body. For example, it’s important that a baby be touch after birth. That reassures her and plays a role in the boosting of her immune system. Touching also plays an important role in love relationships and social situations. It’s a good way to show trust and cooperation. The group C nerves fibers are part of the central nervous system. They are stimulated by passive touching and give us a sensation of pleasure. However, damage or injury to nerve fibers causes neuropathic pain. Like our vision, hearing, taste, and smell, our sense of touch becomes less efficient as we get older and tends to trick us. The nerve endings in the hands may diminish or die off. Or the myelin that encapsulates the nerves and causes the signals they send to go the brain fast may deteriorate, slowing thereby these signals. These nerves are also located in the sole of the feet. In old age, they too tend to become damaged and give us improper reading of the ground. Loss of balance may be frequent and causes fall, to which the elderly may be prone. The loss of sensation in the hands, feet, or any other part of the body is referred to as either hypoesthesia or anaphia. Our senses trick us all the time. They even trick us to make it seem like they work independently while, in fact, to grasp the physical world, coordination between the senses are crucial. We could call this type of coordination sensory crosstalk. In some cases, it’s normal, but in other cases, it is pathological. Sometimes, they can also compensate for one another. For example, blind people The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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generally have a developed sense of hearing. What we hear can influence our sense of taste. For example, say you’re hungry and someone is talking food, pepperoni pizza. If you like peperoni pizza, it’s possible that you actually taste it and start salivating. What we hear can also affect what we see. For example, Chromesthesia is a state in which people associate sound to color. Certain sounds can trigger the perception of certain colors, such as seeing pink, blue, or green if they hear a car honking. People who report such experiences are known as chromesthetes. The perception of the world around us, thus the perception of reality does not depend solely on the five above senses, which are called visible senses because we can see and feel them. We know they’re there. The people we interact with are also aware of them because of the signs we show and the way we behave. But, humans have, in fact, ten senses. The other five are called invisible senses and they are: equilibrioception, proprioception, thermoception, nociception, and interoception.

3. The invisible five senses The invisible senses are commonly called physiological senses because we can’t see them. However, the roles they play in our interpretation of our environment are as important as those played by the visible senses. Studies suggest that there are several of them, but the most common are equilibrioception, proprioception, thermoception, nociception, and interoception. First, equilibrioception and the four others that follow are referred to as the physiological senses. Equilibrioception is all about balance. I can walk fast, walk slow, or stand on one leg at will without falling because of it. I previously talked about coordination between the senses. Well, equilibrioception depends on the fluid in my inner ear and on my vision. With my eyes closed, it becomes difficult for me to walk properly. Also, if I spin a few times, then, abruptly stop, I may not be able to remain standing because the fluid in my inner ear has been disturbed. Astronauts’ equilibrioception is disturbed by weightlessness. Prolonged interruption of equilibrioception may cause dizziness, disorientation, and nausea. “A link between your inner ear and your brain helps you keep your balance when you get out of bed or walk over rough ground. This is called your vestibular system. If a disease or injury damages this system, you can have a vestibular disorder. Dizziness and trouble with your balance are the most common symptoms, but you also can have problems with your hearing and vision. Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV): This is the most common cause of positional vertigo, a sudden feeling that you’re spinning or swaying. It happens when tiny calcium crystals in one part of your ear move into an area where they shouldn’t be. This causes your inner ear to tell your brain you’re moving when you’re really not.”


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Another physiological sense is proprioception which allows us to know where each part of our body is at all time. If I’m asked to close my eyes or if I’m in the dark, I will still be able to feed myself, know where my nose, my eyes, my mouth, my hands, and my feet are. Proprioception is responsible for my sense of position. … like phantom smell or phantosmia, as we saw above in the analysis of the sense of smell, our sense of proprioception can trick us and leads us to believe a limb is there when it’s not. For example, it’s been reported that people who got one of their limbs amputated may experience what is called the phantom limb syndrome, which is the ability to feel sensations and even pain in a limb or limbs that no longer exist. External sensations such as touch, temperature, pressure, vibration, and itch may also be experienced. French surgeon Ambroise Paré, who treated wounded soldiers, was the first to describe phantom limb syndrome in 1552. Those soldiers complained about pain in the non-existent leg. The phantom limb syndrome can be explained by a rewiring of the neurons and the neural networks in the brain, which, after spending so long receiving a particular signal from a specific source, tends to change their connections in order to perpetuate the signals. This is referred to as neuroplasticity. Loss of proprioception may occur in several other cases such as: Malignant astrocytoma, Olivopontocerebellar atrophy, Sensory ataxia, Spinal Cord Injury, Spinal cord tumor, and Degenerative disease. Generally, the inability to control or coordinate movement is attributed to loss of proprioception. The phantom limb disease and these neurological diseases are examples of how reality can be distorted even by our invisible senses. Thirdly, thermoception is also an invisible sense and is responsible for sensing changes in temperatures. Say on a hot day, I step outside from an air-conditioned room, I don’t need my hand to tell me that the weather is hot. I can feel the heat. Inversely, I can feel a bone-chilling temperature if I step outside from a heated facility in the winter. This is because of the thousands of thermoreceptors that run through my body under my skin. These receptors are specialized nerve cells and are able to detect the difference in temperatures. People who suffer from Congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis can’t feel pain and temperatures. When someone can’t sweat normally, he/she’s said to suffer from anhidrosis or hypohidrosis. On the other hand, another type of receptors called nociceptors detect pain. They are, in fact, nerve endings located all over our body (muscles, the joints, the bladder, the gut, and the digestive tract). The ability to detect pain by these receptors is called nociception. As you can see, they play a crucial role in our perception of reality. But, some people may not be able to feel pain at all if they suffer from Congenital insensibility to pain (as I explained above), a hereditary disease. Patients with Congenital Insensitivity to Pain with Anhidrosis are very likely to injure themselves in ways that would normally be prevented by feeling pain. Finally, interoception is a sense that is responsible for what’s going on inside our bodies at subconscious level. It comes into play in subconscious or reflexive reactions, for example, your The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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respiratory rate, the fact that you feel hungry or thirsty, when you cough, etc. Interoception plays also a role in your mood, the level of stress, panic disorder, dissociative disorders, or eating disorders. Examples of interoceptors are enzymes and neurotransmitters.

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CHAPTER 2 ROLE OF THE BRAIN IN THE INTERPRETATION OF REALITY Before you ask, no I’m not a neuroscientist. Pretty much everything I know about the brain comes from my biology classes (back in the day) and independent research. I just know that when I experience something, no one else can experience it the same way. Even in the case of a collective experience, my peers and I will still view it under different lenses. I’m unique just like you and everybody else are unique. In the study and understanding of reality, the brain is the most important medium although reality takes shape as a result of information going through the brain. At only three pounds, the brain represents just 2 percent of the body’s weight but consumes 20 percent of our total energy (65 percent in newborns). Our genes are coded at an incredible rate of 80 percent for the brain. It is the only human organ that hasn’t been transplanted yet. Will it ever be? Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, that is not my focus in this book. My goal is to give, in simple terms, an overview of the structure of the brain, how it’s formed and how it functions, and to demonstrate how the brain is an inescapable tool when it comes to the perception, the interpretation, and the understanding of what we call reality, which, if it starts with the senses, needs the brain and/or the mind to process it. Brain death is one of the two ways of determination of death, according to the Uniform Determination of Death Act of the United States (the other way of determining death being "irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions"). It differs from persistent vegetative state (new name: Unresponsive wakefulness, in which some autonomic functions remain. The door that you can touch, and you swear is there; the rainbow or the beautiful sunset that you see; the smell and taste of your favorite dish; and these relaxing notes that make you fall asleep are all happening in your brain. The brain makes us unique in that each of us interprets the environment differently. In my paper, “Understanding what makes a person unique: a multipronged approach”, I talk about a combination of biology and environment that ultimately leads to our unicity. Here I want to stress specifically the dynamics between the brain and reality. There is something unique about us, both as individuals and as a collectivity, and it’s all because of the brain, which helps us function as legitimate members of the human species. Anatomically, our brains are similar. How they function is similar and different at the same time. Similar in terms of physiology, but different as to the end result or how we see and feel about reality. To understand the brain and its role in the interpretation of reality, it’s important to know how it’s formed and to understand how it functions. But, before I explain that, I would like to say a few words about CT, MRI, and PET, which are widely used imaging technologies that allow us to observe the structure and activities of the brain. “Although also based on the variable absorption of X-rays by different tissues, computed tomography (CT) imaging, also known as ‘CAT scanning’ (Computerized Axial Tomography), provides a different form of imaging known as cross-sectional imaging. The origin of the word The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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‘tomography is from the Greek word ‘tomos’ meaning ‘slice’ or ‘section’ and ‘graphe’ meaning ‘drawing.’ A CT imaging system produces cross-sectional images or ‘slices’ of anatomy, like the slices in a loaf of bread. How a CT system works? 1) A motorized table moves the patient through a circular opening in the CT imaging system. 2) As the patient passes through the CT imaging system, a source of x rays rotates around the inside of the circular opening. A single rotation takes about 1 second. The x-ray source produces a narrow, fan-shaped beam of x rays used to irradiate a section of the patient's body. The thickness of the fan beam may be as small as 1 millimeter or as large as 10 millimeters. In typical examinations there are several phases; each made up of 10 to 50 rotations of the x-ray tube around the patient in coordination with the table moving through the circular opening. The patient may receive an injection of a ‘contrast material’ to facilitate visualization of vascular structure. 3) Detectors on the exit side of the patient record the x rays exiting the section of the patient's body being irradiated as an x-ray "snapshot" at one position (angle) of the source of x rays. Many different ‘snapshots’ (angles) are collected during one complete rotation. 4) The data are sent to a computer to reconstruct all of the individual ‘snapshots’ into a cross-sectional image (slice) of the internal organs and tissues for each complete rotation of the source of x rays.” I would like to stress that CT scans are different from conventional X-Rays in that they give a cross sectional view of the brain, while X-Rays give a flat two-dimensional image thereof. A CAT scan of the brain provides us with more detail about the tissues and the structure of the brain. It can also be used in the evaluation of the effects of treatment on brain tumors and in the detection of brain clots, which are likely to cause stroke. More use of the CT scan of the brain can be found especially when a biopsy of brain tissues is mandatory before a surgery. Magnetic resonance imaging or MRI is another technique used to show a clear picture of the brain in detail. The difference between CAT scan and MRI is that, unlike CT scan, MRI does not use X-Rays. Pictures of bones and tissues of the brain are obtained by using powerful magnetic fields and radio frequency pulses. According to WebMD, for an MRI of the head, you lie with your head inside a special machine (scanner) that has a strong MRI of a patient lying inside a scanner magnet. The MRI can show tissue damage or Courtesy : National Institute of Health disease, such as infection or inflammation, or a tumor, stroke, or seizure. Information from an MRI can be saved and stored on a computer for more study. Photographs or films of certain views can also be made. In some cases, a dye (contrast material) may be used during the MRI to show pictures of structures more clearly. The dye may help show blood flow, look for some types of tumors, and show areas of inflammation. Both CT The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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scan and MRI are used to show pictures of the brain. While X-Rays and magnetic fields are used respectively, the end result is the same. These techniques of brain scanning were developed by physicists and are used for medical purposes. That’s how Paul Broca came to the conclusion that the region of the brain named for him (Broca’s area) was crucial to speech. The ability to scan the brain has challenged some of the most influential psychological theories such behaviorism. However, if these scanning techniques make it easy to observe the brain without having to physically go inside it, they do not allow us to observe and monitor the activities of the brain. To observe and monitor the activities of the brain, more sophisticated techniques are needed. A functional MRI or fMRI, or a more sophisticated technique, called positron emission tomography (PET), may be used. Both fMRI and PET measure brain activities by using blood flow in the brain. While fMRI uses magnetic fields and radio frequency pulses, PET uses positron emission. But, these new tools enable psychologists to tell which part of the brain is responsible for what. Speech, movement, and elements of internal consciousness, like love or hate, pleasurable tastes, and feelings towards others can be analyzed and associated with specific areas of the brain. “How does PET work? PET works by using a scanning device (a machine with a large hole at its center) to detect positrons (subatomic particles) emitted by a radionuclide in the organ or tissue being examined. The radiotracers used in PET scans are made by attaching a radioactive atom to chemical substances that are used naturally by the particular organ or tissue during its metabolic process. For example, in PET scans of the brain, a radioactive atom is applied to glucose (blood sugar) to create a radionuclide called fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG), because the brain uses glucose for its metabolism. FDG is widely used in PET scanning. Other substances may be used for PET scanning, depending on the purpose of the scan. If blood flow and perfusion of an organ or tissue is of interest, the radionuclide may be a type of radioactive oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, or gallium. The radionuclide is administered into a vein through an intravenous (IV) line. Next, the PET scanner slowly moves over the part of the body being examined. Positrons are emitted by the breakdown of the radionuclide. Gamma rays are created during the emission of positrons, and the scanner then detects the gamma rays. A computer analyzes the gamma rays and uses the information to create an image map of the organ or tissue being studied. The amount of the radionuclide collected in the tissue affects how brightly the tissue appears on the image and indicates the level of organ or tissue function.”


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Now, I would like to go back to two fundamental questions: how is the brain formed and how does it function? The knowledge of the formation and the functioning of the brain is a prerequisite for its observation and its analysis, whether CT scan, MRI, or PET are used. The brain or encephalon is an organ of soft nervous tissue contained in the skull of vertebrates, functioning as the coordinating center of sensation and intellectual and nervous activity. The role of the brain in the perception and interpretation of reality are determined at The brain is made up of cells called neurons, and, with the spinal cord, a very early stage of its formation. “The makes up the central nervous system (CNS). Credit: Brock University nervous system develops from embryonic tissue called the ectoderm. The first sign of the developing nervous system is the neural plate that can be seen at about the 16th day of development. Over the next few days, a ‘trench’ is formed in the neural plate - this creates a neural groove. By the 21st day of development, a neural tube is formed when the edges of the neural groove meet. The rostral (front) part of the neural tubes goes on to develop into the brain and the rest of the neural tube develops into the spinal cord. Neural crest cells become the peripheral nervous system. At the front end of the neural tube, three major brain areas are formed: the prosencephalon (forebrain), mesencephalon (midbrain) and rhombencephalon (hindbrain). By the 7th week of development, these three areas divide again. This process is called encephalization.” “Around the second month, the embryo develops a thin tube of fluid that will become the brain. It’s lined with progenitor cells that will ultimately give rise to all of the brain cells. Around the fourth month, the progenitor cells divide at a pace unbelievably of a quarter million times per minute, creating cells that become the brain. Ultimately, there will be about a hundred billion neurons and at least a trillion glial cells. Once created, they lose the ability to further divide. Because they were created so rapidly, how the cells are created makes a difference in the functioning of the brain throughout the lifespan of an individual. For example, exposition to radiation during pregnancy (children born after the bombing of Hiroshima), use of substances during pregnancy. Therefore, who we are doesn’t only depend on genetic factors, but also on biological factors. We are who we are, in part, because of the chemicals that surround us during development. If a child grows up in the dark, the part of the brain responsible for sight will never develop. There is a genetically determined period of growth, and that growth requires a certain The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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sort of interaction with the child’s surrounding.” (Gimbel, 2015). Childhood and adolescence brain transformations stop by the time we are 25 years old. However, the brain continues to change after the age of 25 (transformation is not to be confused with change). New experiences can affect the brain. Think of something you can bend into shape and that can retain that shape. Same goes for the brain. It’s malleable (well, not in the true sense, rather in terms of memories). That is referred to as plasticity, which happens not just during childhood or adolescence. To put who we are or our personality in simple terms: we are the sum of our memories or experiences. Although a well-defined structure of the brain plays an important role in the making of reality, how the brain actually functions determines our reality. First and foremost, there are the neurons, which, by definition, are specialized cells transmitting nerve impulses; they’re also called nerve cells. The impulses pass from one neuron to another through a specialized junction called synapse. Neurons communicate with one another thanks to chemical signals called neurotransmitters. Dopamine, for example, is a neurotransmitter in the brain associated with motor control, addiction and reward. The transmission of impulse is referred to as synaptic transmission. “Neurotransmitters are chemicals that are involved in the transmission of nerve impulses. Serotonin can trigger the release of substances in the blood vessels of the brain that in turn cause the pain of migraine. Serotonin is also key to mood regulation; pain perception; gastrointestinal function, including perception of hunger and satiety; and other physical functions. It’s a compound present in blood platelets and serum that constricts the blood vessels and acts as a neurotransmitter. The majority of the body's serotonin, between 80-90%, can be found in the gastrointestinal tract. Serotonin is considered a natural mood stabilizer.” Glial cells glue the neurons together, creating stable structures. For instance, “if neurons are bricks, glial cells are like mortar holding the neuronal structures together and sustaining the necessary gaps called synapses or gaps between the neurons.” Synapses stay and go depending on the individual. Some synapses may be useful in one individual but useless in another and, thus, die. In the newborn’s brain, the neurons are intricately connected. As he grows, the connections become fewer and fewer until adulthood but become increasingly stronger. Consciousness, sentience or awareness of the world around us or reality depends on fast connections between the neurons. A slow connection may translate into absence of consciousness. Our brain works by building upon models previously acquired throughout our lives. Make no mistake. The world we live in and the things we were exposed to while growing up shape who we are. Life-changing experiences may be good or bad. They can change our identity by having a powerful impact on our brains. For example, Josalyn Tresvant McGhee, on Homeroom, the blog of the U.S. Department of Education, recounts how her experience as a U.S. Department of Education Teacher Ambassador changed her life: “I learned that I should be bold and always look for opportunities to elevate the voice of teachers. In June 2015, I joined an amazing family of Fellows with a wide range of experiences to bring to the table. Some of our common themes of passion included racial equality, fair and quality student The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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assessments, teacher leadership, student efficacy, student advocacy, and a commitment to ensure all teachers not only had a voice but an intentional seat at the table in education discussions. My Exciting Life as a TAF… As a fellow, I had a unique opportunity to raise my voice regarding issues that impacted my profession and share stories from my classroom. In the fellowship, we were charged with conducting outreach to solicit feedback from teachers to inform the Department’s work. I was glad to see that educational decisions were not being made without including the qualified voice of a teacher. When I had an opportunity to consult the Office of Special Education Programs, I considered it a personal privilege since I had started my career as a Special Education teacher. Ensuring that there is equity for students with special needs is my passion and a large part of my philosophy on education. Throughout the fellowship I had opportunities to support the Teach to Lead initiative, facilitate calls with Teachers of the Year, and even visit the White House when President Obama awarded Jahana Hayes the 2016 Teacher of the Year Award. Elevating Teacher Voice and ESSA… During my fellowship, President Obama signed the ‘Every Student Succeeds Act’ (ESSA) into law. As fellows, we conducted nationwide listening sessions to gain feedback and questions. During my facilitation, I heard stories from teachers about how they were marginalized and devalued based on evaluation policies. I also witnessed teachers empowered by raising their voice on issues that impacted their classrooms. In those sessions, teachers and other stakeholders were able to share their concerns and recommendations for ESSA implementation. Social Justice and Diversity During my Fellowship… I had several opportunities to speak with Secretary King regarding our work and what we were hearing in the field. During the 2016 summer, our country was shaken by the killing of Philando Castile. Castile’s death was devastating to the students he served in the St. Paul, Minnesota school where he worked. Secretary King’s visited the school to encourage families to work in their community to heal and talk to their children about how to cope with the loss. As an educator of color, many of the students I teach reminded me of a young Castile. And as an advocate for their futures, I feel it is my responsibility to advocate for social justice, speak up against discrimination and support my students’ development as socially conscious citizens. Once a Fellow Always a Fellow…


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This was a saying I was excited to hear. At the conclusion of my fellowship, I was excited to learn that it would never really end. Sure, I wouldn’t have quarterly visits to Washington D. C. or weekly calls with my cohort, but I would still engage in discussions with the Department and alumni. More importantly, I would continue to be bold and empower teachers to elevate their voices. I strongly suggest educators apply for the Fellowship and make your voice heard at the federal level.” One of the most important experiences that define our identity is language learning, which have two distinct components: a mechanical or physical aspect and a cognitive or psychological aspect. The brain entirely controls the cognitive part of language learning (more details can be found in my book: “Exploring the possibilities for the emergence of a single and global native language”). The left hemisphere (see below) of the brain controls language learning. Specifically, Broca’s area is responsible for speech production. The brain has four main parts: 1) the Frontal Lobe, associated with reasoning, planning, parts of speech, movement, emotions, and problem solving; 2) the Parietal Lobe, associated with movement, orientation, recognition, perception of stimuli; 3) the Occipital Lobe, associated with visual processing; and 4) the Temporal Lobeassociated with perception and recognition of auditory stimuli, memory, and speech. The brain has two sides known as the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere controls muscles of the right side of The four main parts of the brain the body and the right hemisphere controls muscles of the Courtesy: Bryn Mawr College left side of the body. “Also, in general, sensory information from the left side of the body crosses over to the right side of the brain and information from the right side of the body crosses over to the left side of the brain. Therefore, damage to one side of the brain will affect the opposite side of the body”. The two hemispheres of the brain are connected, and any disruption between them may lead to major neurological issues. For example, the Alien hand syndrome is “a disorder resulting from a treatment for epilepsy known as a corpus callosotomy, in which the callosum is cut, disconnecting the two cerebral hemispheres of the brain, also known as split-brain surgery. This disorder causes unilateral and sometimes intricate hand movements without the patient feeling they have volitional control of the movements” (Eagleman, 2015). Below the brain is located the cerebellum, which is “a smaller anatomical structure that sits below the cerebral cortex at the rear of the head. This area of the brain is essential for fluid motor control, balance, posture, and possibly some cognitive functions.” The cerebellum, along with the cerebrum, responsible for conscious awareness, form the higher brain, while the medulla, which controls spontaneous respiration, along with the brainstem, form the lower brain. The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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Another important component of the brain is the Hypothalamus. One of the most important functions of the hypothalamus is to link the nervous system to the endocrine system via the pituitary gland (hypophysis). The hypothalamus is a section of the brain responsible for hormone production. The hormones produced by this area of the brain govern body temperature, thirst, hunger, sleep, circadian rhythm, moods, sex drive, and the release of other hormones in the body. This area of the brain controls the pituitary gland and other glands in the body. Because the following chapter is about the mind and memories, I would like to also mention the hippocampus, where short term memories are processed into long-term memories. No long-term memories will be able to form should the hippocampus be damaged. Therefore, you will only live in the present, which would be a misrepresentation of reality since it’s, in part, based on past experiences or memories. Speaking of memories, what role does the brain play in their creation? In the next chapter, I will talk about memories in more details, but for now, there is something that I would like to point out. Yes, memories do take a physical path in the brain during their creation. The brain stem receives the impulses from the senses. Then, they go through the thalamus before exiting the various cortices and the prefrontal cortex. Their final path will be the hippocampus before becoming longterm memories. The unicity of the brain in terms of memory creation and storage stems from the fact that no single memory is stored in a specific area of the brain. The memory is broken into fragments that are stored in different parts of the brain. These fragments get reassembled during the recall of an experience, for example. That constitutes long-term memory, which is different from short-term memory or working memory, which Salkind (2008) says is information temporarily held accessible in the mind. It is used in the completion of mental tasks such as comprehending language, following instructions, and solving mathematical problems. Many working memory measures correlate with intelligence rather strongly, and the average capacity of working memory increases with age in childhood. An adult can concurrently hold in mind about 4 separate, simple items, or often about 7 items by using mnemonic strategies (such as remembering a telephone number by silently rehearsing it and breaking it into groups of 3 or 4 digits). There appear to be multiple working memory mechanisms. A very small but important set of ideas can be in the focus of one’s attention and awareness at once. However, working memory goes beyond what is in focus. There also are mechanisms to hold more information just beyond awareness. This may include mental representations of the progression of speech sounds in a sentence that one heard seconds ago, or the spatial arrangement of players in a basketball game one is watching. The second question is: can memories be recorded, downloaded or uploaded? Not yet! But, scientists are working on an artificial hippocampus, an artificial cortex, and an artificial cerebellum, which all play an important role in memory creation and storage. Finally, the last question is: can memories be erased or lost? Absolutely. That may happen for a number of reasons. The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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It may happen because of amnesia, which is the temporary or permanent loss of memory. It may also happen because of Alzheimer’s disease, which, in its early stage, cause the hippocampus – processor of memories – to shrink. Alzheimer’s destroys memories thanks to amyloid. “Amyloids are aggregates of proteins that become folded into the wrong shape, allowing many copies of that protein to stick together. These previously healthy proteins most often lose their normal function and form large fibrils. These fibrils disrupt the healthy physiological function of nearby tissues and organs.” (Quizlet, 2018) Alzheimer’s is the most common cause of dementia. Its most common symptoms include memory loss, impaired language, difficulties in concentrating and decision making, confusion, or disorientation. It’s only recently that “the basic mechanisms for Alzheimer’s have begun to be understood. One major breakthrough came in 2012, when it was revealed that Alzheimer’s begins with the formation of tau amyloid, a gummy, glue like substance that clogs up the brain … What makes these amyloid plaques so difficult to target with drugs is that they are most likely made of ‘prions,’ which are misshapen protein molecules. They are not bacteria or viruses, but nevertheless they can reproduce … At present, there is no known way to stop the inexorable progression of Alzheimer’s. Now that the basic mechanics behind Alzheimer’s are being unraveled, however, one promising method is to create antibodies or a vaccine that might specifically target these misshapen protein molecules. Another way might to create an artificial hippocampus for these individuals so that their short-term memory can be restored.” (Kaku, 2014). Not being able to remember your next-of-kin or your past is one thing, but what if you appeared like a complete stranger to yourself? (Daniels, 2015) calls it ‘The walking dead’. She explains it as follows: “As disruptive as it is not to recognize people who are close to you, it is even more destructive not to know yourself. In a rare counterpart to Capgras and Fregoli syndromes, people with Cotard’s syndrome believe that they or parts of their body, are dead. Cotard’s patients often neglect to eat or wash; they may insist on being buried or taken to the cemetery. A patient described in 2008, ‘Mrs. L…,’ was admitted to a hospital ‘complaining that she was dead, smelled like rotting flesh, and wanted to be taken to a morgue so that she could be with dead people.’ The condition is associated with a wide range of disorders, ranging from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia to psychotic depression. It can also appear after brain injury, as in the case of a Scottish man who, following a motorcycle accident, became convinced that he had died of septicemia in the hospital and was being escorted around hell by the spirit of his mother. (The mother had in fact taken the man to South Africa). The cases are so few, and are connected to so many mental disorders, that researchers have not found one single source of the delusion. However, scans of patients indicate that at least some have impaired functioning in the neural circuits that control visual and emotional recognition of faces.1 In the case of Cotard’s syndrome, the loss of recognition seems to extend to the self as well, with dire results.”

1

The inability to recognize people’s faces is called prosopagnosia or face blindness.


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So, Alzheimer’s disease, among others, has the power to alter or destroy somebody’s reality. But, let’s assume that someone is very lucky by being disease-free and, on top of it, is extremely intelligent. Now, instead of memory loss, we’re talking about incredible memory and imagination, which make for a reality out of this world. Well, let’s just say that such a person is a genius. But, do geniuses have bigger brains? What’s so special about their brains? Did you know that Albert Einstein’s brain was in fact smaller than average? According to Dr. Kaku, the only difference found in Einstein’s brain were rather minor. A certain part of his brain, called the angular gyri, was larger than normal, with the inferior parietal regions of both hemispheres 15 percent wider than average. Notably, these parts of the brain are involved in abstract thought, in the manipulation of symbols such as writing and mathematics, and in visual-spatial processing. In that case, you might ask: so, why was Einstein a genius then? Dr. Kaku gives the following reasons: First, Einstein spent most of his time thinking via “thought experiments”. Second, he was known to spend up to ten years or more on a single thought experiment. Third, his personality was important. He was a bohemian, so it was natural for him to rebel against the establishment in physics. Fourth, the time was right for the emergence of an Einstein. In 1905, the old physical world of Newton was crumbling in light of experiments that clearly suggested that a new physics was about to be born, waiting for a genius to show the way. Although, when required by a treatment, a chunk of the brain may be removed while the patient becomes functional again, the brain remains an essential organ as well as its smallest entities, the neurons. An interesting fact about neurons is that they need other people to thrive. Our neurons do not perform well in isolation. Other people make up a significant part of who we are. The chameleon effect, for example, is a result of our neurological structure. For example, when a group of people is chatting, if one person puts his hands in his pockets, the others will tend to follow. Same goes if one person crosses his arms over his chest. It all because of mirror neurons, which allow us to internalize the behavior of the people we observe and with whom we interact. Emotional contagion is another example. Emotional contagion is defined as the tendency to feel and express emotions similar to and influenced by those of others; it’s also, the phenomenon of one person’s negative thoughts or anxiety affecting another’s mood. For example, laughter yoga in India. The session begins with forced laughter and ends with authentic laughter. Laughter is contagious. Other behaviors such as crying, vomiting, a television show that uses laugh track as opposed to one that does not, etc. are also contagious. “In the age of digital hyperlinking, it’s more important than ever to understand the links between humans. Human brains are fundamentally wired to interact: we are a splendidly social species. Although our social drives can sometimes be manipulated, they also sit squarely at the center of the human success story. You might assume that you end at the border of your skin, but there is a sense in which there is no way to mark the end of you and the beginning of all those around you. Your neurons and those of everyone on the planet interplay in a giant, shifting super-organism. What we demarcate as you is simply a network The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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in a larger network. If we want a bright future for our species, we’ll want to continue to research how human brains interact – the dangers as well as the opportunities. Because there is no avoiding the truth etched into the wiring of our brains: we need each other” Indeed, we need each other to ascertain that our brains function optimally. “None of us lives in isolation. The most remote hermit on the farthest mountain top has to interact with his surroundings. He has to make choices, take actions, and solve problems. Most us live in a far more communal world when our personalities and abilities are defined by the ways in which we navigate our social environment.” But, what impact will this growing interdependence have on our unicity? Aren’t we heading towards more individuality instead? I will come back to the brain in future publications. I will explore, for example, the new status of the brain in the face of artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented realities among other topics. The goal of this chapter was to set the stage for the exploration of the mind by explaining how the brain is formed and how it works. The discussion that follows explains the role of the mind in the making of reality.

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CHAPTER 3 THE MIND, ULTIMATE MAKER OF REALITY First, let’s not beat around the bush. It’s important to point out right now that when it comes to the mind, the questions abound because the mind itself is a mystery. For millennia, philosophers, theologians, sociologists, and scientists alike have pondered and written about the mind, trying to explain it. All that because of questions like: what is the mind? Where is it located? What’s the difference between the brain and the mind? “The two greatest mysteries in all of nature are the mind and the universe. With our vast technology, we have been able to photograph galaxies billions of light-years away, manipulate the genes that control life, and probe the inner sanctum of the atom, but the mind and the universe still elude and tantalize us. They are the most mysterious and fascinating frontiers known to science…To witness the mystery of our mind, all we have to do is stare at ourselves in the mirror and wonder what lurks behind our eyes? This raises haunting questions like: Do we have a soul? What happens to us after we die? Who am ‘I’ anyway? … Indeed, we’ve been at a lost to understand what it (the mind) is or how it works for most of history. The ancient Egyptians, for all their glorious accomplishments in the arts and science, believed the brain to be a useless organ and threw it away when embalming their pharaohs. Aristotle was convinced that the soul resided in the heart, not the brain, whose function was to cool down the cardiovascular system. Others, like Descartes, thought that the soul entered the body through the tiny pineal gland of the brain. But in the absence of any solid evidence, none of these theories could be proven”. In this book, I don’t claim to put this age-old debate to rest. My goal is to show the role played by the mind in our perception of the world. I think the mind is the ultimate maker of reality, although closely associated with the brain. René Descartes, Father of modern philosophy, posited that the mind is an entity, totally separated from the body or the brain. He said that while the body is material and the dysfunction of one part may not hinder the functioning of the other parts, the mind is immaterial and functions as a whole and cannot be divided into parts. So, in his honor, this theory of the mind is called the cartesian dualism. But, if you ask me personally: where exactly is the mind located? I’ll just say: “I don’t know”. But there is something that puzzles me: if my mind is not located in my body, why is it always with me? Why can’t I leave it home and request its presence if need be? The only time I’m not aware of it is when I’m asleep. Well, other cases where people are not aware of their minds may include being under anesthesia or suffering from severe mental illnesses as well. In the latter case, they’re said to “have lost their minds”. Most of the time, these people are unable to make sense of their environments. They have lost touch with ‘reality’. I can, thus, deduce that I temporarily lose my mind anytime I’m asleep, even though my brain is functioning. In that regard, we can say that Descartes’ dualism makes sense. But, because I want to talk about the mind in relation to reality, I will not consider the instances where the mind is disconnected from the brain. So, how important is the mind in what we call reality? Why is its study important?


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The Mind, Ultimate Maker of Reality

For starters, the scientific study of the mind is called psychology while the study of the brain is called cognitive neuroscience. Already, the difference is clear. The brain is not the mind. The brain processes what the senses perceive into readily available data that the mind processes into reality. Think of the brain as the hardware or the hard drive on your computer while the mind is the set of software that makes your computer function properly. One needs the other and may not be separated. The mind follows a thought process. Whenever I look at something, the object that I see is a stimulus. My brain either associates the object with stored images and tells me that the object is familiar, or if it’s not, it stimulates my brain to figure it out. That process of That process of decoding is initiated by my brain but is finalized by my mind Photo credit : University of Alabama at Birmingham decoding is initiated by my brain but is finalized by my mind. Say you get stung by a bee. The bite automatically sends, via your synapses and neurons, a signal to your brain, which interprets the pain as a bee sting. Your reaction to the pain is instantaneous because your brain didn’t have time to think. Now, before entering a bee-house, say you take time to wear the proper gear likely to protect you against potential bee stings. This action is controlled by your mind because it follows a thought process. Most of what you do in the course of a day follows a thought process. Keep in mind that thought process does not have anything to do with language. The first humans did not speak any language but were able to think. The emergence of our species (Homo Sapiens) and language did not occur concomitantly. Language developed thousands of years after the first humans emerged (for more about the emergence of language in human history, please refer to my book: “Exploring the possibilities for the emergence of a single and global native language”). Anyway, how many times have you heard someone say: “You can do it if you put your mind to it”? it’s another way of saying: “You can do it you think hard about it or if you’re mindful”. Here is another one: “You read my mind!” It simply means you read my thoughts. No one can read your brain at will. They need special imaging techniques to do that (as we saw above). But, people take the liberty to read your mind as they please. The brain cannot think nor solve any problems. The mind can. But, wait! Don’t discard your brain just yet. You need it 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You only need your mind when you’re conscious. So, here we are! The mind functions only at the conscious level. What is consciousness? Its definition is three-fold: “1) The state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings; 2) A person's awareness or perception of something; and 3) The fact of awareness by the mind of itself The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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Psychology Before WWII

and the world.” We can observe or interact with our environment or reality only when we’re conscious. Therefore, that reality is a product of our mind instead of our brain. Our mind makes reality as we know it. Like I said before, why can’t we have control over our dreams, which start and end whenever they feel like? Why is it always hard to find an address, solve mathematical problems, write a complete and correct sentence in a dream? Because a dream is not real. Would it be a hyperbole if I told you that normally we spend one third of our lives without our mind? No, it wouldn’t, considering that, on average, we spend one third of our lives sleeping. The thought process that we seem to follow while dreaming does not involve our minds. It emerges from our subconscious, which is a repository of old images, thoughts and repressed emotions. In other words, a reservoir of fake realities that no longer require a thought process to emerge and unfold because they belong in the past, which is also an important factor in our conscious reality. In fact, the reality that you’re living right now is nothing but the sum of the decisions you made in the past. The reality that we, as a species, are living right now is the sum of the decisions and the scientific discoveries that our predecessors made. By and large, consciousness has three levels, and what makes human beings unique is the fact that we can operate on all three levels. In level I consciousness, sensory information travels through the brain stem, past the thalamus, onto the various cortices of the brain, and finally to the prefrontal cortex. Thus, this stream of level I consciousness is created by the flow of information from the thalamus of the prefrontal cortex. Level II consciousness is about finding our place in society. Emotions originate and are processed in the limbic system. In Level II consciousness, we are continually bombarded with sensory information, but emotions are rapid-fire responses to emergencies from the limbic system that do not need permission from the prefrontal cortex. The hippocampus is also important for processing memories. So, Level II consciousness, at its core, involves the reaction of the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex. In Level III, the highest level of consciousness, which is associated primarily with Homo Sapiens, we stimulate the future by taking our model of the world and then run simulations into the future. We do this by analyzing past memories of people and events, and then simulating the future by making many causal links to form a ‘causal’ tree. Simulating the future, the heart of Level III consciousness, is mediated by the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the CEO of the brain, with competition between the pleasure center and the orbitofrontal cortex (which acts to check our impulses) …The actual process of simulating the future takes place when the prefrontal cortex accesses the memories of the past in order to approximate future events. All decisions, even split-second decisions, follow a thought process. Scientific discoveries are usually the culmination of long hours of experiments by trial and error, which follow rigorous thought processes controlled by the mind. I will talk about science and reality in future publications, but for now let me take scientific revolutions for example because our world is built upon them. Scientific revolutions illustrate the thought process of the human mind at a macro level The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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in the making of 21st century reality. Usually, people talk about the scientific revolution, but every field of science is subject to revolutions. The scientific revolution is referred to as the birth of modern science during the Renaissance period when exploration and discovery, the printing revolution and advances in astrology, astronomy, mathematics, music, medicine, botany, and alchemy transformed our views of nature and society. But, scientific revolutions generally follow the same pattern: an anomaly is found in an established paradigm, which creates a conflict. Scientists work to resolve the conflict by instituting a new paradigm. Can you imagine how much thought and disagreement is involved in this whole process? Every time that happens, it is a macro undertaking of the collective human mind at its best to create a new scientific reality. For example, the medical field is reconsidering healthcare by placing the patient right at the basic research stage. That means when biologists, biochemists, neuroscientists, etc. conduct research, they don’t just do it for the sake of doing it. They ask themselves: “How can that improve the health of the patient?”. By the time a research reaches clinical stage, the patient is already deeply involved. The whole process is called “from bench to bedside” (for more, please see my paper “How translational medicine is progressively redefining healthcare: from bench to bedside, the patient is the bedrock of translational research”). I differentiated above between the study of the brain (cognitive neuroscience) and the study of the mind and behavior (psychology). I also mentioned how new techniques of brain scanning, imaging, and observation (CT scans, MRI, and PET) not only allow neuroscientists to better study the brain, but also allow psychologists to better understand how the mind works. Psychology, as we know it today, has evolved from a discipline based solely on theories. To understand the role of the mind in the making of reality, it’s important to understand the approaches of the different schools of thought in the field of psychology. The study of the mind can, historically, be divided into two broad categories: psychology before World War II and psychology after World War II.

1. Psychology before World War II: an overview Way before the 19th century, ancient philosophers, namely Plato, proposed a tripartite theory of the mind that included the following three elements: 1) the “ego” or the conscious mind, which is the mind that we usually refer to. Traditionally, we think that the ego is the complete self, for instance, when we say: “I made up my mind”. In fact, the ego does do a lot. It plays a major role when we reason, argue, deliberate, organize, plan, and make sense of experiences; 2) the “Id” is the repository of urges and desires. It is where instinct and primal needs are located. ‘Id’ is the Latin word for ‘it’, whereas ‘ego’ is the Latin word for ‘I’; 3) the “superego” or the conscience. As for Aristotle, especially in De Anima, he treated psychology as a science of the soul. However, by ‘soul’, he meant an animating principle of life. Dependent on the presence of physical parts but The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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not itself material, soul is a principle of nature that accounts for change and rest in living bodies. Thus, the study of the soul comprises all living things, not just those things with an intellect (Walsh et al., 2014). Aristotle regarded the study of the soul as a science, because psychological states (e.g. anger or sadness) involve the body. Yet, insofar as the soul, also involves mind or intellect, and there is no mental substance to intellect, the soul is not entirely describable in physical terms (Green, 1998). Thus, psychological subjects are not completely within the purview of the natural philosopher or scientist. Aristotle puzzled about whether there can be one method for investigating psychological topics; if methods are required, he foresaw there would be conflicts about how best to proceed (Shields, 2011). Study of the soul, for Aristotle, involves the soul’s capacities: nutrition, perception, and reasoning. The capacity for nutrition is shared with all living beings; animals have the capacity for nutrition and perception, while humans have all three capacities, but desire is a distinct capacity of soul that initiates movement and plays a role in purposive behavior (Shields, 2011). However, Aristotle did not consider the soul a sum of different capacities but as an integrated unity. (Walsh et al., 2014) The Renaissance Period and the Scientific Revolution will impact psychology by giving it several meanings although the latter “continued to be dominated by Aristotelian philosophy of nature along with Greek, Arabic, and Latin commentary.” (Park & Kessler, 1988). The confidence generated by scientific discoveries inspired the application of natural laws not merely to natural objects and physiological functions but to human psychological phenomena and social relations. When natural philosophers explained human activity that binds natural objects together, they extended to human nature a mechanistic conception of nature that operates according to causeand-effect relations. Yet, they did so from diverse perspectives and are indebted to their predecessors (Hatfield, 1995). ‘Psychology’ still meant the study of the soul. Individuals did not yet use ‘psychology’ to describe their reflections on their actions, feelings, and thoughts. In fact, many scholars used the term ‘anthropology’ for the study of bodily aspects of human nature only, although Immanuel Kant used it to encompass all psychological phenomena. ‘Human nature’ meant both understanding humans as natural objects and studying human action to improve moral conduct (Smith, 1997). Christian Wolff’s division of philosophical psychology into empirical and rational types bore fruit among some scholars, although Kant critiqued Wolff’s popularities and devised his own resolution (Lapointe, 1970; Leary, 1982). Others ignored Wolff’s distinction. By the nineteenth century, psychology in Britain generally meant natural philosophy applied to psychological phenomena, while in the US, psychology meant moral and mental philosophy, inspired by Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid (1710 – 1796). In the 19th century, the quest to understand human behavior inspired researchers to study the mind, thus, engendering the field known as experimental psychology, which began with Wilhelm Wundt (1832 – 1920) and Gustav Fechner (1801 – 1887). Initially, it was a quest to relate our internal experiences to the world around us. These two pioneers understood the ambiguity caused by the The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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cliché “seeing is believing”. They realized that what we see and what is are not the same thing. The differences in reality or in our environment caught Fechner’s attention. For example, our anatomical detectors may lack the required sensitivity to detect the differences between two slightly different stimuli.

i. Wilhelm Wundt (1832 – 1920) “Wilhelm Wundt, acclaimed as ‘the father of experimental psychology’, established the first psychological research and teaching laboratory within the Philosophy Department at Leipzig in around 1876 (Fancher, 1996). He regarded his psychology as a branch of philosophy, an attempt to apply the experimental methods of natural science (particularly, the physiology of Helmholtz) to essentially philosophical problems concerning the nature of mind and its metaphysical status. This view of the subject persisted, in Germany, at least until the Nazi era. Wundt's research program aimed to investigate the ‘elements of consciousness,’ and the laws governing the combination of these elements (Wundt, 1912). Although his theoretical system made a place for emotional feelings as one class of element, in practice the main focus of Wundt's experimentally based research program was on the elements of sensation and their compounding into ideas. As has been the case in the Empiricist philosophical tradition, these ideas were conceived of as, to all intents and purposes, mental images. Indeed, Wundt insists, much in the spirit of Hume, that there is no fundamental difference in kind between the ideas arising directly from perception and ‘memory images’ (Wundt, 1912). Thus, Wundtian experimental psychology was largely a study of cognitive processes, and, for him (and most of his numerous students and imitators), the mental image (under the rubric idea) played essentially the same crucial, representational role in cognition that it had played for most of his philosophical predecessors.” (Thomas, 2014).

ii. Gustav Fechner (1801 – 1887) “Fechner’s Elemente der Psychophysik, 2 vol. (1860; Elements of Psychophysics), established his lasting importance in psychology. In this work he postulated that mind and body, though appearing to be separate entities, are actually different sides of one reality. He also developed experimental procedures, still useful in experimental psychology, for measuring sensations in relation to the physical magnitude of stimuli. Most important, he devised an equation to express the theory of the just-noticeable difference, advanced earlier by Ernst Heinrich Weber. This theory concerns the sensory ability to discriminate when two stimuli (e.g., two weights) are just noticeably different from each other. Later research has shown, however, that Fechner’s equation is applicable within the midrange of stimulus intensity and then holds only approximately true. From about 1865 he


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delved into experimental aesthetics and sought to determine by actual measurements which shapes and dimensions are most aesthetically pleasing.”

iii. Paul Broca (1824 – 1880) French physiologist Paul Broca showed how damage to the front lobe of the brain, now called Broca’s area, led to speech problems. Broca “examined the brain of a recently deceased patient who had had an unusual disorder. Though he had been able to understand spoken language and did not have any motor impairments of the mouth or tongue that might have affected his ability to speak, he could neither speak a complete sentence nor express his thoughts in writing. The only articulate sound he could make was the syllable “tan”, which had come to be used as his name. When Broca autopsied Tan’s brain, he found a sizable lesion in the left inferior frontal cortex. Subsequently, Broca studied eight other patients, all of whom had similar language deficits along with lesions in their left frontal hemisphere. This led him to make his famous statement that “we speak with the left hemisphere” and to identify, for the first time, the existence of a “language centre” in the posterior portion of the frontal lobe of this Broca and Wernick’s areas hemisphere. Now known as Broca’s area, this Photo credit: The Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology was in fact the first area of the brain to be associated with a specific function—in this case, language...Ten years later, Carl Wernicke, a German neurologist, discovered another part of the brain, this one involved in understanding language, in the posterior portion of the left temporal lobe. People who had a lesion at this location could speak, but their speech was often incoherent and made no sense. Wernicke's observations have been confirmed many times since. Neuroscientists now agree that running around the lateral sulcus (also known as the fissure of Sylvius) in the left hemisphere of the brain, there is a sort of neural loop that is involved both in understanding and in producing spoken language. At the frontal end of this loop lies Broca's area, which is usually associated with the production of language, or language outputs. At the other end (more specifically, in the superior posterior temporal lobe), lies Wernicke's area, which is associated with the processing of words that we hear being spoken, or language inputs. Broca's area and Wernicke's area are connected by a large bundle of nerve fibres called the arcuate The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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fasciculus. This language loop is found in the left hemisphere in about 90% of right-handed persons and 70% of left-handed persons, language being one of the functions that is performed asymmetrically in the brain. Surprisingly, this loop is also found at the same location in deaf persons who use sign language. This loop would therefore not appear to be specific to heard or spoken language, but rather to be more broadly associated with whatever the individual’s primary language modality happens to be.”

iv. Franz Mesmer (1734 – 1815) He investigated the effects of magnets on humans. He discovered that if he dangled a magnet in front of a person for a long period of time, the latter would enter a lethargic state. “He was a German physician with an interest in astronomy, who theorized that there was a natural energetic transference that occurred between all animated and inanimate objects that he called animal magnetism, sometimes later referred to as mesmerism (the verb mesmerize is still used today). The theory attracted a wide following between about 1780 and 1850 and continued to have some influence until the end of the century. In 1843 the Scottish physician James Braid proposed the term hypnosis for a technique derived from animal magnetism; today this is the usual meaning of mesmerism.”

v. Jean martin Charcot (1825 – 1893) and Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) Jean martin Charcot “worked on Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), which today is called Lou Gehrig’s disease because of the Yankee player who died from it but was initially called Charcot’s disease because of his work on it. He also worked on hypnosis and discovered that there is a relationship between hysteria and hypnosis. Sigmund Freud went to Paris to learn from Charcot. Freud discovered that when people were hypnotized, there are events that they remember, but couldn’t remember when they were awake. He concluded there is a repository of memory in the mind that we do not usually have access to and that we have to struggle to repress.” Other popular Freud’s theories include collective neurosis, which represented his personal view on religion, but is still worth taking into consideration since religion is part of reality. “In Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices (1907), his earliest writing about religion, Freud suggests that religion and neurosis are similar products of the human mind: neurosis, with its compulsive behavior, is "an individual religiosity", and religion, with its repetitive rituals, is a “universal obsessional neurosis.”


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vi. Carl Jung (1875 – 1961) Against Freud’s collective neurosis, Carl Jung will oppose his theory of collective unconscious, which he says includes the ego, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious. “Jung believed that deep inside of us, there is an area that we share with every other human being, alive or dead, the collective unconscious. Jung, on his part, contend that there is a part of our mind that contains memories and experiences that are not our own, that predates us and comes from our ancestors. This collective unconscious is what we use to make sense of the world.” Jung was an early supporter of Freud. “However, in 1912 while on a lecture tour of America Jung publicly criticized Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex and his emphasis on infantile sexuality. The following year this led to an irrevocable split between them, and Jung went on to develop his own version of psychoanalytic theory. Most of Jung's assumptions of his analytical psychology reflect his theoretical differences with Freud. For example, while Jung agreed with Freud that a person’s past and childhood experiences determined future behavior, he also believed that we are shaped by our future (aspirations) too. Jung (1948) disagreed with Freud regarding the role of sexuality. He believed the libido was not just sexual energy, but instead generalized psychic energy. For Jung the purpose of psychic energy was to motivate the individual in a number of important ways, including spiritually, intellectually, and creatively. It was also an individual's motivational source for seeking pleasure and reducing conflict” (McLeod, 2014) Another interesting theory proposed by Jung is the Theory of Archetypes, in which he defines archetypes as are images and thoughts which have universal meanings across cultures which may show up in dreams, literature, art or religion. “Jung believes symbols from different cultures are often very similar because they have emerged from archetypes shared by the whole human race. For Jung, our primitive past becomes the basis of the human psyche, directing and influencing present behavior. Jung claimed to identify a large number of archetypes but paid special attention to four. The “persona” (or mask) is the outward face we present to the world. It conceals our real self and Jung describes it as the “conformity” archetype. This is the public face or role a person presents to others as someone different to who we really are (like an actor). Another archetype is the anima/animus. The “anima/animus” is the mirror image of our biological sex, that is, the unconscious feminine side in males and the masculine tendencies in women. Each sex manifests attitudes and behavior of the other by virtue of centuries of living together. The psyche of a woman contains masculine aspects (the animus archetype), and the psyche of a man contains feminine aspects (the anima archetype). Next is the shadow. This is the animal side of our personality (like the id in Freud). It is the source of both our creative and destructive energies. In line with evolutionary theory, it may be that Jung’s archetypes reflect predispositions that once had survival value. Finally, there is the self which provides a sense of unity in experience. For Jung, the ultimate aim of every individual is to achieve a state of selfhood (similar to self-actualization), and in this respect, Jung (like Erikson) is moving in the direction of a more humanist orientation.” Two other The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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important Jung’s views include: 1) Phenomena / noumena. As for the phenomena, when you look at something, you create an image of it that does not exist in the environment, but in your mind, whereas the thing itself is the noumena. Therefore, Jung contended that metaphysics is useless because it does not allow us to make conclusive claim about reality. Thus, he saw the collective unconscious as the bridge between the mind and the world. The collective unconscious is how we can get to reality itself, and we are all, as a species, connected to it; 2) Synchronicities: the synchronicities we experience in life are a mark of being connected to others through the collective unconscious. In the United States, social conditions weren’t the same as those in Europe. That motivated American psychologists to take a different path. “Initially, US psychology was a Germanic experimental science aimed at deriving general laws of mental organization by means of introspection of consciousness. “In the late second half of the 1800s, a number of young North American men and a few women traveled to Germany to study with Wilhelm Wundt, who had established a laboratory and the first graduate program of study in psychology at the University of Leipzig in Germany. They returned to teach psychology and train other students in the major universities of this country with the intent of quantifying individual differences and important elements of human perception and memory.” (Strickland, 2001) Yet by 1898, only 2 per cent of experimental papers in US journals reported introspection, while 25 per cent were focused on practical applications” (Bruner & Allport, 1940). By World War I, US psychology was mainly an applied experimental science of the prediction and control of behavior (O’Donnell, 1985). However, homogeneity of thought among US psychologists was the norm. the discipline struggled with debate about its status as a natural science and its purpose as a theoretical or practical science. The founding of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1892 fashioned a public face of organizational unification, masking personal rivalries. Intensifying psychologists’ debate over their ambiguous boundaries was the fact that academic biologists, representing an established discipline, and some psychologists regarded Psychology as either physiology or philosophy (Walsh et al., 2014). US psychologists’ solution to this foundational identity crisis was to adopt applications of evolutionary biology to psychological phenomena, manifest as “genetic [developmental] psychology” or “functionalist psychology”. Some hope to unite the developmental standpoint with laboratory experimentation (O’Donnell, 1985).

2. Psychology after World War II: an overview World War II popularized behaviorism, which is the psychological theory that human and animal behavior can be explained in terms of conditioning, without appeal to thoughts or feelings, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior patterns. World War II was a turning point in the history of Mankind in the sense that it showed how we, as a species, can The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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Psychology After WWII

radically change our environment or reality. According to Christopher Munsey, “Before World War II, psychology had been primarily an academic discipline, with just a few thousand clinicians, industrial/organizational psychologists and testing experts. In the decades after the war, the clinical side of psychology exploded. Thousands of veterans with an interest in psychology went on to become practitioners, with paid training slots in graduate school and jobs waiting for them at VA hospitals.” (Munsey, 2010). That was done in an effort to heal or close the schism that existed between scientists and clinicians. “At the end of the Second World War, the National Research Council urged the American Psychological Association (APA) to heal the schism between scientists and clinicians and reorganize with full membership benefits for all doctoral psychologists. The Veteran’s Hospitals, in particular, needed well-trained personnel to provide mental health services for their patients. A major 1949 conference held in Boulder, Colorado established standards of education and training for clinical psychologists. Their recommendations were that clinical psychologists should be trained as generalists who were both scientists and clinicians. Doctoral students would complete at least a year of internship and receive the Ph. D. (Doctor of Philosophy) degree. These standards are still in place today,” (Strickland, 2001). The holocaust and the atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki gave psychologists a reason to question human’s ego. “After World War II, American psychology, particularly clinical psychology, grew into a substantial field in its own right, partly in response to the needs of returning veterans. The growth of psychology as a science was stimulated further by the launching of Sputnik in 1957 and the opening of the Russian-American space race to the Moon. As part of this race, the U.S. government fueled the growth of science. For the first time, massive federal funding became available, both to support behavioral research and to enable graduate training. Psychology became both a thriving profession of practitioners and a scientific discipline that investigated all aspects of human social behavior, child development, and individual differences, as well as the areas of animal psychology, sensation, perception, memory, and learning. Training in clinical psychology was heavily influenced by Freudian psychology and its offshoots. But some clinical researchers, working with both normal and disturbed populations, began to develop and apply methods focusing on the learning conditions that influence and control social behavior. This behavior therapy movement analyzed problematic behaviors (e.g., aggressiveness, bizarre speech patterns, smoking, fear responses) in terms of the observable events and conditions that seemed to influence the person’s problematic behavior. Behavioral approaches led to innovations for therapy by working to modify problematic behavior not through insight, awareness, or the uncovering of unconscious motivations but by addressing the behavior itself. Behaviorists attempted to modify the maladaptive behavior directly, examining the conditions controlling the individual’s current problems, not their possible historical roots. They also intended to show that such efforts could be successful without the symptom substitution that Freudian theory predicted. Freudians believed that removing the troubling behavior directly would be followed by new and worse problems. Behavior therapists showed that this was not necessarily the case.” (Mischel, 2017) The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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The behaviorists weren’t born exactly after World War II. Let’s say that their views became more popular and relevant in the wake of the war, as I stated above. “Psychologists realized that the previous approaches to understanding the human mind would do to psychology what alchemy did to chemistry. They wanted to rid psychology of the miraculous or the mystical. Freud’s unconscious and Jung’s collective unconscious were not measurable nor visible. They are not empirically accessible. For those who wanted a rigorous study of the mind, these sorts of entities were an embarrassment. Thus, behaviorism was adopted. Behaviorism was an attempt to make psychology a completely rigorous science. It is based only on what we can see and measure: stimulus and response.” “Attitude is a feeling, belief, or opinion of approval or disapproval towards something. Behavior is an action or reaction that occurs in response to an event or internal stimuli (i.e., thought)” (Strickland, 2001). Behaviorists include, but are not limited to:

i. Ivan Pavlov (1849 – 1936) He taught a dog to salivate at the sound of a bell by using a technique called classical conditioning. “Pavlov said the dogs were demonstrating classical conditioning. He paired two stimuli and summed it up like this: there's a neutral stimulus (the bell), which by itself will not produce a response, like salivation. There's also a non-neutral or unconditioned stimulus (the food), which will produce an unconditioned response (salivation). But if you present the neutral stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus together, eventually the dog will learn to associate the two. After a while, the neutral stimulus by itself will produce the same response as the unconditioned stimulus, like the dogs drooling when they heard the bell. This is called a conditioned response. Think of an unconditioned response as completely natural and a conditioned response as something that we learn.”

ii. John Watson (1878 – 1958) “Pavlov demonstrated conditioning on dogs, but American psychologist John Watson wanted to prove that it happens in humans, too. He took a 9-month-old boy named Albert and showed him several items, including a white rat. Albert didn't seem scared of any of them.” “For the experiment proper, Albert was put on a mattress on a table in the middle of a room. A white laboratory rat was placed near Albert and he was allowed to play with it. At this point, Watson and Rayner made a loud sound behind Albert's back by striking a suspended steel bar with a hammer each time the baby touched the rat. Albert responded to the noise by crying and showing fear. After several such pairings of the two stimuli, Albert was presented with only the rat. Upon seeing the rat, Albert got


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very distressed, crying and crawling away. Apparently, the infant associated the white rat with the noise.”

iii. Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904 – 1990) He used a technique called operant conditioning in learning, which, as opposed to classical conditioning based on the pairing up of two stimuli, pairs up behavior and response. It's important to note that it was the work of Edward Thorndike (1874 - 1949) that led to the development of operant conditioning, which was behind Skinner’s description of how behavior can be modified through the use of positive or negative reinforcement, meaning reward or punishment respectively. An association can be made by anyone between a particular behavior and its consequence. “For example, when a lab rat presses a blue button, he receives a food pellet as a reward, but when he presses the red button he receives a mild electric shock. As a result, he learns to press the blue button but avoid the red button. Punishment doesn't necessarily mean physical punishment. Instrumental conditioning, another term for operant conditioning, focuses on effective principles of reinforcement and shaping, which promote learning and self-control.”

iii. Marcel Duchamp (1887 – 1968) He was not a psychologist. He was a French-American painter, sculptor, chess player and writer whose work is associated with Cubism and conceptual art. But, he showed how people’s behavior can be conditioned under the right circumstances. He invented a concept called ‘Ready-mades’, which were “everyday objects selected and designated as art”. He would mass-manufactured goods and set them up as pieces of art. For instance, a urinal was one of his ready-mades. A snow shovel was another. The idea behind ready-mades was that if you take any object, reposition it by signing and then exhibiting it, it has the potential to pique people’s curiosity and, thus, modify their behavior or their approach towards the object.

iv. Edward C. Tolman (1886 – 1959) He introduced purposive behaviorism, “a branch of psychology that combines the objective study of behavior while also considering the purpose or goal of behavior. Tolman thought that learning developed from knowledge about the environment and how the organism relates to its


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environment.” Also, purposive behaviorism claims that every human action has a purpose and that the action is likely to continue until that purposed is reached.

v. Edwin Ray Guthrie (1886 – 1959) “Guthrie argued on philosophical grounds that the simple association in time of an external stimulus and a behavioral response was sufficient for an animal or human subject to connect the two mentally. This view contrasted with that of other psychologists who felt that some form of reinforcement, either positive or negative, was necessary to establish the association between stimulus and response. Guthrie also denied the reinforcement theorists’ contention that the association must be repeated several times before it is established as a behavioral pattern; on the contrary, only a single incident was enough for the association to be learned, he argued. Guthrie gathered experimental data to support his theory and presented his views in The Psychology of Learning (1935).”

vi. Kenneth Wartinbee Spence (1907 – 1967) “Spence’s work convinced him that discrimination learning takes place by establishing connections between specific stimuli and responses, reinforced by a reward when the proper response is given. In Behavior Theory and Conditioning (1956), he related his findings to behavior in general, as well as to specific learning systems. The strength of learning potential, in Spence’s view, is dependent both on the strength of the drive (such as hunger or sex) that the response satisfies and on the strength of the incentive, the chief variables of which are the amount of reinforcement given and the delay between the response and the reward.” To explain the difference between the brain and the mind, I stated above how – in familiar situation of course – you can say to have read someone’s mind while to read his brain, you would need special imaging techniques like CT scan, MRI, or PET. I also said that the mind, unlike the brain, does need a thought process to operate. And, by devoting two separate chapters for the brain and the mind respectively, I thereby acknowledge that they’re two distinct entities. But, there is something that I would like to point out also: if the mind follows a thought process that depends only on the subject, can an outsider (a person, not a disease) directly influence someone’s mind? (Daniels, 2015) cites the relationship between authority and obedience as an example, stating that “Possibly the most famous psychological experiments of the 20th century, Stanley Milgram’s studies of obedience are still dismaying in their implications. Milgram began them in 1961 in The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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response to the ‘just following orders’ explanations that arose at Adolf Eichmann’s trial. In all, he conducted 20 tests with slightly different conditions, but the basic setup was as follows: Milgram recruited participants to his lab at Yale University, telling them that they were studying the effects of punishment on learning. Each participant was assigned to be the ‘teacher,’ while another the subject, actually a confederate of the experimenter, was the ‘learner.’ In an adjoining room, the learner was wired with electrodes while the teacher was told that every time the learner made a mistake in a word test, the teacher should shock him, increasing the level with each error. The shock levels visible to the teacher had labels ranging from 15 volts (slight) to 450 volts (severe and dangerous). In reality, the electrodes did nothing, but the learners had been told the behave as though they were in intensifying pain. As the experiment proceeded, the learners deliberately made many errors. When the teachers increased the supposed shock level, the learners began to grunt, shout with pain, and at high levels, scream in agony and cry, ‘get me out of here!’ If the teacher refused to administer a shock, a white coated authority figure ordered him to do so with ‘prods’ such as ‘Please continue’ or ‘you have no other choice but to continue.’ Sixty-three percent of the teachers continued to shock the screaming learners right up to the highest level. Milgram was astonished by the results, but over the years, repeated tests with other subjects, have confirmed his numbers. The experimenters found that certain conditions were most likely to prompt obedience: • • • •

When the authority figure was at hand, wore a white coat, and assumed responsibility. When the experiments took place in official-looking surroundings. When the teacher could instruct someone else to press the switches. When the learner was in another room or at a distance.

On the other hand, in some circumstances teachers were much less likely to administer painful shocks: • •

When the teacher had to physically force the learner’s hand onto a shock plate. When other participants were seen refusing to obey.

In those cases, obedience fell to only ten percent.” There is no doubt that mind control is a product of behaviorism. If the Milgram’s experiment was legitimate and made public, other experiments were covert and kept top secret because of their more sensitive implications. “The Cold War hysteria eventually reached the highest levels of the The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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CIA. Convinced that the Soviets were far ahead in the science of brainwashing and unorthodox scientific methods, the CIA embarked upon a variety of classified projects, such as MKULTRA – today declassified – which began in ”1953, to explore bizarre, fringe ideas. (In 1973, as the Watergate scandal spread panic throughout the government, CIA director Richard Helms canceled MKULTRA and hurriedly ordered all documents pertaining to the period destroyed. However, a cache of twenty thousand documents somehow survived the purge and were declassified in 1977 under the Freedom of Information Act, revealing the full scope of this massive effort.) In is now known that, from 1953 to 1973, MULTRA funded 80 institutions including 44 universities and colleges, and scores of hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and prisons, often experimenting on unsuspecting people without their permission, in 150 secret operations. At one point, fully 6 percent of the entire CIA budget went into MKULTRA. Some of these mind-control projects included: • • • • • • •

Developing a ‘truth serum’ so prisoners would spill their secrets. Erasing memories via a U.S. Navy project called ‘Subproject 54’ Using hypnosis and a wide variety of drugs, especially LSD, to control behavior. Investigating the use of mind-control drugs against foreign leaders, e.g. Fidel Castro. Perfecting a variety of interrogation methods against prisoners Developing a knockout drug that was fast working and left no trace. Altering people’s personality via drugs to make them more pliable.

Dr. Kaku goes on to say that although some scientists questioned the validity of these studies (CIA’s), others went along willingly. People from a wide range of disciplines were recruited, including psychics, physicists, and computer scientists, to investigate a variety of unorthodox projects: experimenting with mind-altering drugs such as LSD, asking psychics to locate the position of Soviet submarines patrolling the deep oceans, etc. in one sad incident, a US army scientist was secretly given LSD. According to some reports, he became so violently disoriented that he committed suicide by jumping out of a window … The US Senate was briefed in another secret report that the Soviets were experimenting with beaming microwave radiation directly into the brains of test subjects. Rather than denouncing the act, the United States saw ‘great potential for development into a system for disorienting or disrupting the behavior pattern of military or diplomatic personnel.’ The US Army even claimed that it might be able to beam entire words and speeches into the minds of the enemy: ‘One decoy and deception concept … is to remotely create noise in the heads of personnel by exposing them to low power, pulse microwaves … By proper choice of pulse characteristics, intelligible speech may be created. … Thus, it may be possible to ‘talk’ to selected adversaries in a fashion that would be most disturbing to them,’ the reports said. The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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Unfortunately, none of these experiments was peer-reviewed, so millions of taxpayer dollars were spent on projects like this one, which most likely violated the laws of physics, since the human brain cannot receive microwave radiation and, more important, does not have the ability to decode microwave messages.” However, the future of the study of the mind is promising. It is set to be more and more scientific, evidence-based, and digital. As Dr. Kaku puts it: “As in the movie The Matrix, we might one day be able to download memories and skills using computers. In animal studies, scientists have already been able to insert memories into the brain. Perhaps, it’s only a matter of time before we, too, can insert artificial memories into our brains to learn new subjects, vacation in new places, and master new hobbies. And if technical skills can be downloaded into the minds of workers and scientists, this may even affect the world economy. We might even be able to share these memories as well. One day, scientists might construct an ‘Internet of the mind,’ or a brain-net, where thoughts and emotions are sent electronically around the world. Even dreams will be videotaped and then ‘brain-mailed’ across the Internet. Technology may also give us the power to enhance our intelligence. Progress has been made in understanding the extraordinary powers of ‘savants’ whose mental, artistic, and mathematical abilities are truly astonishing. Furthermore, the genes that separate us from the apes are now being sequenced, giving us an unparalleled glimpse into the evolutionary origins of the brain. Genes have already been isolated in animals that can increase their memory and mental performance.” Mind and memories will still be intricately linked in the quest to understand and explain reality. Memories are what we build on to understand the present and plan for the future. The true source of reality is the past. Imagine someone who not only can’t remember his past but can’t remember what he did or said two minutes ago. Can such a person be said to have a reality? Because we’ll be able to download and upload memories at will, our pasts will always be relevant in the study of our minds. The past will continue to play a significant role in the determination of who we are, and the present will also count in the shaping of the future. Therefore, I adhere to Jung’s position in terms of how our aspirations and ambitions also shape our realities. Also, because of increasing interconnectivity, our individuality, as we know it today, might change in the future. But, for now, in the quest to understand reality, there are hundreds of questions one might ask, and each of them would be answered differently according to the speaker’s reality. Among those questions: what are things and why do they look different from one another? What is life and its origins? What is death? What is superstition? What is space and are we alone in the universe?

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CHAPTER 4 WHAT IS REALITY? A PROPOSED EXPLANATION THROUGH FIVE QUESTIONS There is no standard answer to this question. To me, reality is what I think can affect my life directly or indirectly. Your definition of reality will be just as valid. Most of the time, if not always, when people think of reality, they think about what they can see, smell, taste, hear, or touch. In other words, reality is anything that can be perceived by our senses, they will tell you. There is nothing wrong with this definition either. We saw above how important the senses are2. We are aware of the ‘things’ that surround us thanks to our senses. Reality comes from medieval Latin realitas and from late Latin realis, meaning relating to things. In that regard, way after we experience something (good or bad), it may continue to be part of our existence or our reality. The Oxford Living Dictionaries give the following definitions of reality: 1) The world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them; 2) A thing that is actually experienced or seen, especially when this is grim or problematic; 3) A thing that exists in fact, having previously only existed in one's mind; 4) The quality of being lifelike or resembling an original; 5) The state or quality of having existence or substance; and 6) Existence that is absolute, self-sufficient, or objective, and not subject to human decisions or conventions. From these definitions, we can easily deduce that reality includes whatever is both tangible or intangible, at a spacetime level. But, does what we can observe always represent reality? Say, an archeologist discovered an animal fossil during a search. A priori, he knows it’s a fossil, and it’s an animal fossil. That’s what his eyes tell him. How about the age of the fossil? Is that detectible by any of his senses? I don’t think so. To know the age of the fossil, he would need to perform a test called radiometric dating or radioactive dating, which is a method used to determine the age of an object thanks the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. Radiocarbon or 14C is formed when cosmic rays interact with atmospheric nitrogen. The resulting element combines with atmospheric oxygen to form what is called radioactive carbon dioxide, which spreads in the atmosphere onto plants and animals during their lifetime. All exchange stops after a plant or an animal dies, then, making it possible to calculate their age. Radio carbon dating allows to go back only 50,000 years, while Uranium-thorium dating and Uranium–lead dating allow to go back 75,000 and 4.5 billion years (the age of planet Earth) respectively. According to the department of geosciences of the university of Arizona, “Uranium-Thorium dating is based on the detection by mass spectrometry of both the parent (234U) and daughter (230Th) products of decay, through the emission of an alpha particle. The decay of Uranium 234 to Thorium 230 is part of the much longer decay series beginning in 238U and ending in 206Pb. For Uranium-Thorium dating, the initial ratio of 230Th/234U at the time of sample formation must be known or calculated. With time, Thorium 230 accumulates in the sample through radiometric decay. The sample age is based For example, although we can’t see faraway galaxies and microbes with the naked eye, we still need to use our eyes to look into the telescope or the microscope. 2


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A Proposed Explanation Through Five Questions

on the difference between the initial ratio of 230Th/234U and the one in the sample being dated. The method assumes that the sample does not exchange 230Th or 234U with the environment (i.e., that it is a closed system.) The method is used for samples that can retain Uranium and Thorium, such as carbonate sediments, bones and teeth. Ages between 1000 and 300,000 years have been reported.” “Uranium-thorium-lead dating, also called Common-lead Dating, is a method of establishing the time of origin of a rock by means of the amount of common lead it contains; common lead is any lead from a rock or mineral that contains a large amount of lead and a small amount of the radioactive progenitors of lead—i.e., the uranium isotopes uranium-235 and uranium-238 and the thorium isotope thorium-232 ... The important characteristic of common lead is that it contains no significant proportion of radiogenic lead accumulated since the time that the mineral or rock phase was formed. Of the four isotopes of lead, two are formed from the uranium isotopes and one is formed from the thorium isotope; only lead-204 is not known to have any long-lived radioactive progenitor. Primordial lead is thought to have been formed by stellar nuclear reactions, released to space by supernovae explosions, and incorporated within the dust cloud that constituted the primordial solar system; the troilite (iron sulfide) phase of iron meteorites contains lead that approximates the primordial composition. The lead incorporated within the Earth has been evolving continuously from primordial lead and from the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium isotopes. Thus, the lead isotopic composition of any mineral or rock depends upon its age and the environment from which it was formed; that is, it would depend upon the ratio of uranium plus thorium to lead in the parent material.” (Britannica, 2018). Thus, seeing a fossil is one reality, but knowing its age is another that the eyes can’t see but only scientific methods can reveal. “Our inability to comprehend the true nature of life shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering our DNA differs from apes and monkeys by less than 2 percent. We primates — whether scientist or macaque — have significant cognitive limitations. Like a mouse or a gerbil, we open our eyes and the world − as if by magic — is just there. We think it’s a thing, a hard object. But this is inconsistent with hundreds of experiments carried out in the last century. Reality is observerdetermined — it’s a spatio-temporal process, which fortunately, means that things must change. Could you imagine always and forever being a toddler? Diapers and lollipops would grow tiresome. Or forever being a senior? The laws of nature are structured so that we grow and change and get to experience the full spectrum of biological existence. That part of the equation is easy to understand: First we experience life as children, then as middle-aged adults, and finally, as senior citizens. But we can’t connect the dots beyond that. You’re a shoe-maker for a few years and then it’s into the void of nothingness forever. Stephen Hawking summed this viewpoint up quite accurately: ‘I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers.’ This is the limit of our primate


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comprehension. Still, at some point, virtually everyone has wondered: ‘Is this all we are, is there nothing more?’” (Lanza, 2011) I’m a big fan of science fiction, space, galaxies, multiverses, you name it. A hot item on my bucket list is to be able to travel on a spaceship for a long time with many people of different races, watching children grow up, people grow their own food, go to school, work, evolve, and become self-reliant while traveling together in space. That sounds more like a utopia isn’t it? It probably is if you consider that the reality is Mankind has not yet mastered the required technology to make it happen in my lifetime. Now, if I ask you: is the realization of my dream possible, say right now? Your answer would be that I answered my own question by stating previously that the technology isn’t there yet. While I can agree with you, the reality is: yes, it’s possible, and it’s been happening for 4.5 billion years, of which 200,000 years since the advent of our species. When I put things in perspective, I can honestly say to myself that such a man-made spaceship is just sour grapes, and why should I dream about a reality that has always existed and that is older than mankind? How is that possible? When you think of it, we are all already living that reality. Planet Earth is a spaceship. All of us are traveling in space at a whopping 1,000 miles per hour. For 200,000 years we, as a species, have never awakened in the same spot in space. Our planet is highly diversified in terms of species and races. Children grow up, we grow our own food, we go to school, we work, we evolve, and become self-reliant. It’s a reality that we’re not aware of because we don’t put things in perspective. This is another example of how reality may exist without our being able to detect it with our senses. Besides scientific methods, putting things in perspective may also reveal realities that are hidden in plain sight. While reality incorporates what we can see and what we cannot see, it’s probably the most abstract concept that exists. Why? Because ultimately no two people see and interpret reality the same way. Here, I mean what everyone can experience with their senses. When it comes to the metaphysical part of reality, it gets even more complicated. The metaphysical reality includes what’s out there to know (ontology) and how we get to know it (epistemology). Imagine the inquisitiveness of a two-year old. Trying to make sense of his surrounding, he bombards his parents with the same question time and time again: “what’s this?” or “what’s that?” As adults, we perpetuate the tendency. We are still puzzled by natural and metaphysical phenomena alike. Chances are you won’t be alone if you ask yourself one or more of the following questions: what are things and why do they look different from one another? What is life and its origins? What is death? What is superstition? What is space and are we alone in the universe? Amidst all these questions, there is one that might emerge and would be perfectly appropriate to ask: is reality real? Answering this question requires one to be cautious for to perceive reality and make sense of it thanks to your mind, you need a brain, and you better be alive for your brain to function. Animals don’t have any issue when it comes to reality because they are born with a built-in understanding of their environments, whereas we, humans, learn as we grow, develop, and change until the day we die. The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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In a nutshell, our reality is dependent upon three things: our senses, our mind, and our brain, which can map out the world independently of our will. Humans’ understanding and definition of reality stem, for the most part, from asking questions and trying to suggest the possible answers. What are those questions? Is there a comprehensive list of them? The quickest and simplest answer is: those questions are, or have the potential to be, as numerous as the stars in our galaxy, and no, there is no such list for new questions emerge as we, along with our environment, evolve. However, I would like to propose some answers to the above-mentioned questions that we, as adults, might still be asking ourselves just to make sense of our immediate environment.

Question No. 1: What are things and why do they look different from one another? This is a question we’ve been asking ever since we became aware of our surrounding or somewhere around age two to three years old. While children ask their parents several questions a day regarding the things that pique their curiosity, adults tend to rather question themselves, wonder. What are things? Why do they look different from one another? I myself wonder sometimes if things would have looked different if planet Earth was reborn. Our world is made up of things that are highly diversified, which makes for a diversified environment. Answering this two-part question properly requires us to consider chemistry. No, my goal is not to give you a course in chemistry here, as I don’t have a background in chemistry anyway. But, building upon what I learned from my chemistry classes back in the day, I thought that I could use my limited knowledge to at least try to make my point, meaning lay out my general view on the nature of the things that make up our environment and explain, in the process, why they look different from one another. For starters, there are four main categories of elements within our planet: water, fire, air, and earth. Each sub elements belongs to one of them. Both living and non-living organisms are surrounded by them. For example, the three kingdoms – animal, plant, and mineral – can be found both above and below the surface of earth and also in water. There are also living and non-living organisms in the air. Fire is represented not only by solar rays but also by the intense energy produced by our very planet deep at its core. Volcanic eruptions, for example, produce fire. All the four elements play a crucial role in the survival and maintenance of our planet. The sciences that explain the nature of things abound. Among them: zoology, biology, botany, and chemistry. But, to explain why things are different from one another, the field that seems the most appropriate is chemistry. Chemistry can help a great deal in the quest to find out the nature of things, their similarities and their differences. What is chemistry anyway? It’s the science that considers the composition, structure, and properties of substances and with the transformations that they undergo. But wait! What’s a substance? It’s any material with definite chemical composition. Now, the question is: is The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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Question No. 1: What Are Things and Why Do They Look Different from One Another?

everything we can see or observe a substance or has chemical composition? No. Only matter has chemical composition. Matter is everything that has mass and occupies space. Matter is made up of particles, which may be molecules, atoms, or subatomic bits, such as protons, electrons, or leptons. Examples of substances (e.g. having chemical composition) include, but are not limited to: gases, liquids, solids, plasma, diamond, a shoe, apple, cheese, cucumber, etc. We are also surrounded by things that are not chemicals such as heat, kinetic energy, gravity, potential energy, ultraviolet light, and thoughts. Now that we are clear on chemicals and non-chemicals, let’s consider a substance, a thing, or a material. It could be anything. What follows holds true for anything with mass. Let’s consider a rock for example. If you cut it in half, do both halves have the same chemical properties as the original whole? The answer is yes. If you keep cutting each new half into half, the new half will still retain the chemical properties of the original rock. How about the tiniest portion obtained when you can’t cut anymore? The answer is still yes, and this tiniest portion is called atom. What is atom? To understand, let’s go back in time. The ancient civilizations of China, India, and Greece spoke with one voice when it came to the composition of matter. They all agreed that all matters are made from four elements: water, fire, air, and earth. The dissenting voice was that of an ancient Greek named Democritus. He was the one to think that if you keep cutting something, you will get to a point where you would not be able to cut anymore. He called that uncuttable portion atom, which derives from Greek ‘a’ = without, un, non, not, and ‘tomos’ = cut. The word atomic just means something too small to cut or to divide into smaller portions. The proper or scientific definition of an atom is: the smallest unit into which matter can be divided and still retain the characteristic properties of an element. Think of an atom as a cell of a living organism, which is defined as the basic structural, functional and biological unit of all known living organisms. We know now what a substance or matter is. We also know what atom is. I said that the atom retains the characteristics of an element. What’s an element? Any substance that consists of just one kind of atom is an element and is called in that case a pure substance. Oxygen, hydrogen, copper, iron, sodium, chlorine, carbon, gold, nitrogen, mercury, sulfur and potassium (to name a few) are all elements. Elements are abundant on Earth, but some, such as molybdenum are rare. Examples of metals that are elements include, but are not limited to gold, aluminum, nickel, and titanium. Gases may also be elements. For example, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and fluorine are elements. If a substance is not pure, meaning it does not have a specific kind of atom, it’s called a compound. Compounds have two or more atoms combined a certain way. When we look around us, most of what we see are compounds. The combinations of different atoms are called molecules. Water, for example, has two molecules of hydrogen and one molecule of oxygen. Its chemical formula is: H2O. It only has three atoms, which makes it a simple molecule. But, not all molecules are simple. In fact, most molecules are complex, meaning they have hundreds, thousands, even trillion of atoms that are arranged in a particular way. The The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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molecules that compose our body are complex. It’s important to keep in mind that the number of atoms and the way they are arranged determined the characteristics of each substance. With that, we can already see why things look different from one another. It is because they have different number of atoms which are arranged differently. But, the explanation doesn’t stop here. To further our understanding of the nature of things and why they are different from each other, let’s go on. Most of everything on Earth contain carbon and are called organic compounds. Organic compounds are held together by covalent bonds (strong bonds). Inorganic compounds do not contain carbon (exceptions include CO and CO2) and are usually small molecules. Examples of inorganic compounds include: ammonia, aluminum sulfate, barium chloride, bismuth of oxychloride, cacodylic acid, chloric acid, gallium nitride, etc., really just to name a few because there are hundreds of them. So, we are surrounded by carbon. We are carbon. Both living and nonliving substances (see definition of substance above) have carbon. The difference is most nonliving substances are made up of crystals. A crystal is a solid that is composed of atoms arranged in an orderly pattern. For example, metals and rocks consist of crystals, as do snowflakes, salt, and sugar. Diamond’s crystals are not arranged the same way as snowflakes’ crystals nor salt and sugar’s crystals and are not in the same number either. No matter where a diamond is extracted, it will always have the same number of atoms and the same atom configuration. Think of the single and the double files we used to make in school. Think of the different patterns formed by humans during a parade, a celebration, or any kind of show. In the case of inorganic substances, the patterns of the atoms occur naturally, without the weeks of training. Contrary to popular belief, crystals are not always transparent and beautiful objects. A hunk of nickel, for example, is nothing but a pack of small crystals whose trillions of atoms are set in a fixed pattern. Asked to name some crystals, people tend to name diamond, ruby, emerald, etc. forgetting that gold, copper, lead, aluminum are also crystals. They just have atoms arranged differently than those of precious stones. And that’s why they look different from diamond or ruby. Crystals are, without a doubt, solid and are called substances. Remember I also cited above gas, liquid, and plasma as examples of substances? The difference between a crystal (solid) and a gas lies within the behavior of their molecules. If a crystal’s atoms behave like they are in a parade, gas’ molecules do not stick together, they move freely throughout the space made available to them. They travel in a straight line, and when they hit something, they bounce off, again in a straight line. The molecules also move at high speed. That’s why if you a gas in an unsealed container, it will escape even if the container is not full, as opposed to a solid or a liquid. Gases can be compressed, and the force used to do so is called pressure. By the way, it is easier to compress a gas than a liquid or a solid. It’s just because the molecules of the gas are spread far apart from each other and are always moving, as opposed to those of a solid that do not move past one another and are held together by strong molecular forces, or those of a liquid that move past by each other but less rapidly than gas molecules and still stay closer to one another. Say you put The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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a liquid in a tank, it will take the shape of the tank, but will not go pass its original line. If you put the same volume of gas in the same tank, it will also take the shape of the tank but will eventually pass it original line, fill up the tank, and escape. The molecules of the matters do not move at the same speed and are held together by forces different in strength. A solid will not try to take the shape of the tank. It will retain its own shape. It’s important to note that some liquids are viscous, so viscous that they behave pretty much like solids, though they don’t necessarily have the characteristics of solids. For example, cornstarch mixed with water, and quicksand. On the other hand, some solids are also viscous and can be confused with liquids. For example, crude petroleum, located below the surface of the earth, is basically a rock containing crystals. Petroleum comes from Greek ‘petra’ = rock and from Latin ‘oleum’ = oil. Another example of rock located below Earth’s surface that’s not quite solid is molten rock, also called liquid rock or magma, which, after it reaches Earth’s surface, is called lava. We all know about liquid crystals, for example liquid crystal displays or LCDs used for years in things like calculators, cellphones, and digital watches. In liquid crystals, the atoms or molecules move freely and randomly, as opposed to ordinary crystals. We’ve seen the main differences between solids, liquids, and gases in terms of number of atoms, their configuration, and their movement. But let’s go back to the atom one more time. Democritus thought of an atom as uncuttable. Today, we can say that he was right when it comes to the remaining particle that still retains the characteristics of the original element after you cut the latter into an infinite number of halves. But, we also know that the atom can be cut, and its composition analyzed. The thing is, what you obtain when you cut an atom cannot be said of having the same characteristics as the original element. Thus, in a sense, Democritus was right, except that he thought the atom was the last stage. So, besides of being present in different numbers and behaving differently for different substances, what are atoms made of?


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I said previously that our senses, our brain, and our mind are crucial in our perception of reality. But none of those allow us to see an atom or say what things are made of in their very core. Of course, we have seen how chemistry is inescapable in our quest to understand the nature of things and why they look different from each other. But, sometimes, we need to look deeper. When something is not readily observable, it is necessary to use what is called a model. But, first, what’s inside an atom? Again, let’s go back to our high school chemistry classes. By and large, an atom is comprised of particles called subatomic particles: a nucleus surrounded by moving electrons charged negatively. Inside the nucleus are 1) protons that have a positive charge The atom and its subatomic particles equal in magnitude to the electrons’ negative charge, and 2) neutrons with no charge. Further in the series, I will come back to the atom in subsequent publications and get into more details, but let’s see, for now, how a model, besides chemistry, is helpful in the description and the composition of things or substances. What’s a model? A model or scientific model is a method used in science when scientists are unable to observe something directly. That’s why it’s called scientific model or scientific method. It allows scientists to know what something or a phenomenon might be like. Of course, before scientists come to any conclusion, the model has to be tested. A model is deemed successful when its predictions turn out to be true. Models involve many experiments by trial and error until the expected result is achieved. Applied to the atom3, which every substance contains, one of the most popular models is arguably that envisioned by Danish physicist Niels Bohr and that is based on the solar system. It is called the solar system model or the Rutherford-Bohr model, named also for Ernest Rutherford who discovered the nucleus of the atom, where all of its mass is concentrated. Niels Bohr perfected Rutherford’s model4, which explains the hyphenated name of the model. In essence, the model compares the subatomic particles – electrons, protons, and neutrons – to the solar system where the Sun is the nucleus and is positively charged, and the planets orbiting the Sun are the electrons and are negatively charged. The Sun, having a heavier mass and a more powerful gravitational force, attracts the planets continuously in its orbit. The interesting fact about John Dalton (1766 – 1844) – English chemist, physicist, and meteorologist – is credited for the modern atomic theory. 4 Rutherford’s model had two flaws. He posited that: 1) each individual atom should produce a continuous line spectrum, and 2) electrons orbit the nucleus in a circular fashion. 3


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this model is that it successfully proved that the distance between each nucleus is, in fact, very significant. Therefore, when I explained earlier that solids have atoms that are packed together, we have to put things in perspective. That doesn’t mean there is no distance between the atoms. If that was the case, some solids, called transparent solids – such as glass, plastic, etc. – wouldn’t be able to be traversed by light. In the world of smalls, the distance between two atoms can be compared to something like 15 kilometers in real world measurement. To recapitulate, our world is made up of things called matter, materials or substances that have mass and occupy space, and therefore have atoms. Some things, like rocks, water, fruits are visible, some, like energy, are not. Things look different to us because they each have different number of atoms that are arranged differently in every case. Besides atoms, most things contain carbon. Those that do are called organic compounds. Those that don’t are called inorganic compounds, except, of course, CO and CO2. Atom was first studied thanks to what is called a scientific model, which allows scientists to speculate about how stuff or phenomena can be virtually explained. But, humans, unlike animals, don’t just live day in and day out until we die. Besides wondering about our immediate material world, we also wonder about life, death, natural phenomena, and it’s been like that since the advent of our species on planet Earth. Both living and non-living things have atoms, but what is the fundamental differences between them? How did we come to be? What is life and its origins?

Question No. 2: What is life and its origins? In our quest to understand reality, “what is life and its origins?” is, I think, one of the questions we constantly ask ourselves during the course of our lives. After looking around us, observing animals, non-living things, and natural phenomena, it is highly likely to wonder where the heck do we come from and what is our purpose in this world? Because I’ve been asking myself the same questions all my adult life, I can’t guarantee that my explanations are final. To be honest, every time these questions cross my mind, I always say to myself: “I wish I knew for sure.” In fact, no one can claim to know for sure. To this day, all the theories about life and its origins are hypothetical. While some of them make sense, others belong outright to the realm of pseudoscience. Among these theories, there are two that I like: the biogenesis theory of the advent of life and the abiogenesis theory of the advent of life on our planet. According to the biogenesis theory, life can only come from life itself, meaning living organisms had to originate only from other living organisms. On the hand, the abiogenesis theory stipulates that life may have also come from non-living substances. This theory shows how life can come from chemistry, for example, meaning chemical reactions can eventually yield to living organisms. I will talk about these two theories later. But, before, I would like to go back in time and consider the evolution of our planet or the three-age system in terms of the advent of life. Here, the three-age system is not to be The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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Question No. 2: What is Life and Its Origins?

confused with the three-age system in terms of tool-making technologies (stone age, bronze age, and iron age, which are not the focus of our discussion). In a nutshell, the Three-age system of human history in terms of the advent of life includes: 1) the Paleozoic Era, meaning ‘ancient life’ is the first of three eras that form a part of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Permian period lasted from 299 to 251 million years ago and was the last period of the Paleozoic Era. The distinction between the Paleozoic and the Mesozoic is made at the end of the Permian in recognition of the largest mass extinction recorded in the history of life on Earth. It's characterized by the system of rocks deposited during it and also by the advent of fish and insects. 2) the Mesozoic era, which means ‘middle life’ and is the second period of phanerozoic eon. It was the Age of Reptiles or the age of the Dinosaurs. 3) the Cenozoic era, which means ‘new life’ and is known as the Age of Mammals. It is the era in which we now live and is the third period of the phanerozoic eon. So, this is it. Mammals, which we are as a species, appeared during the last age or the age of new life. But, the understanding of life, in general is not limited to human life. It’s the origin of life in terms of all living organisms. Therefore, we need to also look at the second age – the Mesozoic era – or middle life when reptiles and dinosaurs appeared on the planet. My favorite theories, biogenesis and abiogenesis theories of life, have to do rather with the origins of life. But, to understand life itself, we need to look at some of its characteristics. First, the question ‘what is life?’ always includes the underlying question: what’s the origin of life? It’s a question that requires a multipart answer. Before elaborating on the question, let me define life. That is, what does the word mean? We speak of life whenever something has cells (or cell if it’s unicellular), uses energy, develops and grows, reacts and adapts to the environment, and reproduces. NASA defines life as “a self-sustained chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution.” There are some problems with this definition. First, it implies individual life form such as a human being, a zebra, or a bacterium. We all know that life forms, when taken individually cannot undergo Darwinian evolution – defined as the survival of the fittest – and only their population can, as a group. Ok, let’s say that we decide to ignore that aspect of NASA’s definition of life. The second problem is that some species not only cannot reproduce, but their population cannot undergo Darwinian evolution either. As we saw above, mules (interbreedings of donkeys and mare) cannot reproduce, thus, cannot undergo Darwinian evolution. Gray crocodiles are turning orange in the African country of Gabon. Scientists believe it’s because of evolution. If these gray crocodiles were a sterile interbreeding species, that wouldn’t have never happened. Now, what is life, really? To these biological or physiological definitions of life, we may add that life is also the existence of an individual human being or animal, like in the sentence “He spent his entire life wondering The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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what life is”. Because in most cases life has a duration, it is important to describe its characteristics or its nature. And the moment you go beyond the physiological aspect of life, you fall into its philosophical or metaphysical aspect. That’s where it can get really tricky and confusing for some but simple for others, like William Shakespeare who describes life as a big stage where we all have a part (or multiple parts) to play and depart once we’re done: “All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” However, the characteristics of life and its purpose are two different things, likely to be construed differently by different people. The nature of life has to do with biology, while its purpose is rather philosophical. Sometimes, nature and purpose are used interchangeably to explain life. When we wonder what life is, we are more interested in knowing its purpose. Even biologically, life isn’t so The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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easy to define because of its complexity. “Aristotle made the first attempt at a definition, describing life as something that grows, maintains itself and reproduces. But this definition would exclude mules, which are sterile, while including things like fire. Calling life something that has a metabolism, the ability to take in energy to grow or move and excrete waste, is no good either; cars do this, for example. In 1944, the physicist Erwin Schrödinger gave life a definition based on the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the entropy, or disorder, of a closed system increases over time. Schrödinger defined life as something that decreases or maintains its entropy. Yet this definition fails because it includes crystals, which resist entropy by forming highly structured lattices. Trying to define life by its qualities is the wrong approach, Cleland said. As an example, she cites scientists' early attempts to define water in terms of properties like being wet, transparent and a good solvent. ‘We didn't 'define' water as H2O, but rather discovered, in the context of molecular theory, that it is a chemical substance composed mostly of H2O molecules,’ Cleland said. Life on Earth is typically divided into two main groups: the cellular life forms, which include archaea, bacteria and eukarya (all the plants and animals), and non-cellular life forms, like viruses. Whether viruses, which can replicate only inside the cells of a host organism, count as ‘life’ is debated.” (Lewis, 2013)

a. The meaning of life In terms of purpose or meaning of life, one question usually follows the previous one and so on. “The question of the meaning of life is one that interests philosophers and non-philosophers alike. The question itself is notoriously ambiguous and possibly vague. In asking about the meaning of life, one may be asking about the essence of life, about life's purpose, about whether and how anything matters, or a host of other things. The most familiar form of the question(s) about the meaning of life is simply, ‘What is the meaning of life?’ Although the form of the question is one, when it is asked, any one (or more) of several different senses may be intended. Here are some of the more common of them: 1. In some cases, what the seeker seeks is the kernel, the inner reality, the core, or the essence, underlying some phenomenon. Thus, one might ask what his essence, his true self is, and then feel that he has found the meaning of his life if he discovers that true self. 2. In other cases, the question is about the point, aim, object, purpose, end, or goal of life, typically one's own. Here, in some cases, the question is about some pre-existing purpose that the questioner might (or might not) discover; in other cases, the question might be about some end or purpose the agent might invent or create and give her life. The latter questioner, when she is successful, may believe that her life has a meaning because she herself has given it one. 3. In yet other cases, the question of the meaning of life is that of whether our lives, and anything we do within them, matter, or have any sort of importance. If one can show that The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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they matter, and in virtue of what they do, one will have provided a substantive answer to the question of the meaning of life. A common, but not universal, assumption on this score is that our lives have significance and importance only if they issue in some lasting achievement the ravages that time will not destroy. 4. In still other cases, what bothers the questioner is the discord, plurality, and chaotic nature of his apparent empirical life as it is actually lived. He can make no sense of it; there is no rhyme or reason to it. The drive here, one might well think, is to see one's life as intelligible, as something that makes sense. The discovery or invention of some kind of unity in his life would amount to an answer to his question, ‘What is the meaning of life?’ 5. Yet another thing the question about the meaning of life can be is a request for a narrative or picture, a way of seeing life (perhaps a metaphorical one) that enables one to make sense of it and achieve a sense of meaning while living it. And so, we get ‘Life is a bowl of cherries’ and various and sundry religious narratives. 6. Sometimes what the questioner is really wondering is whether it makes sense to go on and his question is "Is life worth living?" He may actually be contemplating suicide. His predicament has to do with meaning if he is assuming that it makes sense to continue living only if (his) life has a suitable meaning, something which, at the moment, he can't see it as having. 7. Finally, the question of the meaning of life can be the question of how one should live in order to have a meaningful life, or, if such a life is impossible, then what the best way to live meaninglessly is.” (O’Brien, 2018) Life has different meanings or purposes for different people. However, it’s possible that someone is unable to give you a precise answer should you ask him: what does life represent for you? When it comes to define life in terms of meaning and purpose, philosophers seem to have the upper hand. How do they see life then?

i. Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) He had a teleogical view of life. Teleology is the explanation of phenomena by the purpose they serve rather than by postulated causes. Teleology is derived from two Greek words: telos (end, goal, purpose) and logos (reason, explanation). “Simply put, Aristotle saw in the process by which life is generated and maintained one that indicates them to be goal directed. Every aspect of reproduction and embryonic development, for example, exemplifies that purposeful and goal directed character. Given that purpose was so clearly associated with such a wide variety of material forms (though all examples came from the biological world), it only seemed logical to conclude that an underlying purpose was associated with all material forms, biological and nonbiological. Aristotle’s famous Final Cause). Indeed, that is the essence of Aristotle’ teleological view – that there is an underlying purpose to the workings of nature, that purpose governs the cosmos as a whole. Given the bountiful biological evidence for Aristotle’s teleological argument,


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in retrospect it’s quite understandable that teleological thinking held up largely uncontested for over two millennia.” (Pross, 2012)

ii. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860) To him, life is tantamount to will, which is a mental force deployed when fighting for survival and which has its roots in the pattern of our rationale, be it conscious or unconscious. An example is stage-four cancer patients who embrace positive thinking and are convinced they still can fight the disease if they have they will to do it or the will to stay alive. The will to live is influenced by existential, psychological, social, and physical sources of distress as well as hope. For example, people who experienced near-death experience alleged that they came back to life because of an inner will to survive and not wanting to die. Sometimes, that will to live is likened to the will to die in people who commit suicide. Schopenhauer also saw life as misery and suffering5. He was a pessimist who saw life as meaningless. In his essay The Vanity of Existence he claims that our lives have no absolute value. He said, “Human life must be some kind of mistake” because our lives consist of dissatisfaction and boredom. If we do not achieve our goals we become dissatisfied, and if we achieve our goals we become bored. We spend our lives wanting more and more things. The meaningless of life is translated into both dissatisfaction and boredom. Although the will to live is there, it’s powerless when it comes to the way we lead our lives. Schopenhauer is a disappointment for those who seek a purpose in life. Nobody counted before he was born. So, he won’t count either after he’s gone.

iii. Soren Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855) According to him, life passes through three stages before becoming a true self: The Aesthetic, the Ethical, and the Religious. These stages are conflicting and clash against each other. First, the aesthetic is based on sensory experience and pleasures. One cannot live to the fullest if pleasures are absent from the picture. The way to do it is to anticipate an event before it happens by imagining a positive outcome. But, because pleasure is temporary, the aesthetic is an immature stage. Also, because the aesthete acts according to his best interest, it becomes difficult for him to please someone else. On the other hand, ethics come from the outside. It’s a body of norms that must be followed to live and to be accepted by a society. Social norms may impede pleasures. He takes for example marriage, which is ethical and a beautiful thing but that can quickly turn sour. This is a case where the ethical hinders the aesthetic. Before that, one may not be able to explore the self. The inability to explore oneself may lead to a conflict with faith or a proper religious life. Finally, 5

Another poet-philosopher who saw life as pain and suffering was Louise-Victorine Ackermann. To find out more on her views, please refer to my essay: “Philosophical Essay on the Works of Louise-Victorine Ackermann” The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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“Kierkegaard considers the religious life to be the highest plane of existence. He also believes that almost no one lives a truly religious life. He is concerned with how to be “a Christian in Christendom”—in other words, how to lead an authentically religious life while surrounded by people who are falsely religious. For Kierkegaard, the relationship with God is exclusively personal, and he believed the large-scale religion of the church (i.e., Christendom) distracts people from that personal relationship. Kierkegaard passionately criticized the Christian Church for what he saw as its interference in the personal spiritual quest each true Christian must undertake. In the aesthetic life, one is ruled by passion. In the ethical life, one is ruled by societal regulations. In the religious life, one is ruled by total faith in God. One can never be truly free, and this causes boredom, anxiety, and despair. True faith doesn’t lead to freedom, but it relieves the psychological effects of human existence. Kierkegaard claims that the only way to make life worthwhile is to embrace faith in God, and that faith necessarily involves embracing the absurd.”

iv. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) His views on life were the opposite of Schopenhauer's views. He didn't believe that life is all about suffering and pain. He looked at the positive and ascendant side of life instead. He thinks that the meaning of life is entirely up to the individual, his reason, and aspirations. According to Nietzsche, suffering and failure have to be welcome by anyone seeking happiness. We should regard them as tough challenges that need to be overcome like a mountaineer climbing a mountain. Having reversals in life is an advantage. It's good to note that Nietzsche had a very poor health. He wrote: “That which does not kill me makes me stronger ... Not everything which makes us suffer is bad for us; the same way not everything that makes us feel good is necessarily actually good for us ... To regard extremes of suffering as an evil or as something to be abolished is supreme idiocy … You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”

v. Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910) He was serious about finding the meaning of life. His question: “What is the meaning of life” was followed by many other questions such as: What is it for? What does it lead to? Why? What then? What for? But what does it matter to me? What of it? Why go on making any effort? How go on living? What will come of what I am doing today or shall do tomorrow? What will come of my whole life? Why should I live, why wish for anything, or do anything? Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy? What am I, with my desires? Why do I live? What must I do? What is the meaning of my life? Why do I exist? “Tolstoy said explicitly that his question was not about the composition, origin, and fate of the universe, nor again about the question, ‘What is the life of the whole?’ That question, Tolstoy said, is unanswerable for a The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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single man, and it is ‘stupidity’ to think an individual must first answer the question about the meaning of the universe or the whole of humanity before he can answer the question of the meaning of his own life.” Tolstoy was focused on the meaning of life for the simple reason that no matter what we do, we’ll be disappointed, suffer, and eventually die. He thought that the answer to these questions lie with faith or God, a view similar to that of Kierkegaard.

vi. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 - 1980) His views on life were based on existentialism, a view that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will. His philosophy revolved around three slogans: 1) Existence: Existence precedes essence (Fundamental ontology): Essence in this case refers to the ancient philosophical idea (most closely associated with Plato) that all things have a predefined, ideal set of characteristics. For instance, the Essence of a chair (entelechy) is that it has four legs, a back, and people sit on it. However, not everything matches its Essence. You might have a chair with three legs, or a broken back, or that no one sits on. The actual details of a particular chair make up its Existence. The idea that Existence precedes Essence is that –for human beings –there is no predefined pattern that we must fit into. We live our lives, and that in turn defines what we truly are, not any idealized set of characteristics. Who we are (our essence) emerges as we live our lives (our existence). It doesn't go the other way around. The kind of person you are doesn't define your life, but, rather, your life defines the kind of person you are. If you take a painting, the canvas exists before anything a painter might put on it. In that regard, one can say that the essence of man stems from some sort of situationism or transformism that can only occur according to the direction(s) he gives to his life or his existence. This idea is the heart of Sartre’s version of Existentialism. The implications are that we must create our own meaning, place our own value on our acts, and that our individual freedom is absolute and unbounded. 2) Responsibility: Each man is responsible for all men (ethical consequences). 3) Freedom: Man is condemned to be free (our emotional experience of the human condition): “...That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does. The existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never regard a grand passion as a destructive torrent upon which a man is swept into certain actions as by fate, and which, therefore, is an excuse for them. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion....”


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vii. William James (1842 - 1910) (Wendell, 2018) reports that “In ‘Is Life Worth Living?’ (1895), James reveals deep, probably firstperson, familiarity, with the existential source of concern with the issues of the meaning and worthwhileness of life. He calls it the ‘profounder bass-note of life’ and suggests that it is to be found, or heard, somewhere in all of us: ‘In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.’ (1895: 32). Some people are so naturally optimistic and in love with life that they are constitutionally incapable of being much bothered by the bassnote and pay it little attention. James's example of such a person is Walt Whitman; and one thinks of the English. James finds no fault – intellectual, moral, or otherwise – with such people. It is rare good fortune to be blessed with such a temperament. If everyone were, the question of the worthwhileness of life would never arise … In ‘What Makes a Life Significant’ (1899), James expressly addressed the question of the significance or meaning of life. What he said in this essay was rather different from what he had said in the previous one. The essay was in part a response to the deification of the uneducated, hard-working peasants in Tolstoy's Confession. James admired Tolstoy a great deal but felt he went a bit overboard in his praise of peasant life and in his tendency to identify it as the very locus of meaning. James held that the lives of Tolstoy's peasants were full of one ingredient necessary for a meaningful life – toil, struggle, pluck, will, suffering, manly virtues – but that they lacked the other necessary ingredient for a fully meaningful life, namely, what James called ‘ideals.’ … The solid meaning of life is always the same eternal thing, (the marriage, namely, of some unhabitual ideal, however special, with some fidelity, courage, and endurance; with some man's or woman's pains). And, whatever or wherever life may be, there will always be the chance for that marriage to take place. (1899: 878)”

viii. Sir Alfred Jules "Freddie" Ayer (1910-1989) He was a logical positivist philosopher who had a very different approach to the meaning of life. “Ayer argued, in an important 1947 paper, that ‘there is no sense in asking what the ultimate purpose of our existence is, or what is the real meaning of life’ (Ayer 1947: 201). His argument is that there is no reason to believe in anything like a God who created us and intended us for a specific purpose. And even if there were such a God, his purposes could not give life meaning unless we agreed with them and accepted them. Thus, the meaning of life always comes back to what we as individuals purpose, value, and aim at. There is no meaning out there to be discovered. Ayer insists that the meaninglessness of life is nothing to cry about. One's life has whatever meaning one gives it. It just doesn't make sense to ask about the meaning of life because there is not, and could not be, such a thing. The question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ is illogical and unanswerable. But a person can give his life a meaning, and if he does, it will be meaningful to The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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him. It will come down to the value judgments the person makes. And these are a matter of personal choice and preference. There is no sense in saying that one person's value judgments are true and another's false. Give your life a meaning, and that's the meaning it will have.” Now, let me say this: if there is one thing we can all agree on, it’s the fact that the question: “what is the meaning of life?” can lead to many answers and approaches. Each person views life differently. That’s understandable since we all have different experiences. Life marks us differently, and life experiences are inalienable. They cannot be swapped among people. You are a sum of your experiences and aspirations coupled with a unique genetic makeup like I am a sum of my experiences and aspirations coupled with a unique genetic makeup. The above-mentioned philosophers may not be judged for their views. Because they were living in a period different from ours, and “the proper measure of a philosophical system is not the degree to which it anticipated modern thought, but its degree of success in treating the philosophical problems of its own day.” Their views could have probably been different if they were our contemporaries. I think, however, that some of these views are timeless because they take into account the intrinsic nature of our species: propensity to change and evolve because we live in a dynamic environment. From Shakespeare to Ayer, there is a recurrent underlying theme in the quest to understand the meaning of life: we all have a mission: live our lives by keeping in mind that we can’t be at the helm of it all the time because our existence depends on other people’s existence and that we all came into this world with an expiration date. “ We came into this world! ” But, How? When? Why? These questions are usually asked when it comes to discover the origins of life. Normally, people tend to be more concerned with the meaning of life than its origins. That makes sense if you think about it. Since we have a life to lead, we better focus it instead of on its origins. I would say that the present bears more weight than the past, to put it simply. However, the origins of life are of equal importance because its understanding may help us better understand our environment.

b. The origins of life Many times, I’ve heard people suggest that the human species suffer from collective amnesia because we forgot how we got here. Trying to find out how life emerged is yet another inherent characteristic of what makes us humans. We are the only species who cares about its origins and why it looks this way. The same way defining the true purpose, or the meaning of life got philosophers speculate, coming up with the right theory of the emergence of life on the planet is still one of the greatest challenges of biology and chemistry. The building blocks of life are just too complex. Up to now, we still can’t agree when it comes to finding a definition of life. As we saw above, when, one the one hand, the definition includes the word “reproduce”, and, on the other hand, it includes “Darwinian evolution” – as it’s the case for the NASA definition – confusion may set in as some species cannot reproduce nor evolve as a population since they cannot reproduce in The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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the first place. For example, mules (interbreeding between a donkey and a mare or female horse). Yes, as I’m writing about it, the origins of life are still unknown. We know for sure that life did not form at the same time as our planet. I briefly explained previously the three-age system when it comes to the advent of life on Earth. I would like to point out that when I say “life”, I don’t mean it exclusively in terms of multicellular and superior life forms, but life in its simplest form, a bacterium for example. The purpose of this book is not to propose a theory on the matter, but rather to make sense of the existing ones. I will talk about the following theories: abiogenesis, biogenesis, Darwin’s theory of life, Jacques Monod’s theory of life, and panspermia.

i. Abiogenesis theory of life Abiogenesis is the theory that life may have originated from non-living substances. “Most chemists believe that life emerged spontaneously from mixtures of molecules in the prebiotic Earth … The question (of the origins of life) has two quite distinct facets – historical and ahistorical, and only the combined insight of the two facets will be able to lead to a full and satisfying resolution of the problem. The historical aspect would seek to answer the how question – how did life emerge? That would involve deciphering the actual chemical event that transpired on the prebiotic Earth – the particular chemical path followed, step by step, leading from inanimate materials through to simplest life. Key questions would include: what were the molecular building blocks from which early life was constructed? What were the prevailing reaction conditions that enabled those building blocks to form, and once formed, what were the key intermediate step along the long evolutionary road from those building blocks to simple life? The ahistorical aspect would address the more general why question: why would inanimate matter of any kind, regardless of its structural identity, follow a pathway of complexification in the biological direction, eventually leading to some simple life form?” Abiogenesis became popular and influential especially in the 20th century with the OparinHaldane theory and the Miller-Urey Experiments. “Abiogenesis is the idea that life arose from nonlife more than 3.5 billion years ago on Earth. Abiogenesis proposes that the first life-forms generated were very simple and through a gradual process became increasingly complex. Biogenesis, in which life is derived from the reproduction of other life, was presumably preceded by abiogenesis, which became impossible once Earth’s atmosphere assumed its present composition. Although many equate abiogenesis with the archaic theory of spontaneous generation, the two ideas are quite different. According to the latter, complex life (e.g., a maggot or mouse) was thought to arise spontaneously and continually from nonliving matter. While the hypothetical process of spontaneous generation was disproved as early as the 17th century and decisively rejected in the 19th century, abiogenesis has been neither proved nor disproved ... In


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the 1920s British scientist J.B.S. Haldane and Russian biochemist Aleksandr Oparin independently set forth similar ideas concerning the conditions required for the origin of life on Earth. Both believed that organic molecules could be formed from abiogenic materials in the presence of an external energy source (e.g., ultraviolet radiation) and that the primitive atmosphere was reducing (having very low amounts of free oxygen) and contained ammonia and water vapor, among other gases. Both also suspected that the first life-forms appeared in the warm, primitive ocean and were heterotrophic (obtaining preformed nutrients from the compounds in existence on early Earth) rather than autotrophic (generating food and nutrients from sunlight or inorganic materials). Oparin believed that life developed from coacervates, microscopic spontaneously formed spherical aggregates of lipid molecules that are held together by electrostatic forces and that may have been precursors of cells. Oparin’s work with coacervates confirmed that enzymes fundamental for the biochemical reactions of metabolism functioned more efficiently when contained within membrane-bound spheres than when free in aqueous solutions. Haldane, unfamiliar with Oparin’s coacervates, believed that simple organic molecules formed first and in the presence of ultraviolet light became increasingly complex, ultimately forming cells. Haldane and Oparin’s ideas formed the foundation for much of the research on abiogenesis that took place in later decades.” (Rogers, 2018) In the 21st century, the views have not changed, except for small differences in the models. Rogers goes on to say that “modern abiogenesis hypotheses are based largely on the same principles as the Oparin-Haldane theory and the Miller-Urey experiment. There are, however, subtle differences between the several models that have been set forth to explain the progression from abiogenic molecule to living organism, and explanations differ as to whether complex organic molecules first became self-replicating entities lacking metabolic functions or first became metabolizing protocells that then developed the ability to self-replicate. The habitat for abiogenesis has also been debated. While some evidence suggests that life may have originated from nonlife in hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, it is possible that abiogenesis occurred elsewhere, such as deep below Earth’s surface, where newly arisen protocells could have subsisted on methane or hydrogen, or even on ocean shores, where proteinoids may have emerged from the reaction of amino acids with heat and then entered the water as cell-like protein droplets. Some scientists have proposed that abiogenesis occurred more than once. In one example of this hypothetical scenario, different types of life arose, each with distinct biochemical architectures reflecting the nature of the abiogenic materials from which they developed. Ultimately, however, phosphate-based life (“standard” life, having a biochemical architecture requiring phosphorus) gained an evolutionary advantage over all non-phosphate-based life (“nonstandard” life) and thereby became the most widely distributed type of life on Earth. This notion led scientists to infer The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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the existence of a shadow biosphere, a life-supporting system consisting of microorganisms of unique or unusual biochemical structure that may have once existed, or possibly still exists, on Earth. As the Miller-Urey experiment demonstrated, organic molecules can form from abiogenic materials under the constraints of Earth’s prebiotic atmosphere. Since the 1950s, researchers have found that amino acids can spontaneously form peptides (small proteins) and that key intermediates in the synthesis of RNA nucleotides (nitrogen-containing compounds [bases] linked to sugar and phosphate groups) can form from prebiotic starting materials. The latter evidence may support the RNA world hypothesis, the idea that on early Earth there existed an abundance of RNA life produced through prebiotic chemical reactions. In fact, in addition to carrying and translating genetic information, RNA is a catalyst, a molecule that increases the rate of a reaction without itself being consumed, meaning that a single RNA catalyst could have produced multiple living forms, which would have been advantageous during the rise of life on Earth. The RNA world hypothesis is one of the leading self-replication-first conceptions of abiogenesis. Some modern metabolism-based models of abiogenesis incorporate Oparin’s enzyme-containing coacervates but suggest a steady progression from simple organic molecules to coacervates, specifically protobionts, aggregates of organic molecules that display some characteristics of life. Protobionts presumably then gave rise to prokaryotes, single-celled organisms lacking a distinct nucleus and other organelles because of the absence of internal membranes but capable of metabolism and self-replication and susceptible to natural selection. Examples of primitive prokaryotes still found on Earth today include archaea, which often inhabit extreme environments with conditions similar to those that may have existed billions of years ago, and cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), which also flourish in inhospitable environments and are of particular interest in understanding the origin of life, given their photosynthetic abilities. Stromatolites, deposits formed by the growth of blue-green algae, are the world’s oldest fossils, dating to 3.5 billion years ago. There remain many unanswered questions concerning abiogenesis. Experiments have yet to demonstrate the complete transition of inorganic materials to structures like protobionts and protocells and, in the case of the proposed RNA world, have yet to reconcile important differences in mechanisms in the synthesis of purine and pyrimidine bases necessary to form complete RNA nucleotides. In addition, some scientists contend that abiogenesis was unnecessary, suggesting instead that life was introduced on Earth via collision with an extraterrestrial object harboring living organisms, such as a meteorite carrying single-celled organisms; the hypothetical migration of life to Earth is known as panspermia. Research on abiogenesis has benefited significantly from astrobiology, the field of study concerned with the search for extraterrestrial life (life beyond Earth) and with understanding the conditions required for life to form. Astrobiological investigations of the moon Titan, for example, which has an atmosphere lacking free oxygen, have revealed that complex


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organic molecules are present there, offering scientists a glimpse into the formation of biological materials in a prebiotic habitat resembling that of early Earth.”

ii. Biogenesis theory of life The idea behind biogenesis is simple: life can only come from life, meaning from other living organisms. “The Spontaneous generation hypothesis proposed by scientists to explain the origin of the “animalcules" observed by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek in his magnifying lenses had received wide acceptance all over Europe from Antoni’s time until the time of Louis Pasteur. Erroneous experimental set up, results, and conclusions of some scientists had supported and strengthened the hypothesis. For example, the Englishman John Needham claimed that vital life is needed for the spontaneous generation of microbes. He added that the reason why no living organisms emerged from heated and sealed solutions in containers is that the ‘vital life’ was destroyed by the heat and new ‘vital life’ was not supplied to the solutions because they cannot enter the sealed containers. Fortunately, there were scientists skeptical about the hypothesis. So, they designed their own experimental set up and from the results they gathered, they drew the most feasible explanation on the origin of the ‘animalcules’. Among the scientists was the Italian Lazzaro Spallanzani who opposed Needham’s idea of the ‘vital life’. Proponents and opponents of spontaneous generation hypothesis debated a lot starting from the time Leeuwenhoek presented his discoveries (1670s) to the public until the time of Rudolf Virchow, who in 1858 challenged the spontaneous generation with his concept and definition of biogenesis. This concept claims that living cells can arise only from preexisting living cells. Virchow defended this concept to the scientific community, but he did not come up with a convincing experiment to back up his idea. In 1861, the French scientist Louis Pasteur resolved the issue on the origin of microbes (“animalcules") through a series of ingenious and persuasive experiments. Pasteur showed that microorganisms exist in the air and can contaminate sterile solutions, but he emphasized that air itself does not produce microbes. He filled a number of shortnecked flasks with beef broth and then boiled their contents. He immediately sealed the mouths of some of the flasks while he left the others open and allowed to cool. After few days, the contents of the unsealed flasks were found to be contaminated with microorganisms. No evidences of growing microorganisms were found on the sealed flasks. Pasteur concluded that the microorganisms in the air were responsible for contaminating non-living matter like the broths in John Needham’s flask. Pasteur performed another experiment but this time he put beef broth in open-ended long-necked flasks. He bent the necks of the flasks into S-shaped curves and boiled the contents of the flasks. Amazingly, the contents of the flasks were not contaminated even after several months.


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The unique S-shaped design of Pasteur’s flasks allowed air to pass but trapped the microorganisms that could contaminate the broths. Do you know that some of the original vessels used by Pasteur in his experiments are still displayed in the Pasteur Institute, Paris today? A few of the flasks contain broths that remain uncontaminated for more than 100 years! Pasteur demonstrated the presence of microbes in non-living materials whether they are solid, liquid, or air. In addition, he laid the foundation of aseptic techniques, techniques that prevent contamination by unwanted microbes. These techniques are based on Pasteur’s idea that microbes can be killed by heat and that procedures can be designed to inhibit the access of airborne microbes to nutrient environment. Application of aseptic techniques is now the standard practice in medical and laboratory procedures. Disproving the idea that microorganisms spontaneously generated from non-living matter through mystical forces is one of the greatest contributions of Pasteur in science. He provided the evidence that any appearance of ‘spontaneous’ life in nonliving solutions can be attributed to microbes that already exist in the air or in the fluids themselves.” (Sace, 2017)

iii. Darwin’s theory of life The premise of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is that all life, from mammals to single celled organisms, is related through descent with modification from common ancestral stock. The mechanism he proposed to explain descent with modification was natural selection. “The theory of evolution by natural selection, first formulated in Darwin's book On the Origin of Species in 1859, is the process by which organisms change over time as a result of changes in heritable physical or behavioral traits. Changes that allow an organism to better adapt to its environment will help it survive and have more offspring. Evolution by natural selection is one of the best substantiated theories in the history of science, supported by evidence from a wide variety of scientific disciplines, including paleontology, geology, genetics and developmental biology. The theory has two main points, said Brian Richmond, curator of human origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. ‘All life on Earth is connected and related to each other,’ and this diversity of life is a product of ‘modifications of populations by natural selection, where some traits were favored in the environment over others,’ he said. More simply put, the theory can be described as ‘descent with modification,’ said Briana Pobiner, an anthropologist and educator at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., who specializes in the study of human origins. The theory is sometimes described as ‘survival of the fittest,’ but that can be misleading, Pobiner said. Here, ‘fitness’ refers not to an organism's strength or athletic ability, but rather the ability to survive and reproduce. In the first edition of “The Origin of Species” in 1859, Charles Darwin speculated about how natural selection could cause a land mammal to turn into a whale. As a hypothetical example, Darwin used North American black bears, which were known to catch insects by swimming in the water with their mouths open: ‘I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale,’ he speculated. The idea didn't go over very well with the public. Darwin was so embarrassed by the ridicule he received that the swimming-bear passage was removed from later editions of the book. Scientists now know that Darwin had the right idea but the wrong animal. Instead of looking at bears, he should have instead been looking at cows and hippopotamuses. The story of the origin of whales is one of evolution's most fascinating tales and one of the best examples scientists have of natural selection. To understand the origin of whales, it's necessary to have a basic understanding of how natural selection works. Natural selection can change a species in small ways, causing a population to change color or size over the course of several generations. This is called ‘microevolution.’ But natural selection is also capable of much more. Given enough time and enough accumulated changes, natural selection can create entirely new species, known as ‘macroevolution.’ It can turn dinosaurs into birds, amphibious mammals into whales and the ancestors of apes into humans. Take the Charles Robert Darwin (1809 – 1882) Photo Credit: Wikipedia example of whales — using evolution as their guide and knowing how natural selection works, biologists knew that the transition of early whales from land to water occurred in a series of predictable steps. The evolution of the blowhole, for example, might have happened in the following way: random genetic changes resulted in at least one whale having its nostrils placed farther back on its head. Those animals with this adaptation would have been better suited to a marine lifestyle, since they would not have had to completely surface to breathe. Such animals would have been more successful and had more offspring. In later generations, more genetic changes occurred, moving the nose farther back on the head. Other body parts of early whales also changed. Front legs became flippers. Back legs disappeared. Their bodies became more streamlined and they developed tail flukes to better propel themselves through water. Darwin also described a form of natural selection that depends on an organism's success at attracting a mate, a process known as sexual selection. The colorful plumage of peacocks and the antlers of male deer are both examples of traits that evolved under this type of selection. But Darwin wasn't the first or only scientist to develop a theory of evolution. The French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck came up with the idea that an organism could pass on traits to its offspring, though he was wrong about some of the details. And around the same time as Darwin, British biologist Alfred Russel Wallace independently came up with the theory of evolution by natural selection. The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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Darwin didn't know anything about genetics, Pobiner said. ‘He observed the pattern of evolution, but he didn’t really know about the mechanism.’ That came later, with the discovery of how genes encode different biological or behavioral traits, and how genes are passed down from parents to offspring. The incorporation of genetics and Darwin's theory is known as ‘modern evolutionary synthesis.’ The physical and behavioral changes that make natural selection possible happen at the level of DNA and genes. Such changes are called mutations. ‘Mutations are basically the raw material on which evolution acts,’ Pobiner said. Mutations can be caused by random errors in DNA replication or repair, or by chemical or radiation damage. Most times, mutations are either harmful or neutral, but in rare instances, a mutation might prove beneficial to the organism. If so, it will become more prevalent in the next generation and spread throughout the population. In this way, natural selection guides the evolutionary process, preserving and adding up the beneficial mutations and rejecting the bad ones. ‘Mutations are random, but selection for them is not random,’ Pobiner said. But natural selection isn't the only mechanism by which organisms evolve, she said. For example, genes can be transferred from one population to another when organisms migrate or immigrate, a process known as gene flow. And the frequency of certain genes can also change at random, which is called genetic drift. Even though scientists could predict what early whales should look like, they lacked the fossil evidence to back up their claim. Creationists took this absence as proof that evolution didn't occur. They mocked the idea that there could have ever been such a thing as a walking whale. But since the early 1990s, that's exactly what scientists have been finding. The critical piece of evidence came in 1994, when paleontologists found the fossilized remains of Ambulocetus natans, an animal whose name literally means "swimming-walking whale." Its forelimbs had fingers and small hooves but its hind feet were enormous given its size. It was clearly adapted for swimming, but it was also capable of moving clumsily on land, much like a seal. When it swam, the ancient creature moved like an otter, pushing back with its hind feet and undulating its spine and tail. Modern whales propel themselves through the water with powerful beats of their horizontal tail flukes, but Ambulocetus still had a whip-like tail and had to use its legs to provide most of the propulsive force needed to move through water. In recent years, more and more of these transitional species, or "missing links," have been discovered, lending further support to Darwin's theory, Richmond said. Despite the wealth of evidence from the fossil record, genetics and other fields of science, some people still question its validity. Some politicians and religious leaders denounce the theory, invoking a higher being as a designer to explain the complex world of living things, especially humans. School boards debate whether the theory of evolution should be taught alongside other ideas, such as intelligent design or creationism. Mainstream scientists see no controversy. "A lot of people have deep religious beliefs and also accept evolution," Pobiner said, adding, ‘there can be real reconciliation.’ Evolution is well supported by many examples of changes in various The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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species leading to the diversity of life seen today. ‘If someone could really demonstrate a better explanation than evolution and natural selection, [that person] would be the new Darwin,’ Richmond said.” (Than, 2015)

iv. Jacques Monod’s theory of life According to Monod, life originated from natural processes. But, he didn’t specify whether these processes were biological or chemical. In his book Chance and Necessity: Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology (French: Le Hasard et la Nécessité: Essai sur la philosophie naturelle de la biologie moderne), he uses the processes of evolution to show that life is only the result of natural processes by “pure chance”. The basic tenet of this book is that systems in nature with molecular biology, such as enzymatic biofeedback loops can be explained without having to invoke final causality. (Herrnstein, 1972)6, in his essay “The molecular drama”, explains that Monod “calls our attention to the genius of Escherichia coli. Place just one of these bacteria (whose native turf is the bowels of certain animals, including man) in a dish with a little water, a few grains of sugar and a dash of mineral salts, and within thirty-six hours, the broth will be teeming with several billion, virtually identical germs. Little wonder that the facts of life have long strained our capacity to accept a physical explanation. How in the world does a creature weighing less than one trillionth of a gram outperform – in precision, economy, and speed – the best that man’s science of chemistry can deliver? Yet the job gets done, Monod points out, within the constraints imposed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is to say, that the physical-energy changes in the dish conform to ordinary physical principles even as the germs reduplicate themselves into myriads of separate, living existences. Monod’s book, based on lectures given at Pomona College early in 1969, recounts modern molecular biology’s story about Escherichia coli, and therefore also about the chemical basis of life in general. For, as he says, ‘To biologists of my generation fell the discovery of the virtual identity of cellular chemistry throughout the entire biosphere.’ Clearly a momentous discovery, the chemical unity of life also vastly simplified the task of molecular biology. Now the job called not for a separate account of each living form, but instead merely for the rules by which a single fundamental procedure ramified itself into the phenomenal diversity of creatures. The new task may not be exactly easy, but it could have been (as far as anyone knew thirty years ago) immeasurably harder.

6

This (from here to page 82) is a reproduction of Richard J. Herrnstein’s essay initially written in 1972.


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The fertile bacterium poses a dual riddle, says Monod. First, whence the invariance, the capacity to duplicate itself virtually down to the molecular level—at least, most of the time? Inanimate objects do not often (if ever) reveal a comparable flair for self-duplication, so when we marvel at life’s distinctiveness or uniqueness, we must be reacting partly to its invariance. The second half of the riddle, Monod calls teleonomy, the goal-directedness of living beings. In the growth and development of its physical structure, as well as in its behavior, the living organism reveals an inner determination, setting it to some degree free of its immediate circumstances. Each creature develops and performs true to its type, acting and growing so as to sustain itself in its distinctiveness. The environment does not just act upon animate objects, as it does upon inanimate ones like falling Jacques Lucien Monod (1910 – 1976) stones or cooling cups of coffee, but is acted upon by the Photo credit: Wikipedia creature, for its own purposes. This is not to suggest that Monod believes in a mental life of germs, nor that he is unaware of the physical limits in the environment outside of which any given creature ceases to function typically or at all. Instead, it shows that Monod recognizes the magnitude of the task of reconciling the purposiveness of life with the mechanisms of science. At least, that reconciliation is what Monod seeks. He scorns easy solutions, which replace ignorance by mere postulation. The vitalists, like Bergson, endow living creatures with élan, a spiritual essence that fortuitously provides just those properties of teleonomy thought to be lacking in the physical body. And the animists, like Teilhard de Chardin, expunge the riddle of teleonomy by professing belief in the unfolding of a universal principle, unknowable by definition. The old struggle between mechanists and anti-mechanists (the vitalists and animists) pervades the book as Monod works through his solution of the dual riddle. The progress of molecular biology since the early 1950’s has closed much of the credibility gap that earlier afflicted mechanistic biology. No longer must the mechanist feebly defend himself with discoveries yet unmade when challenged by the extraordinary precision of biochemistry, its subtle adaptations, or its ability to reproduce itself. Now he can array the chemical code laid down in the genes, along with glimmerings of how it is deciphered into the richer language of amino acids, which concatenate into the thousands of proteins found in all living creatures. By no means has all of the tale been told, but enough bits and pieces so that the anti-mechanist now begins to suffer lack of credibility. Here and there, molecular biologists have traced through a series of chemical reactions at the microscopic level to show teleonomy in fact, not just in principle. There are, for example, chains The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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of chemical reactions that manufacture ‘metabolites’—essential chemical components in some structure or process. The speed of the reactions (hence their net productivity per unit of time) gets paced by highly specific chemical agents called catalysts and regulators. (Catalysts, some may remember from their chemistry courses, enter into reactions and speed them up without being consumed or even permanently altered by them.) If, as is sometimes the case, the final outcome of a chain is, at one and the same time, both a metabolite and a regulatory inhibitor for some earlier reaction in the chain, then chemistry has created a self-limiting production line. As the level of metabolite rises, it more and more retards further production. When the level falls, production rises. It is obvious that such negative feedback may sometimes serve a useful purpose. There are other configurations serving other purposes—to retard or advance particular chemical outcomes under particular circumstances so as to promote the vigorous survival of the organism. This new victory for scientific materialism has shown how Darwinian selection reaches down into the molecular substratum of life. ‘Survival of the fittest’—so graphic a portrayal of the pre-nuptial contests of bull moose or the gradual stretching of the giraffe’s neck—may now be applied with equal, if not greater, validity to the molecular drama. The key to understanding has been the discovery of what Monod calls the ‘gratuity’ of the chemical substratum of life. Because catalysts are tied to certain reactions rather than others by the match of arbitrary spatial features in the component molecules—much like a key in a lock—the opportunities for chemical innovation are as boundless as the endless spatial variations of organic compounds. The catalytic nature of life’s essential chemistry allows regulation to vary relatively freely (by mutation, accident, etc.—the “chance” in the title of the book) without altering the basic chemistry of the system as a whole. If a particular variation is advantageous, it may, through natural selection, establish itself in future generations (by “necessity,” as it follows from the simple arithmetic of Darwinian evolution). The advantageous variation must, of course, originate in the genes in order to be heritable, but Monod shows how the genetic “alphabet” may sometimes turn up with a beneficent misprint. The occasional “errors” are sifted over automatically for the rare, fruitful variation, giving the living system at once both its invariance and teleonomy. Chance and necessity combine to favor the right innovation at the right time. In the short span of a couple of decades, molecular biology has taken great strides toward deep and significant understanding. It has also added to the vernacular a number of pseudo-words and quasi-phrases—like “DNA” and “RNA” and “polypeptides” and “nucleotides” and “stereochemical complementarity”—incomprehensible to anyone whose last chemistry course is of earlier vintage than about 1955. Part of Monod’s purpose in his lectures must have been simply pedagogic—to attach to those mysterious new labels some concrete meaning for the layman. But that likely was his lesser purpose, for the major themes sound more philosophical than pedagogic. He could actually have made his main points without any chemistry at all, setting the question instead as follows: “Grant me a true science (i.e., like physics or chemistry) of life’s invariance The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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and teleonomy, substantiating once and for all the principles of evolution by natural selection. What broader lessons shall we learn then?” For Monod, of course, the substantive facts of his science have been woven integrally into the fabric of the Weltanschauung he offers. Yet a reader who fails to hang on through the elementary biochemistry early in the book can clamber back on to the train of thought later on. Star player and articulate popularizer of one of the best games around, Monod should not be too harshly rebuked for his book’s shortcomings. But shortcomings there are, at least two serious ones. When he steps back from molecular biology to take a look at science as a whole, he cannot impart his vision either clearly or persuasively. It will do no reader any good to be told that science seeks “objectivity,” or that it calls for the “confrontation of logic and experience.” The tough problem— to translate those vague and formless guides to action into something concrete and specific— remains unsolved. Was there something especially “objective” about the choice of Escherichia coli as the experimental subject? Doubtless, it was a happy choice, but not any more objective or logical than the many organisms that might have served less well. And, to look at science’s past, was the phlogiston theory of combustion not an elegant confrontation of logic with experience? Monod fails to see the pragmatic core of science, promoting Escherichia coli and rejecting phlogiston by the sole criterion of success. It is an ironic oversight, for the pragmatic standard seems little different in science and in the chemistry of life. In both cases, we see by hindsight how the happy accident (of thought or chemistry) gains ascendancy through natural selection (in predictive power or physiological superiority). Many philosophers, past and present, have come up empty-handed in better style than Monod, when reaching for science’s elusive essence. But the purely philosophical shortcoming seems, at least to me, the lesser one. When Monod considers the role of a creature’s behavior, he loses the main story in his enthusiasm for a minor subplot. Behavior, he correctly notes, orients the direction of evolution. When some primitive fish first started venturing on land, it was no doubt ill-equipped to do so. However, its tenacious efforts (and those of its descendants) set the scene in which any mutation favoring terrestrial life quickly (relatively speaking) overspread the gene pool in subsequent generations. In the evolutionist’s jargon, terrestrial behavior creates “selection pressure” for terrestrially-adaptive structure. The same argument, Monod notes, applies to all kinds of advantageous behavior. In human beings, the higher mental functions—language, subjective simulation (his term for cognition), the formation of society and culture—presumably exert selection pressure for compatible underlying structures. The universality of language and certain cultural forms suggests to Monod that even those highly conventionalized human activities have innate underpinnings. Monod thus takes his place in the vanguard of the swing back toward nativistic theories of human behavior. For a couple of generations after World War I, at least in the United States, the pendulum swung almost friction-free toward the environmentalist pole. John B. Watson’s book Behaviorism The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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(1924) was heralded in a review in the New York Times as the beginning of a new epoch, with its argument that each man’s character and behavior was simply a lifetime’s worth of conditioned reflexes. Although the psychological substance has actually been much refined, the mass-culture rendition of B. F. Skinner’s recent Beyond Freedom and Dignity sounds much the same, in content and as portent. Yet in the interval between Watson and Skinner, the simpleminded environmentalism of elementary textbooks and popular magazines has taken a beating, in the laboratory and in philosophical analysis. Behavior is not infinitely malleable; people are not equally talented or motivated or psychically sound. Moreover, some of the limitations, predispositions, and differences are surely genetic. And so, with the customary lag, the pendulum is swinging back, receiving a fair impetus from Monod. It is easy to imagine his message blending with Robert Ardrey’s, Noam Chomsky’s, Konrad Lorenz’s, Desmond Morris’s, and with all the others that now stand for nature as opposed to nurture in the account of man. While Monod is doubtless right about the contribution of behavior to selection pressure, he fails to uncover a crucial precondition. Consider again the primitive fish flinging itself awkwardly upon the land. A bulging appendage or two to stabilize its thrashings would be very helpful, but only if the fish has the wits to use them. What good would it do the fish to have its new appendages without any inkling of how to use them? It may, to be sure, inherit just the right behavior to go along with each new structural modification. But not only is such dual mutation vastly less probable, it tacitly rules out the impact of behavior on selection pressure. New behavior must, at least sometimes, arise within an individual’s lifetime, guided by the individual’s own successes or failures, in order to influence the course of evolution. There needs to be a provision for fruitful non-genetic and individual variation, in addition to genetic variation, if Monod’s hypothesis is to work. For only then, with behavior exploiting the opportunity, will selection pressure follow in the wake of individual variation. Similarly, picture the proto-man whose proto-larynx first fashioned coherent gruntings. Selection pressure for language presupposes that our ancestor had some capacity to press his advantage within his own lifetime, otherwise the potential for language would have languished unused. To play the major role in phylogeny that Monod accords it, behavior must be responsive in ontogeny. But saying that behavior is ontogenetically responsive acknowledges a substantial part of the environmentalist canon. The more familiar name for the study of ontogenetic responsiveness is “learning theory,” the branch of psychology devoted to how creatures get their behavior changed by their experience. Monod, having missed the environmentalist ingredient in his scheme, fails to note that the study of the learning process has not lagged far behind molecular biology in recent years. For Watson, all learning was a version of Pavlovian conditioning. Skinner and most contemporary environmentalists know that Pavlovian conditioning is not enough. Not very much complex behavior is cast in the mold of a dog salivating at the sound of the dinner bell. In addition, behavior often echoes its past in accordance with a process known as “operant” or “instrumental” The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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conditioning. The laboratory rat hungrily pressing a lever for a bit of food exemplifies such learning. Even in human beings, behavior of all degrees of complexity can be shaped by this process, which accounts for much of the current excitement over “teaching machines” and “behavior therapy.” The essential principle could hardly be simpler—out of the stream of movement, certain movements are selected for repetition, if they lead to particular outcomes (like food for a hungry rat or a successful putt for a golfer). The clear parallel between this kind of learning and phylogenetic selection has been noted often in the hundred-odd years since Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin. In both mechanisms, adaptive, teleonomic outcomes arise from purely automatic rules for selection. Environmentalists, impressed by the power with which surroundings mold behavior, implore us to make the most of the plasticity. Nativists, recognizing the tie between behavior and physiology, caution us against too bland a disregard of biology. Both, of course, are right, and, often, wrong, when carried away by excesses of enthusiasm. Monod, in the grip of nativism, fails to tie together the strands of his argument, depriving it of a solidity it could have had. He acknowledges the role of behavior in creating selection pressure. And he is hardly unconscious of the learning process in some contexts, for, when discussing mankind, he notes that ontogenetic adaptation substitutes to some degree for biological evolution, making adjustments possible within single lifetimes. But he misses the impact of ontogenetic adaptation on evolution itself, for once creatures acquired the capacity to learn, their behavior became the cutting edge of phylogeny as never before, creating selection pressure wherever a new behavior conferred some advantage over one’s kind. Had he spotted the parallel yet interacting mechanisms of selection in behavior and in the germ-plasm, he would have seen ontogeny and phylogeny playing off one another in endless spirals of chance and necessity.”

v. The Panspermia theory of life According to this theory, life may have come from outer space, which would make all of us extraterrestrials. It claims that life emerged on Earth after it was struck by an asteroid (comet or meteor). “The birth of life on Earth is one of the greatest puzzles to have faced scientists, but some are starting to question whether it was even born here at all. Astrobiologists are collecting growing evidence that suggests life may have begun elsewhere in the galaxy and was carried here by meteorites or comets around 3.8 to 4 billion years ago – a theory known as panspermia. For example, organic molecules and water have been found on comets racing through our solar system, suggesting the materials needed to kickstart life on Earth came from space. However, there are some who go further and say life itself formed elsewhere and was carried here where it found the conditions were perfect to evolve. Panspermia is not a new theory – it was first proposed in 1871 – but it has more recently gathered fresh support as astronomers have discovered just how full the The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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universe is with organic compounds. Although no evidence to prove this has yet been found, the idea of panspermia, which remains on the fringe of mainstream science, is not considered as farfetched as it once was, according to New Scientist. Peter Ward, a biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, told the magazine: 'I think the case for Mars as the origin of Earth life is pretty good.' He added that should proof be found that life on Earth is extraterrestrial in origin, it would have some pretty major impacts on current scientific and religious thinking. He said: 'It's a big blow. For some religious fundamentalists, it is an axiom that there is but one life and it is here on Earth.' Many scientists have pointed at the apparent suddenness of life appearing on Earth around 3.8 billion years ago at the same time conditions to support life became perfect. Some scientists go further and say the entire Milky Way may be teeming with life. Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, an astrobiologist at the University of Buckingham and long-time supporter of panspermia, believes Earth is constantly exchanging organic and even living material with planets around neighboring star systems. He was recently involved in the publication of several papers that found what he believes to be fossilized remains of organisms in meteorites and tiny algae-like organisms living high up in the Earth's atmosphere that have been carried here by-passing comets. Speaking to New Scientist, Professor Wickramasinghe said: ‘this was conjecture in the past, purely theoretical, but now we have evidence for it. It's changing slowly, but surely.’ ‘Material expelled at speeds greater than the escape speed from a planetary system like our own solar system will, in general, have hyperbolic orbits with respect to a nearby star, so the probability of direct capture will in general be very low.’ However, sub-micron dust including bacteria and viruses released by transiting cometary Life on Earth began around 3.8 billion years ago but it may not have originated bolides, even if they are in on our planet. There is growing support for a fringe theory of panspermia that suggests life first started elsewhere in space and was carried here by comets and hyperbolic orbits, will be easily be meteorites, as illustrated above, that bombarded our planet during its early stopped by friction (gas drag) in history. Courtesy: Daily Mail the interplanetary disc of the recipient planetary system, and thus serve to infect habitable planets.' Put more simply, organisms and molecules on comets travelling past planets could be deposited on that planet. ... It is planning a robotic mission to drill beneath the surface of the Moon to look for meteorites that may provide clues to how life started on Earth and if it was carried here from elsewhere. Scientists at Nasa have also conducted experiments using simulated meteorites fired into space and allowed to reenter the atmosphere. These have shown DNA and some bacterial spores can survive the extreme heat and


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pressures of entering the Earth's atmosphere. This has lent support for some of the fundamental ideas underpinning panspermia.” (Gray, 2015) “Despite some advances, the field has come up against chemical walls that are proving impossible to climb. … The organic—meaning carbon-based—compounds understood to have come together to form life in a ‘prebiotic soup’ do not behave in the lab in a way that would indicate they led to the formation of life on early Earth. When these compounds are energized by heat or light, instead of producing early RNA they create tar—hardly the stuff from which we would all evolve. Yet discoveries over the past decade on Mars have pointed to a planet that was once warmer and wetter than it is now. No living or fossil organisms have been found on Mars. But the science team working with the rover Curiosity concluded earlier this year that they had drilled into an ancient lake bed that had all that was needed to support life—and consequently that the planet had been habitable. That doesn't mean it ever was inhabited, but scientific signs are beginning to point, however hesitantly, in that direction. Does this mean Benner or Adcock sees panspermia as a likely beginning for life on Earth? Not exactly. … ‘It's yet another piece of evidence which makes it more likely life came to Earth on a Martian meteorite.’ But it's more of a changing of probabilities than it is scientific proof. ‘A panspermia solution, after all, produces another panspermia problem,’ he said. ‘If a Martian microbe did make it from Mars to Earth, maybe it would be as if it landed in Eden. But just as likely, it would quickly die.’” (Kaufman, 2015)

Question No. 3: What is death? It’s difficult, even impossible, not to talk about death after talking about life since they complete each other. Paradoxically, they’re both essential to existence because one supposes the other to form existence. Life is the beginning of existence and death is the end of it. So, life precedes death, or does it? Are there cases where death may precede life? I will explain that during the discussion. Along with the meaning of life and its origins, death and its mysteries preoccupy the human mind especially during late adult life. Does nothingness really follow death? Do we go to a special place or does our soul wander until reincarnation in a future life on this Earth? I don’t know the answer to any of these questions. While it’s anybody’s prerogative to speculate on what happens after we die, death does and will occur at one point during our existence. Benjamin Franklin said: “… in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Death’s occurrence has a probability rate of 100%, meaning we all have a rendezvous with death. However, the possibility of life after death has preoccupied Mankind since the dawn of time. The ancient Egyptians, were famous for their embalming techniques, which they had down to a science. It was thought that the departed had to be properly presented to their new world. Today, that belief is still strong in many cultures. In parallel, in more advanced societies, people have turned to cryonics – the lowtemperature preservation (usually at -196°C) of people who cannot be sustained by contemporary The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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Question No. 3: What is Death?

medicine, with the hope that resuscitation and restoration to full health may be possible in the far future – in an attempt to redefine the concept of life after death. They want to come back to life but not in some metaphysical world. They want to come back to this world and enjoy once more everything it has to offer. I will talk about life after death in more details. For now, I’d like to make sense of the concept of death. What does it entail?

a. Definition of death According to MedicineNet, death may be defined as: “1. The end of life. The cessation of life. (These common definitions of death ultimately depend upon the definition of life, upon which there is no consensus as I previously explained.) 2. The permanent cessation of all vital bodily functions. (This definition depends upon the definition of ‘vital bodily functions.’). 3. The common law standard for determining death is the cessation of all vital functions, traditionally demonstrated by ‘an absence of spontaneous respiratory and cardiac functions.’ 4. The uniform determination of death. The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws in 1980 formulated the Uniform Determination of A flower, a skull and an hourglass stand for Death Act. It states that: ‘An individual who has sustained life, death and time in this 17th-century painting by Philippe de Champaigne either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory Photo credit: Wikipedia functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem is dead. A determination of death must be made in accordance with accepted medical standards.’ This definition was approved by the American Medical Association in 1980 and by the American Bar Association in 1981.” How can we explain all that? It turns out that death is not so easy to define as one would think. To really make sense of these definitions of death, we need to break them down into two simple questions: what is it? And how does it happen? Death is the cessation of life would be a broad answer and would apply to the first question. Death is the cessation of all vital bodily functions would apply to the second question. But, then again, it doesn’t stop there. Sometimes, death can be a process that comes with legal implications, especially when vital organs have to be removed in order to save other lives. Because of the parameters involved in the definition of death, we need to consider it at three specific levels: the whole-brain level, the higher-brain level, and the cardiopulmonary level. First, the whole-brain view focuses, of course, on the brain, meaning its role and its status at the time of death, which has led medical scientists to define human death as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the entire brain, including the brainstem (see second definition above under the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws in 1980). It’s important to keep The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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in mind the old view of death (cardiorespiratory death) when considering the brain death approach because confusion is likely to arise. A brain-dead patient is considered dead while, at the same time, he is not because he can still breathe thanks to assisted breathing. Before I go on, I would like to note the difference between being brain dead and being in a permanent (or irreversible) vegetative state7. While the whole-brain view considers the brain-dead patient as dead, it is not the case for the patient who falls into a permanent vegetative state in which some autonomic functions – such as the ability to breathe on his own and some reflexes, including heartbeat – remain. Ok, we got that. Now, let’s go back to the whole-brain view. The whole-brain includes: the higher brain (the cerebrum and the cerebellum, see above) and the lower brain or brainstem. Whole-brain death therefore means total brain failure. Proponents of the whole-brain view think that because of the momentous role of coordination between the other organs played by the brain, its failure suffices to call a patient’s death. Heartbeat and breathing only cannot be likened to life. For the purpose of this book, I tend to adhere to this approach, considering that only the brain can perceive and interpret reality. The heart and the lungs cannot. But, at the same time, it is fair to note that the heart, the lungs, and the brain are three organs that work in harmony, and the cessation of anyone of them will quickly affect the spontaneous functions of the other two. Second, the higher-brain view focuses on the irreversible inability to be conscious, meaning the brain is unable to return to consciousness. A such states implies death although the brainstem, responsible for cardiopulmonary function, continues to function. Again, I adhere to this view. An irreversible loss of consciousness translates into a permanent inability to sense reality and make judgments. If a person may never become aware of reality, that means he’s gone out of existence. We can say to exist when we are aware of our own person, our own thoughts, feelings, and emotions. We saw above that people are not aware of their existence either while sleeping, but the fact that they can dream and experience rapid eye movements (REMs) means the brain is alive and is functioning properly. There can be no dreams in the case of neither whole-brain death nor higher-brain death. Both approaches have a common denominator: ongoing activities that resemble life. Whether a patient is whole-brain dead or higher-brain dead, he still uses energy. If a body still uses energy, can we talk about death at all? Situating death at the brain level is important especially in terms of legal implications. For example, a brain-dead patient’s organs can be safely removed and donated to other patients who desperately need them. Finally, the traditional approach – the cardiopulmonary view – is based on the fact that death is called if there are no cardiopulmonary functions. Put simply, someone is dead if his heart stops beating and he’s not breathing. It was that way for a very long time until the brain movement came The new name for Permanent Vegetative State is Unresponsive wakefulness. It’s a condition in which a medical patient is completely unresponsive to psychological and physical stimuli and displays no sign of higher brain function, being kept alive only by medical intervention. Physicians call a vegetative state “persistent” if it has lasted at least one month. 7


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along. It’s the development of respirators and other life support equipment that engendered the debate regarding the meaning of death because they allow for cardiopulmonary functions to carry on without brain function. Let’s note right away that while the heart and the lungs can continue to function for a long time with or without assistance in case of brain failure, the reverse is impossible. A patient’s brain may not continue to function for a long time while his heart and his lungs have failed. That leads us to wonder: if death is defined as the permanent irrelevancy of a body in the grand scheme of things, isn’t the cardiopulmonary approach more important than both the wholebrain and the higher-brain approaches? Whether consciousness is present or not, if the body uses energy and is warm, it may not be said to be lifeless. However, if we put things in perspective and try to have a holistic approach towards death, we can say that this view is discriminatory or hypocritical because it leaves out the brain and ignores the coordination role played by it. Can someone be said to exist if he has respiration and circulation but no consciousness? By all accounts, I think none of three approaches, alone, should be used to define death, which must be viewed as a sum of major anomalies, cessation or failures of every single organ of the human body. Death occurs when no part of the body can no longer use energy and, this, at the cellular level, which makes real death a rather slow process. For example, rigor mortis. It is one of the recognizable signs of death, caused by chemical changes in the muscles after death, causing the limbs of the corpse to become stiff and difficult to move or manipulate. Rigor mortis comes from Latin rigor = stiffness, and mortis = of death. Rigor mortis commences after about three to four hours, reaches maximum stiffness after 12 hours, and gradually dissipates from approximately 24 hours after death. “Once the actin and myosin molecules stick together, they stay that way until another molecule, adenosine triphosphate (ATP), attaches to the myosin and forces it to let go. Your body uses the oxygen you breathe to help make ATP. That oxygen supply ends, of course, with death. Without ATP, the thick and thin filaments can't slide away from each other. The result is that the muscles stay contracted -- hence rigor mortis. During rigor mortis, another process called autolysis takes place. This is the self-digestion of the body's cells. The walls of the cells give way, and their contents flow out. Rigor mortis ends not because the muscles relax, but because autolysis takes over. The muscles break down and become soft on their way to further decomposition. While the process of rigor mortis is taking place, two other events occur: livor mortis and algor mortis. Livor mortis refers to the maroon or purplish discoloration of the skin that happens when blood, particularly red blood cells, stops circulating and settles in the area of the body closest to the ground. If a person dies while lying on his or her back with the head turned to one side, livor mortis will show up on the back and the side of the face that is facing downward. Algor mortis is the gradual cooling of the body until it reaches the same temperature as the air around it.” Put that way, death is a process instead of a specific event. The cardiopulmonary view will always be taken into account when trying to decide, once and for all, if someone has life or is lifeless. The other views are meant to facilitate the legal implications The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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of death, especially when analyzing legal versus biological death. By the way, I would like to note that, to confuse things a bit more, experts in the field distinguish between clinical death and biological death. “In summary, no heartbeat + no breathing + no brain activity = clinical death, but it does not necessarily spell Death. Clinical death is treated as a medical emergency, with CPR and the like following. Only when a physician calls off the efforts and throws in the towel can brain or biological death, eventually followed by legal death, be declared. In the U.S., this marks the removal of ‘personhood’ from the deceased’s body.” (Nuwer, 2012). In light of the above discussion, we can say that the limits between life and death are not clear-cut and require judgement, deep examination, and legal insight. Sarcasm put aside, it makes sense to say that someone may be partially or fully dead. “The idea that brain death in human death is tied to the dualistic view of the body that has largely been abandoned in science” But, at the same time, human life is not possible after brain death. What if I told you that the difficulty to define death comes from the fact that death itself has been with us way before we were born, meaning while developing in the very womb of our mothers? (death precedes life). What if I told you that death is a fact of life, meaning we can experience it (not near-death, which I will talk about next) while alive and still live for a long time afterwards? (death and life can coexist). To understand these two propositions, let’s look beyond the abovementioned types of death that all lead to the end of the existence, meaning biological and conscious existence. First, let’s think of life as the onset of reality’s awareness, that is the moment we become aware of our surroundings (usually at age two). Let’s call it conscious life because from the moment of conception all the way to before we are aware of our environment, consciousness, in terms of being able to understand, interact with, or influence our environment, is irrelevant. For the argument of death precedes (conscious) life, I would like to take the phenomenon known as apoptosis for example. Biologically, it is a type of death. It means death of cells. It’s a cell auto destruction program written in the fetus’ DNA. The development of fingers in human fetus is the result of apoptosis. Humans usually develops a fin-like structure in lieu of a full hand during early stage of fetal development. As we develop inside the womb, the fingers are glued together by a wall of tissues. Then, the cells of the tissues die progressively, and the fingers become distinct, as they are now separated. Same goes for the small tail at the end of the fetus’ buttocks, which will eventual form the coccyx. Moreover, apoptosis may also occur after we become conscious of the environment and during our normal life. For example, cells may also die if their DNA are damaged. Except for the neurons, every single cell of our body is renewed on a regular basis. On the other hand, tissues or organs may die while we are alive. Death of tissues is referred to as necrosis. For example, tissues of the heart may die, following a heart attack. In the Cirrhosis of the liver, part of the liver become nonfunctional because of dead tissues. Both apoptosis and necrosis deserve the appellation of death because they involve the disaggregation of biological structures. Of course, they’re different from The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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the more common type of death to which we are more accustomed when speaking of dying: somatic death, which is the end of all life processes in an organism. Somatic comes from Greek sṓmatos = body. Thus, somatic death means death of the (whole) body, as opposed to the death of cells or tissues. There is no doubt we can outlive both apoptosis and necrosis. Now, the question is: can we outlive or beat somatic death? It’s a highly debatable topic. Many people claimed to have come back from (somatic) death, and the whole event has a name: near-death experience. Also, it’s widely believed that there exists, after the somatic death, an afterlife where the human spirit or soul continues to exist. I would like to talk about near-death experience first.

b. Near-death experience (NDE) Strickland (2001) defines near-death experience as an intense, pleasant, and sometimes profound experiences that people report when they have “come back” from states close to death. Anecdotally, my late uncle Divert, who loved to drink, used to tell me, growing up and way into my adult life, about a strange ‘dream’ he once had. From the first day I listened to it as a child, the story never changed. He told it the same way over and over again with the same details. My uncle claimed that he had a near-death experience once and had an encounter with God. He said that after a night of heavy drinking, he had a strange dream that he likened to a real-life experience and not to the kind of weird things people do or say when they’re drunk. While they may hallucinate, they’re still conscious of their surroundings. He said that he felt like he was really dead. First, after dying, he was struck by an immensely bright light, a light he never saw before. The light transported him way above Earth to a final destination he described as “God’s house”. Upon his arrival, he saw an impressive-looking and white-bearded man flanked by other associates. He had a pile of paper on his table and was holding a pen. He would take note as each event was happening, meaning writing down his final decisions regarding other people’s fate, as they would appear before him in turn. When his turn came, he did nothing but grin and bear it for he knew his life on Earth had not been perfect. Much to his surprise, the man looked at him and said: “What are you doing here? Your time hasn’t come yet. I’m going to let you go for now. But, don’t come back until I call you.” Every time he would tell the story, I would listen carefully. I liked that story. It gave me goosebumps. Of course, at first, I didn’t know what near-death experience was. But when I found out, I was able to connect the dots and make sense of his experience.


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I cannot talk about near-death experience from a personal standpoint because, based on their shared characteristics, I can honestly say that I never had one before. But, people who did always describe it as something out of this world. (Sleutjes et al., 2014) define Near-death experience as “a personal experience associated with death or impending death. Such experiences may encompass a variety of sensations including detachment from the body, feelings of levitation, total serenity, security, warmth, the experience of absolute dissolution, and the presence of a light.” “NDEs transcend all other human experience; they are more than physical occurrences. Being more numinous or mystical in nature. Many people imagine that NDEs must be dreamlike, but this is not the case. A dream is transitory and often vague, whereas NDEs result in heightened states of awareness: the senses become more acute – colors may appear more vibrant, smells may be more vivid, and sounds may become audible Such experiences may encompass a variety of over otherwise impossible distances. Often, the sensations including detachment from the body. NDEr8 may become aware of events that are Photo credit: Getty occurring in a different location. It can be an extraordinary, overwhelming experience that leaves the NDEr facing important life changes.” (Sartori, 2016). So, if NDEs have specific characteristics, what are they? In 1975, Dr. Raymond Moody identified the following: • • • • • • • • • 8

Hearing the news of being close to death (or of being dead) Hearing ‘white’ noise Having an out-of-body experience (OBE) Experiencing feeling of peace and tranquility Traveling through a dark tunnel Seeing a bright light Entering another realm Meeting those who have already died Meeting a ‘bright light’

NDEr = Near-death experiencer


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• • • • • •

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Communicating without words Experiencing a ‘life review’ Feeling a sense of unity and interconnectivity Experiencing a distortion of time Coming to a barrier or point of no return Being sent back to life

These characteristics can be regrouped into four stages: Peace  Body separation  Entering darkness  Seeing the light  Entering the light. Scientists don’t think there is anything transcendental, metaphysical, or divine about near-death experience. They suggest that it’s “a subjective phenomenon resulting from ‘disturbed bodily multisensory integration’ that occurs during life-threatening events.” (Blanke, 2009) Therefore, it’s a purely physiological experience. It’s an unconscious hallucination caused by a lack of oxygen in the brain among other neurological events. According to Christopher French, “a wide range of physiological theories of the NDE have been put forward including those based upon cerebral hypoxia, anoxia, and hypercarbia; endorphins and other neurotransmitters; and abnormal activity in the temporal lobes.” Hypoxia is a gradual reduction of brain function, an increase sense of confusion, disorientation and disorganization. Hypercarbia is the presence of a high level of carbon dioxide in the brain – which is understandable since the body lacks oxygen. Anoxia is the severe reduction of oxygen level in the blood, cells, and tissues of the body. “N, N-Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, is a drug best known for its ability to produce intense visual hallucinations. Many regard the high from DMT as a spiritual experience. At this time, the risk for becoming addicted to DMT is believed to be relatively low. Unlike alcohol, cocaine, or heroin, DMT does not lead to compulsive drug-seeking behavior. DMT is a naturally occurring tryptamine compound found in many different kinds of plants. Tryptamine is also produced in the human body and plays a fundamental role in much of its central nervous system regulatory processes. In fact, findings have suggested that tryptamine plays a role in the moderation of sleep, memory, body temperature, behavior and cognition” (Sitaram et al., 1987) “Interestingly, there is some belief that the pineal gland excretes DMT as a person approaches death. This could account for the vivid imagery described by individuals who have had near-death experiences” (Strassman, 1996) However, French also reported that other underlying psychological factors have been identified in the explanation of near-death experience. The following four psychological explanations are most common: “1) Depersonalization. A depersonalization model was proposed in the 1970s by professor of psychiatry Russell Noyes and clinical psychologist Roy Kletti, which suggested that the NDE is a form of depersonalization experienced under emotional conditions such as lifethreatening danger, potentially inescapable danger, and that the NDE can best be understood as a The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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fantasy-based hallucination. 2) Expectancy. It has been suggested that although these experiences could appear very real, they had actually been constructed in the mind, either consciously or subconsciously, in response to the stress of an encounter with death (or perceived encounter with death) and did not correspond to a real event. In a way, they are similar to wish-fulfillment: because someone thought they were about to die, they experienced certain things in accordance with what they expected or wanted to occur. Imagining a heavenly place was in effect a way for them to soothe themselves through the stress of knowing that they were close to death. 3) Dissociation. NDE is a form of withdrawal to protect an individual from a stressful event. Under extreme circumstances some people may detach from certain unwanted feelings in order to avoid experiencing their emotional impact and suffering associated with them. The person also detaches from one's immediate surroundings. 4) Memory of birth. The birth model suggests that near death experiences could be a form of reliving the trauma of birth. Since a baby travels from the darkness of the womb to light and is greeted by the love and warmth of the nursing and medical staff, and so, it was proposed, the dying brain could be recreating the passage through a tunnel to light, warmth and affection.” All these psychological explanations are debatable. The memory of birth explanation is irrational because it’s impossible for anyone to remember anything before the age of two. Memories start to form and begin to be stored in our subconscious once we become aware of our surroundings. The part of the brain that processes memory isn’t formed yet before the age of two. Although near-death experience remains a mystery, the descriptions given by the experiencers are uniform and share a common set of characteristics. It’s because the human brain is built the same way and its physiology is virtually the same for everyone. Scientists have been careful, thus far, not to describe near-death experience as real death, which is irreversible despite tremendous advances in technology and the medical science field. Who knows? Perhaps near-death experience is a prelude to what life looks like after death. If that’s the case, I would love for my uncle to come back and give me an update on what life really is up there, as I sometimes ponder, like everyone else, a possible life after death.

c. Life after death Life after death is not to be confused with near-death experience. People who had near-death experiences usually come back to talk about it, which means they weren’t dead in the first place. Because death is death. No one has ever come back from the nothingness of death to talk about it. We are still waiting to hear from the pharaohs who have been buried, adorned with gold and precious stones in extravagant and majestic tombs or pyramids. What is life after death or the afterlife? I will give you the same answer I gave for near-death experience: I don’t know. No one The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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knows for that matter. That makes the burden of proof greater on life after death than on neardeath experience. I will say this though: we usually imagine the afterlife as a material place that can be either heaven, hell, or purgatory. Divine Comedy9 is a beautiful, long epic poem written by the Italian writer Dante Alighieri. Its main theme is life after death, and Dante himself is the chief character. Divine Comedy is divided into the Inferno (Hell); the Purgatorio (Purgatory); and the Paradiso (Paradise). Whether different names are attributed to these places, the idea remains the same. According to popular belief, it’s a place where our soul goes after leaving our body following death. Some cultures or religions exclude any return of the soul on this Earth. An age-old example is the Egyptian Pharaohs. The massive and elaboration preparation of the dead rulers’ bodies, including the removal of all organs and the riches placed in their tombs signified that they would not come back. That was meant to ascertain that they would lead a life similar to the one they had on Earth, wherever their souls would end up. According to Richard Taylor, “The afterlife played an important role in Ancient Egyptian religion, and its belief system is one of the earliest known in recorded history. When the body died, parts of its soul known as ka (body double) and the ba (personality) would go to the Kingdom of the Dead. While the soul dwelt in the Fields of Aaru, Osiris demanded work as restitution for the protection he provided. Statues were placed in the tombs to serve as substitutes for the deceased” On the other hand, some other cultures or religions expect the dead to return to life and live in some place again in the future. For example, Christianity acknowledges the materialization of the soul only on Judgement Day, without a prior cycle of transformations. On Judgement Day, those who have led a sin-free life on Earth will enter heaven while those who have died in unrepented mortal sin will go to hell. Hinduism also acknowledges the materialization of the soul after death, but that materialization is done in cycles. Hinduism distinguishes between reincarnation and karma. In reincarnation, the soul never dies. When the body dies, the soul is reborn. This rebirth is done in cycles, over and over again. This cycle is called Karma whose law states that every action influences how the soul will be born in the next reincarnation. If a person lives a good life, the soul will be born into a higher state, perhaps in the body of a Brahman (the supreme existence or absolute reality). If a person leads an evil life, the soul will be born into a lower state, perhaps as a worm. This circle of life is called samsara. A person's reincarnation continues until he or she achieves spiritual perfection. The soul then escapes the process of rebirth and enters a new level of existence called moksha. Therefore, life after death may be either simple or complicated depending on which culture or religion you belong to before your death. Today, the concept of afterlife is taking on a whole new meaning. Modern societies still seek an afterlife which would have nothing to do the traditional view based on metaphysics. While dead 9

Dante called the work simply Comedia (Comedy) because it ended happily. Later generations added the word Divine. The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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bodies are still being embalmed for preservation purpose instead of preparation for an afterlife, scientists are considering new techniques such as cryonics or cryopreservation, or digital immortality so that life after death comes to fruition. The people who have been cryonized in the hope of being revived in the future are, well, dead both clinically and biologically. We’re not waiting for them to come back – as if nothing happened – to tell us how it is up there. They’re waiting for us to bring them back to life so that they can experience life after death (the real one). So, let’s see what cryonics and digital immortality entail.

i. Cryonics or Cryopreservation David Pegg defines Cryopreservation as a process where organelles, cells, tissues, extracellular matrix, organs or any other biological constructs susceptible to damage caused by unregulated chemical kinetics are preserved by cooling to very low temperatures. “Cryopreservation is a darling of the futurist community. The general premise is simple: medicine is continually getting better. Those who die today could be cured tomorrow. Cryonics is a way to bridge the gap between today’s medicine and tomorrow’s. ‘We see it as an extension of emergency medicine,’ … ‘We’re just taking over when today’s medicine gives up on a patient. Think of it this way: 50 years ago, if you were walking along the street and someone keeled over in front of you and stopped breathing you would have checked them out and said they were dead and disposed of them. Today we don’t do that, instead we do CPR and all kinds of things. People we thought were dead 50 years ago we now know were not. Cryonics is the same thing, we just have to stop them from getting worse and let a more advanced technology in the future fix that problem.’ … Of course, the premise of cryonics also makes it essentially untestable. Nobody has ever tried to bring a human back to life after preservation. While researchers working on ‘suspended animation’ are finding that they can cool a living being down to appear apparently dead before reviving them, freezing a body for decades is a different matter. More points to studies in which scientists have studied the preservation of cells and tissues and even worms but scaling that up to a full human body isn’t a trivial proposition. But whether the science is there or not, people are being frozen in liquid nitrogen with the hope of seeing some distant tomorrow.” (Eveleth, 2014)


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A tank of liquid nitrogen, used to supply a cryogenic freezer (for storing laboratory samples at a temperature of about −150 °C). Photo credit: Wikipedia

What is Reality?


Cryonics is a process which is even more complicated than the ancient Egyptian embalming of the dead. Removal of organs may be seen as destruction, while the preservation of cells involves a meticulous scientific process in which there is no room for error if we want the end result to be the ability for future scientist to revive the dead. Rose Eveleth explains the process as follows: “Once the person in question is declared legally dead, the process of preserving them can begin, and it’s an intense one. First, the standby team transfers the patient from the hospital bed into an ice bed and covers them with an icy slurry. Then a ‘heart-lung resuscitator’ [is used] to get the blood moving through the body again. They then administer 16 different medications meant to protect the cells from deteriorating after death. As they note on their website, ‘Because cryonics patients are legally deceased, methods [can be used] that are not yet approved for conventional medical use.’ Once the patient is iced up and medicated, they move them to a place for surgery.

The next step includes draining as much blood and bodily fluids as possible from the person, replacing them with a solution that won’t form ice crystals – essentially the same kind of antifreeze solution used in organ preservation during transplants. Then a surgeon opens up the chest to get access to the major blood vessels, attaching them to a system that essentially flushes out the remaining blood and swaps it with medical grade antifreeze. Since the patient will be in a deep freeze, much of the preparatory work involves trying to ensure that ice crystals don’t form inside the cells of the body. Once the patient’s veins are full of this antifreeze, [they] can begin to cool them down by about one degree Celsius every hour, eventually bringing the body down to -196C after about two weeks. Eventually the body finds its final home for the foreseeable future: upside down in a freezer, often alongside three others. This is the ideal scenario. But it doesn’t always go this way – if a patient hasn’t told … they were sick, or if they die suddenly, the process can be delayed for hours or days. … The longer the wait between death and preservation, the more cells will decay, and the harder it will be to resurrect and cure the patient, ... If this all sounds like a lot of risk for a slim reward, it might be. More is the first to admit that cryonics comes with no guarantees. ‘We don’t know for sure, there’s a lot of things that can go wrong,’ he says. It’s possible that … companies … are simply storing a lot of dead bodies in liquid nitrogen. But he also claims that cryonics is unlike a lot of other futuristic technology. ‘There’s no fundamental physical limit to be able to repair tissues,’ … it’s not like time travel. The science of tissue regeneration is steadily advancing. But nobody really knows when they’ll be able to wake these patients up, or if they’ll be able to at all.


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… We probably don’t even know what repair technology would be used.’” (Eleveth, 2004). Among famous people who’ve been cryonically preserved: •

“Dr. James Bedford, a psychology professor at the University of California, was the first person to ever be cryonically preserved. The choice to be preserved by freezing was entirely his; he even left money for a steel capsule and liquid nitrogen in his will. So, when he died on January 12, 1967, his family abided by his wishes. It was a big day in the cryonics community, and they still refer to January 12 as ‘Bedford Day.’… Bedford was switched to a different tank in 1991 and it would appear that everything has held up thus far.

•

Thomas K. Donaldson, a mathematician, had ideas about death that were even stranger than cryonics. He believed that even though people were ‘dead,’ their brains continued to exist and have functionality and we just don't have the technology to access it yet. For his sake, let's hope that's true; he died in 2006 and is assumed to have been cryonically preserved. He seemed to be pretty confident that he would be back someday; in a 1982 interview, when asked for a piece of wisdom to pass on to cryonicists, he said, ‘I'm sure that any profound piece of wisdom I might have would seem really rather stupid in 300 years. So, I think it would be better for me to say nothing, so I don't feel ashamed of myself in 300 years.’

•

Ted Williams is without a doubt the most famous cryogenically frozen person (that we know of). But the circumstances surrounding his freezing are a bit controversial. His son, John-Henry Williams, was adamant that his father wanted to be preserved to be brought back in the future and wanted his whole family to follow suit, so they could be reunited when technology and medicine made it possible. However, Ted's will said he wanted to be cremated, and his daughter by his first wife took John-Henry to court over the matter. JohnHenry produced a ‘family pact’ signed on a cocktail napkin, which seems pretty strange to me. Why would you write your last wishes on a cocktail napkin and expect it to hold up in court? Anyway, after much debate over authenticity, the napkin-pact was allowed, and Ted was frozen.” (Conradt, 2009)

Will the cryonics movement bear fruit? What might the future hold for cryonics? It’s difficult to say. “My hope is that by using the methods available today we can sufficiently preserve human patients so that one day technology can return them to a new life. I understand that most people will reject this option whether revival is guaranteed or not. But those few who would choose life over death should not be dismayed if some experts are not yet on our side. The Society for Cryobiology has been hostile to cryonics since the 1960s and remains almost as hostile today. In The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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1965, they rejected human cryonic suspension because they could see no way to ever revive a frozen human body; at that time, not a single organ – human or animal – had ever been frozen and revived. Professor Ettinger countered them: ‘Of course, no one today knows how a frozen patient could be resuscitated. We are not suggesting that. We are banking on future technology, and you cannot know what will be possible in the future! The future is unknown.’” (Nelson, 2014) Because of cryonics’ uncertainties, society is also exploring other techniques likely to facilitate life after death. Scientists want to take full advantage of the fifth technological revolution10 in the history of mankind: the information revolution. In that regard, they want to use information technology as a way to ensure immortality to whoever wishes it. The approach is called digital immortality.

ii. Digital immortality First, it’s important to note that digital immortality is part of a larger movement called transhumanism, which is the belief or theory that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technology. Digital immortality (or ‘virtual immortality’) “is the hypothetical concept of storing (or transferring) a person's personality in more durable media, i.e., a computer, and allowing it to communicate with people in the future. The result might look like an avatar behaving, reacting, and thinking like a person on the basis of that person's digital archive” (Parkin, 2015). Susanne Asche summarizes the concept as follows: “As a hopefully minimalistic definition then, digital immortality can be roughly considered as involving a person-centric repository containing a copy of everything that a person sees, hears, says, or engenders over his or her lifespan, including photographs, videos, audio recordings, movies, television shows, music albums/CDs, newspapers, documents, diaries and journals, interviews, meetings, love letters, notes, papers, art pieces, and so on, and so on; and if not everything, then at least as much as the person has and takes the time and trouble to include. The person’s personality, emotion profiles, thoughts, beliefs, and appearance are also captured and integrated into an artificially intelligent, interactive, conversational agent/avatar. This avatar is placed in charge of (and perhaps "equated" with) the collected material in the repository so that the agent can present the illusion of having the factual memories, thoughts, and beliefs of the person him/herself.”

10

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Digital immortality is much less complicated than mummification and cryonics. It involves a twostep process: archiving and digitizing people and making the avatar live. The latter can either remain static or continue to learn autonomously way after the person’s death. Of course, now the concern is: if we can save, upload, or download people’s memories at will, it’s possible that in the future we might be able to create super intelligent machines capable of supplanting humans. This is called singularity and may be achieved by the year 2045 thinks futurist Ray Kurzweil, proponent and leader of that line of thinking. (find out more about singularity in my essay: “Technological Singularity, a Grandiose Dream: A Would-Be Glorious Mind uploading – Photo credit : Getty Achievement for Its Proponents, but an Idea Eliciting Second Thoughts from the Sceptic”). According to Kurzweil, “based on conservative estimates of the amount of computation you need to functionally simulate a human brain, we’ll be able to expand the scope of our intelligence a billion-fold.” Again, as I’m writing this book, no one has come back to life yet from cryopreservation nor from any digital immortality techniques. These two methods are promising and unique in the sense that, as opposed to mummification, which promised a spiritual or metaphysical afterlife, they claim to potentially be able to provide their adepts with a more material and practical afterlife which would look more like life after life instead life after death. By all accounts, any successful attempt to bring someone back to life after his death will at the same time alter the concept of existence. For there to be existence, there has to be a beginning (birth) and an end (death). Humans will have to redefine their purpose or essence on Earth. Because what makes us humans is the purpose of our lives and how we interact with other people. Digital immortality may not be construed as indefinite existence if no one will ever die. In this simple equation: Birth + Death  Existence, all three variables are mutually dependent. Take out anyone of them and you’re left with an unsolvable equation. Digital immortality will just lead to another mystery. But mysteries, the quest for the unknown, and curiosity are also part of human nature. In this line of thinking, it would be appropriate to discover why did man create the concept of afterlife in the first place.

iii. Why did man create the concept of afterlife? The answer may be simple as: “because we are predisposed to believe in a god (or God) and the afterlife” or “because we are all afraid to die”. In fact, it’s both. Whether it’s one or the other or The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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both, I have two views when it comes to life after death. I said previously that no other species worry about life after death but humans. That separation of the mind from the body stemmed from the fear of dying. The body decomposes and disintegrates after death, but the mind can’t. My first view is that life offers too many opportunities for us not to want to come back and leave this world once and for all after we die. So, we speculate about another world where we can continue to be humans and be able to acquire as many material things as we used to in our previous lives. The afterlife concept stemmed from the egotistical nature of our species. We are the only species that can change the environment to our advantage because we can use tools, we have imagination and we are able to think. I would say that the afterlife is a metarepresentation, meaning a representation of life after we die. Life does not have the same purpose or represents the same things for everyone. Thus, the afterlife provides us with a unique opportunity to achieve our goals or make up for our mistakes. The afterlife is way to combine material acquisitions with personal satisfaction and power. Humans have never sought to be nor to remain poor in their afterlives. The idea behind immortality has always been wealth, plenty of food, and perpetual elixir. That tendency is embodied by the ancient Egyptian funerary ceremonies and rituals and in more modern times by the Philosopher’s Stone, which is a legendary alchemical substance said to be capable of turning base metals such as lead into gold or silver. It was also sometimes believed to be an elixir of life, useful for rejuvenation and possibly for achieving immortality. For many centuries, it was the most sought-after goal in alchemy. The philosophers' stone was the central symbol of the mystical terminology of alchemy, symbolizing perfection at its finest, enlightenment, and heavenly bliss. Efforts to discover the philosophers' stone were known as the Magnum Opus (“Great Work”). The afterlife isn’t motivated by humility. It’s a greed-laden and potential power grabbing movement. It’s a way for humans not to take responsibility for the present reality he created while he was alive on this Earth. As to my second view, the afterlife was created by man as a result of what I would call advanced survival instinct written in our DNA. We see death as a major life-threatening event. But, because, we, as a species, know we are powerless in the face of death, we created the afterlife concept as a way to bypass or cheat death. Life after death is probably not necessary, but we won’t know until we experience it. For now, our advanced survival instinct tells us to keep trying living beyond our normal lifespan just in case. It’s like a runner who keeps running even though he passes the finish line first. He does it just in case, especially if his adversary was close behind him. There was a time when human life expectancy was just in the 40’s. Advances in technology and the medical field allow us to now live way beyond sixty-five years. Today, seventy is a the new fifty, they say. Dying between eighty to ninety years old is the new normal. As we’re becoming more and more uncertain about life after death, we push our survival instinct to its limits. But, while people are dying older and older, do they experience true happiness? Are their years beyond sixty-five worth bragging about? Are they more confident? Does their financial burden lessen? The quest for life after death is nothing more than the manifestation of our advanced survival instinct. An excellent The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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way to demonstrate it is to consider the hypocritical side of it. For example, propose to a billionaire a life after death on the condition that he will be dirt poor in his second life or give two choices to a convicted felon: either serving a life sentence in this life or be a free man in his second life, but relentlessly pursued to be executed. The survival instinct of both men will kick in right away and chances are none of them will seek to live beyond this life. Despite the uncertainty of life after death we, as a species, will continue to explore it for the reality is, after more than 200,000 years, mankind is still not able to clear the following mystery: no matter how long someone lives, he will always be dead for a much longer time.

Question No. 4: What is superstition? The same way talking about death after talking about life seems proper and anticipated, talking about superstition after talking about death and afterlife is also anticipated. Believing in life after death falls into the realm of superstition. Like believing in a supreme being and in afterlife, superstition is inherent to mankind. Almost everybody is superstitious somehow. Superstition is inescapable because our mind functions in a manner that predisposes us to be superstitious.

a. Definition of superstition Superstition is the traditional belief that a certain action or event can cause or foretell an apparently unrelated event. The ancient Romans, for example, resorted to haruspicy to understand the present or to predict future events. Haruspicy is a divination technique that resorts to observation of animal internal parts namely the livers of poultry and sacrificed sheep. The ceremony was conducted under the supervision of a priest called haruspex. It is believed that the method came from the Near East with the Hittites and Babylonians. The Etruscans later spread it into the Roman Empire. There, it became popular, so much so that an institute was open with the goal of perpetuating the tradition. Superstition may be placed under the broader umbrella term known as occultism, which is the study of occult practices, including (but not limited to) magic, alchemy, extra-sensory perception, astrology, spiritualism, religion, and divination. As you can see, talking about every aspect of superstition may not be an achievable goal in this book, but we can always focus on the end result of the occult part of superstition: influence or try to alter the environment or reality to one’s advantage, sometimes at the expense of someone else. Before we get there, it’s important to ask why do we believe in superstition and where does superstition come from? Like I previously said, the way the human works favors a predisposition to believe in the supernatural. The mind interprets what our senses perceive, and that perception is never 100% accurate, which makes it, to a certain extent, a non-natural representation. Because of our The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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Question No. 4: What is Superstition?

imagination and our language capacity, we have come to understand, as opposed to animals, the complexity of our environment. And because we don’t want to confront it alone, we created the supernatural and all the beliefs that come with it, among them religion. I will explain below, in my analysis of the impact of black magic on reality, how three of the most famous occultists of modern times – Éliphas Lévi, Helena Blavatsky, and Aleister Crowley – ultimately created their own religions to give more weight to their doctrines. “Most people believe because they think they have experienced supernatural events personally, or they have heard reliable testimony about the supernatural from those they trust. … We interpret our experiences and other people’s reports within a supernatural framework because that framework is one that is intuitively appealing. It resonates with the way we think the world operates with all manner of hidden structures and mechanisms. … The most obvious origins for supernatural beliefs come from the different forms of religions – from traditional organized ideologies to various types of New Age mysticism that appeal to gods, angels, demons, ghosts, or spirits. Each of the world’s established religions extol beliefs about entities that have supernatural powers. Whether it is priests preaching in pulpits or pagans prancing on the prairies, all religions include some form of supernatural belief. But you don’t have to be religious or spiritual to hold a supersense. For the nonreligious, it can be beliefs about paranormal abilities, psychic powers, telepathy, or any phenomena that defy natural laws.” (Hood, 2009) In common language, superstition is not construed as an attempt nor to alter the environment nor at somebody else’s expense. For instance, some people believe that letting the groom see the wedding dress before the wedding brings bad luck. Here, the focus is on not to let the groom see the wedding dress, as doing so would alter the environment but not at one’s advantage. I will focus on the part of superstition that attempts to alter the environment at one’s advantage and sometimes at the expense of somebody else (which is called black magic) thus, a change sought by the person who initiates the magical act. But, before I go on, I would like to give a few examples of superstitious beliefs that do not alter the environment positively but still they may become an integral part of the believer’s reality. Below are a few examples suggested by Mitch Horowitz of HuffPost: “Breaking a mirror The ancient Romans believed that human life renewed itself in 7-year cycles (mirroring the cycles of the moon). Because a reflection was considered someone’s “magical likeness” - or soul - it followed that if the reflected image got shattered, so did the next 7 years of a person’s health. Mirrors inspire a wide range of superstitions. Victorian parents feared exposing infants to mirrors, believing that a mirror could trap their reflection and stunt their growth. Or, worse still, kill them by imprisoning their innocent souls. Even today, traditional Jewish families cover mirrors after the death of a loved one so as not to risk the departed soul wandering into the reflection and getting lost on its way to eternity. The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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Opening an umbrella indoors Dozens of superstitions surround the ordinary umbrella - both indoors and out. As with many modern conveniences, the umbrella was once a rare luxury owned by royalty, from Persia to Ancient China. They didn’t use it to block the rain but as protection from the sun’s rays - which some believed contained invasive spirits. Many people still shudder at opening an umbrella indoors - some believe that “bad juju” is expelled when an umbrella springs open inside a room. But this taboo has a more practical origin. The first rain umbrellas were very large and tightly sprung. To release such a contraption indoors could cause very real bad luck: Think of all the Victorian lamps, vases, and baubles that met a sudden end thanks to the reckless opening of a high-tension umbrella. The number 13 Was Apollo 13 cursed by its flight number? Should you avoid the 13th floor of a building? Do you need to watch your step on Friday the 13th? Fear of the number 13 is one of humanity’s most enduring superstitions. Perhaps the earliest known origin of this superstition comes from ancient India, where it was considered unlucky for 13 people to sit together. In Nordic mythology, the evil Loki is the 13th guest at a banquet of gods - which ends in argument and violence. The most famous origin involves Judas Iscariot, the so-called traitor apostle, who was the 13th man at the Last Supper. Jesus was crucified on Good Friday, which got linked to the number 13 for a day of unholy luck. Friday the 13th also marked the mass execution of the medieval Knights Templar. Following tensions with the Vatican, the Christian knights were all but wiped out beginning on Friday, October 13th, 1307. So deep is our fear of 13 that even today many hotels are designed without a 13th floor. Jumping the broom Today, the African-American expression “jumping the broom” means getting married - but it comes from an old custom that the newlyweds literally jump over a broom to prove that one of them is not an evil double. In folklore found in both the European Middle Ages and traditional African cultures, vampires and wicked spirits were considered to possess obsessive-compulsive traits. Hence, a malevolent spirit would have to stop to count all the broom’s bristles, exposing a sinister entity that attempted to disguise itself as the bride or groom. Even after the wedding, couples must be careful. In the West, the new husband carries his wife over the threshold, which the Romans believed was crawling with evil spirits, which his act of chivalry helps her avoid. And what about that bridesmaid’s dress you just spent a bundle on? It too goes back to Roman days, where bridesmaids were supposed to distract evil spirits from the wife-to-be. Knocking on wood Today, knocking on wood supposedly brings good luck. The belief stemmed from medieval European churchgoers who would touch wood the churches claimed was from Jesus’ cross. The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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Because of that the believed that touching the wood would establish a connection between them and the Christ.” (Horowitz, 2015) And there are thousands more examples. Yes, superstition is very popular in sports. “Sport is an integral part of popular culture. A country's great sports help shape its heritage and sense of national identity. In the United States, some believe that baseball is the premier American sport. Many writers, including several of our finest novelists, have described the game with religious reverence. Others contend that football or basketball is the true American sport. But most would agree that sport is truly American. The popularity of sport combined with the fact that its participants are a traditionally superstitious group make athletes, particularly professional athletes, the most famous of all superstitious people. Journalists have delighted in revealing the curious habits of the heroes of the playing field. Former Buffalo Bills quarterback Jim Kelly forced himself to vomit before every game, a habit he had practiced since high school. NBA star Chuck Persons used to eat two candy bars before every game: two KitKats, two Snickers, or one of each. Former New York Mets pitcher Turk Wendell, named the most superstitious athlete of all time by Men’s Fitness magazine, would brush his teeth between innings. Wayne (The Great One) Gretzky, former star of the New York Rangers hockey team, always tucked the right side of his jersey behind his hip pads. Although many of the magical beliefs held by athletes are purely individual, the world of sport is also famous for its group or team superstitions. In baseball, it is widely believed that, if a pitcher has held the opposing team hitless, it is bad luck to mention the ‘no-hitter’ in the dugout during the game. Some say the best way to avoid ‘jinxing’ the pitcher is to stay away from him altogether and keep quiet. The Connecticut College women’s basketball team has a group practice that is believed to bring good luck: when they join hands before the start of a game, the players break out of the huddle with a shout of ‘Together!’ This cheer is never used at the beginning of the second half or at any other point in a game, and new player must be educated in its use when they join the team.” (Vyse, 2013)

b. Mythology versus superstition We all know about mythology. For example, Roman and Greek mythologies. I would like to point out that mythology is not superstition. A myth is a story while a superstition is a belief. “A myth can be defined as an ancient legend, story or even a fable of the early history. Greek legends of gods such as Zeus and mortals such as Odysseys are some great myths of our history. A myth can also be used to explain a natural event especially involving supernatural beings. Myths began to develop since the beginning of human existence and civilizations where people had the urge to comprehend the world around them. As science and technological development were rather limited during these times, myths were used as a form of rationalization. It allowed people to make sense of the world in a creative manner. The very creation of the world, the natural elements were all The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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understood through myths. These myths consisted of various characters such as gods and supernatural beings that had various powers and potentials to bring about changes in the human world. Myths were also used to sustain the prevailing social order of the society through traditions, customs, and various rituals. Another function of myths was to operate as a moral tale. On the other hand, A superstition can be defined as a belief in supernatural influences or a practice based on this. This can involve the role of evil spirits, witchcraft, religious ideals, and even certain traditional beliefs. In most societies, there are many superstitions, which are intertwined with the cultural beliefs of the society. Superstitions can also be connected with luck. For example, the belief that a black cat signifies bad luck can be viewed as a superstitious belief because there is no factual or rational basis for it. In the past, the reliance and belief in superstitions were quite high, even though the situation has changed now along with the rapid development in science. In rural areas, these are still believed. Especially in Asian cultures there are many superstitions revolving around astrology, evil spirits, etc.” Myths may sometimes take on a firmer aspect and fall in the realm of superstition once they become beliefs. Therefore, sometimes there is a fine line between myth and superstition. But, the bottom line is: myths do not affect reality, but superstitions do, especially its ramifications. Superstitious beliefs may be either inoffensive – or naïve – or detrimental. The firmer side of superstition is the one that falls into occultism which harbors black magic (witchcraft11, sorcery or wizardry). For example, the Cambridge Dictionary defines superstition as “a belief that is not based on reason or scientific thinking and that explains the causes for events in ways that are connected to magic.”

c. Can superstition alter reality? Anything that has people gossip or write about it can change reality. If we go from the principle that to have a view or approach of something, it has to exist first, we can say that the moment our ancestors began to imagine a supernatural world, reality consequently started to change. Prior to that, reality was what it was: superstition-free. Think of it as a treasure that has been sitting on the ocean floor. It has no value. But, the moment it’s discovered, it starts acquiring value. To answer this question, I illustrate it with three tendencies: Alchemy, lycanthropy, and Freemasonry. But, before I get to them, I would like to first look at the period preceding their emergence to see how the transformation of thought – thus reality –led to these three phenomena. In her book “Superstition and Magic in Early Modern Europe: A reader”, Helen Parish reports that Christian writers first encountered the Latin words superstitio and magia when Greek and Roman writers and rulers applied them to Christianity itself in their combined senses of divination, magic, secret and forbidden practices, and excessive religious fear. Christians, in turn, reversed 11

Witchcraft is the practice of magic, especially black magic; the use of spells and the invocation of spirits.


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the usage: for them, superstition referred to what they considered to be the irrational and false beliefs – that is, the ‘religions’ – of all others besides Christians, and, to a limited extent, Jews, although Christian scripture portrayed some Jews as magicians and the poisonous image of the Jew as sorcerer survived for a long time in later European thought. Christians captured for themselves the old and respected Latin word religio – which originally designated the bond between humans and the gods – and restricted its application to Christianity alone. To the late second-century apologist Tertullian, all pagan religious practice was ‘Roman superstition’. Early Christian teachers like Ignatius of Antioch also pointed out that although the Magi had used their skills as magician-astrologers to find the Christ-child, once they had found their destination, their skills ceased, since they were no longer needed after the fact of the Incarnation and Nativity. To the fourth-century Christian polemicist Lactantius the definitions were crisp and simple: ‘religion is the true cult paid to God – superstition is the false’. In the late sixth century Martin of Braga strongly under the influence of Augustine in his work “On the correction of rustics”, explained how demons had made themselves into pagan gods in order to deceive humans and receive their worship. In Martin’s work, Jove was described as a magician and a sexual corrupter of his wife and daughters. Shortly after Martin, Gregory of Tours in Gaul repeated the theme in his Histories. Finally, the Middle Ages will see a flurry of superstitious activities embodies into its most popular movement: Alchemy, which was practiced on a large scale. It ultimately became a collective belief and had a great impact on the medieval society and on science itself.

i. Alchemy and reality One of the most notable superstitious beliefs was perhaps Alchemy which, along with the Philosopher’s Stone, has left an indelible mark on science. Alchemy is defined as is a way of studying and experimenting with matter that includes elements of chemistry, philosophy, and spirituality. According to Dictionary.com, Alchemy is a medieval philosophy and early form of chemistry whose aims were the transmutation of base metals into gold, the discovery of a cure for all diseases, and the preparation of a potion that gives eternal youth. The imagined substance capable of turning other metals into gold was called the Philosophers’ Stone. “Alchemy is an ancient practice shrouded in mystery and secrecy. Its practitioners mainly sought to turn lead into gold, a quest that has captured the imaginations of people for thousands of years. However, the goals of alchemy went far beyond simply creating some golden nuggets. Alchemy was rooted in a complex spiritual worldview in which everything around us contains a sort of universal spirit, and metals were believed not only to be alive but also to grow inside the Earth. When a base, or common, metal such as lead was found, it was thought to simply be a spiritually and physically immature form of higher metals such as gold. To the alchemists, metals were not the unique substances that populate the Periodic Table, but instead the same thing in different stages of development or refinement on their way to spiritual perfection.” (Radford, 2016). The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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“Today, alchemy might be an insult to science, but back in the day, it was the ultimate reality. Alchemy comes from Arabic ‘al’ meaning ‘the’ and Greek ‘kimiya’, meaning ‘transmutation of metals’. It also has Greco-Egyptian origins, chemeia. Alchemy is the precursor of metallurgy. To understand the importance of alchemy, we have to go back even further in time. In terms of tool making technology, man would use rocks to make tools. Then, he found out that he could extract the metals out of those rocks to make even better and more durable tools and more effective weapons that set the stage for domination over those who did not have access to the technology. Then, he discovered that adding tin to copper yielded to bronze, an even harder alloy. When it comes to tool making technology, man went from stone, to iron and bronze. In the process, metallurgists thought they could eventually master metal transmutation and take it to an even higher level by transforming any metal into gold. Those who engaged in such endeavor were called alchemists, and the activity was called alchemy. What was interesting about alchemy and made future generations associate with superstition was the fact that the alchemist was a VIP and his job was lucrative because most alchemists worked for kings and men of power. Therefore, they had to keep their work secret from the general public. To do so, they attributed special codes to the processes of their activities, which they shared among themselves. But, as a rule of thumb, when a secret is known by more than one person, it ceases to be a secret. Thereafter, their work would be discovered, but could not be understand by the public in a scientific way. For example, alchemists would use the word King for Gold, Queen for Silver, Father and Mother for Sulfur and Mercury respectively, and so on. So, a complete process would look like a story or a poem, which was thought to be a magical formula to recite in order to produce gold or any other precious metals. Since alchemists themselves sought to change natural elements for their own benefits, alchemy was called natural magic. However, the distortion of their work by untrained individual will give a supernatural character to the activity. So, from natural magic, alchemy will become supernatural magic.” Radford, goes on to say that in March 2016, the Chemical Heritage Foundation bought a 17thcentury alchemy manuscript written by Newton. Buried in a private collection for decades, the manuscript detailed how to make “philosophic” mercury, thought to be a step toward making the philosopher's stone — a magical substance thought to have the ability to turn any metal into gold and give eternal life. Curator of rare books at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, James Voelkel said the text was likely copied from an American chemist named George Starkey. It is a fact that, today, Alchemy falls into the realm of pseudoscience. It has no effect on 21st century reality. Did it affect Medieval society? Absolutely! Although Alchemy didn’t produce anything tangible, it did change the behavior of scientists and non-scientists alike. “The preparation of medicines had become a major part of alchemy by the early modern period. John of Rupescissa’s mid-fourteenth-century notion of the preservative ‘quintessence’ and his application of chymical methods to make better medicines from minerals, metals, and plants had been picked up and The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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expanded by later authors such as the pseudo-Lull12 and thereby spread far and wide. … Much of this early interest in chymical medicine has, however, lain in the shadow of a looming sixteenthcentury figure: Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus (1493/94 – 1541), one of the most colorful characters of the early modern period. … Paracelsus believed that powerful medicines could be prepared even from poisonous substances using chymical means of separation, which he called Scheeidung in his native German. Processes including distillation, sublimation, putrefaction, and solution could be used to divide a naturally occurring substance into its three primordial principles of Mercury, Sufur, and Salt. He considered these three the useful and beneficial parts and believe that their separation left behind the toxic ‘dregs’ of the substance. Once purified, the tria prima could be recombined to yield an ‘exalted’ form of the original substance, free from impurities and toxicity, and thus enabled to operate more powerfully and beneficially as a medicine. Always fond of inventing words, Paracelsus gave this process of separation and reintegration the name spagyria. The term has been explained as meaning ‘to separate and (re)combine,’ from the Greek words span and ageirein, meaning ‘to draw out’ and ‘to bring together’. … By the start of 16th century, Latin alchemy had developed in many ways beyond the Arabic al-kimiya that Europe had acquired more than three centuries earlier. The Noble Art’s ancient and central interest in chrysopoeia remained undiminished, and the search for the secrets of transmutation continued with increased vigor, aided by a wealth of new concepts, materials, and observations. In fact, multiple ‘schools’ of chrysopoeia had developed by this time, each promoting particular starting materials or particular procedures, and basing themselves on metallic composition and explanations of how the Philosopher’s Stone could bring about transmutation. … At the same time, alchemy achieved an increasingly visible presence in Early Modern European culture, arousing both admiration and critique. Its ideas, metaphors, products, theories, practices, and practitioners attracted attention from artists, playwrights, preachers, poets, and philosophers. At the end of the fifteenth century, alchemia was entering its golden age. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the age of Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Boyle, and Newton, the age often called the Scientific Revolution, would also prove to be alchemy’s great age” (Principe, 2013) Because of that, it did have a great impact on its time and continue to have a lasting underlying effect. As to its then impact, “having sampled the dynamism and diversity of chymistry13, and its connection to so many other fields of knowledge and creativity, it is hardly surprising that chymistry enjoyed so wide a dispersion in early modern culture. Throughout various branches of human endeavor, it fired the imagination of artists, authors, theologians, and natural philosophers alike, because it shared so many visions and aims with them. Early modern chymistry with its 12

Pseudo-Lull is the name given to a corpus of alchemical writings from the 14th to the 16th century, which appeared under the name of Ramon Llull or rather Raimundus Lullus but did not originate from it. Llull himself, a Catalan encyclopedist, mystic, poet and missionary of the 13th and 14th centuries, criticized alchemy and considered a transformation of base metals into noble metals impossible. (Source: Wikipedia) 13 Old spelling of Chemistry used to designate Alchemy. The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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arresting images and ideas (once we understand them properly and contextually) can tell us much about the general outlooks of the premodern world, a world of which and from which we still have so much more yet to learn.” On the other hand, its impact is long-lasting in the sense that it constitutes an incentive for today’s scientists to base their research on rigor, objectivity, and precision. Today’s researchers and scientists are adamant not to let any non-scientific approach do to modern science what Alchemy did to science in Medieval time. That resolve has its origins at the turn of the 19th century that marked the schism between science and philosophy. Because up until the 18th century, the distinction between science and philosophy was not clear. In fact, science, including alchemy, was called natural philosophy. Thus, Alchemy was a wakeup call. To summarize, Alchemy affected the reality of its time not by making transmutation of metals possible but by pushing people to act and behave a certain way and by eliciting social changes. Its lasting effect manifests itself through the determination of present-day scientists to reject any subjectivity in their endeavors.

ii. Lycanthropy and reality Another example of how superstition can have a lasting impact on our reality is the supernatural phenomenon referred to as lycanthropy which, itself is classified under cryptozoology, a branch that focuses on supernatural and mythological animals. Cryptozoology means the occult or hidden study of supernatural animals. Lycanthropy is a concept revolves around the lycanthrope, a mythological or folkloric human with the ability to shapeshift into a wolf or an therianthrope hybrid wolf-like creature, either purposely or after being placed under a curse or affliction (e.g. via a bite or scratch from another lycanthrope). A lycanthrope is commonly referred to as a werewolf. Early sources for belief in lycanthropy are Petronius and Gervase of Tilbury. Lycanthropy comes from Greek lykos = wolf, and anthrōpos = man or human. Lycanthropy started in medieval Europe and then spread to the New World thanks to colonialism. Witchery and lycanthropy developed at around the same time. “Werewolfery was a common accusation in witch Werewolf, by Lucas Cranach the Elder, c. 1512 trials throughout their history, and it featured even Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons in the Valais witch trials, one of the earliest such The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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trials altogether, in the first half of the 15th century. Likewise, in the Vaud, child-eating werewolves were reported as early as 1448. A peak of attention to lycanthropy came in the late 16th to early 17th century, as part of the European witch-hunts. A number of treatises on werewolves were written in France14 during 1595 and 1615. In France, werewolves were known as “Le maître des forêts” (The master of the forests). Werewolves were sighted in 1598 in Anjou, and a teenage werewolf was sentenced to life imprisonment in Bordeaux in 1603. Henry Boguet wrote a lengthy chapter about werewolves in 1602. In the Vaud, werewolves were convicted in 1602 and in 1624. A treatise by a Vaud pastor in 1653, however, argued that lycanthropy was purely an illusion. After this, the only further record from the Vaud dates to 1670: it is that of a boy who claimed he and his mother could change themselves into wolves, which was, however, not taken seriously. At the beginning of the 17th century witchcraft was prosecuted by James I of England, who regarded ‘werewolves’ as victims of delusion induced by ‘a natural superabundance of melancholic’” Becoming a werewolf involved more than one methods. “Various methods for becoming a werewolf have been reported, one of the simplest being the removal of clothing and putting on a belt made of wolf skin, probably as a substitute for the assumption of an entire animal skin (which also is frequently described). In other cases, the body is rubbed with a magic salve.” (Bennett, 2002). “Drinking rainwater out of the footprint of the animal in question or from certain enchanted streams were also considered effectual modes of accomplishing metamorphosis.” (O’Donnell, 1912) “The 16th century Swedish writer Olaus Magnus says that the Livonian werewolves were initiated by draining a cup of specially prepared beer and repeating a set formula. Ralston in his Songs of the Russian People gives the form of incantation still familiar in Russia. In Italy, France and Germany, it was said that a man or woman could turn into a werewolf if he or she, on a certain Wednesday or Friday, slept outside on a summer night with the full moon shining directly on his face.” (Woodward, 1979). Lycanthropy had a real impact on reality because, unlike Alchemy, its impact was real and could be felt in everyday life. Woodward goes on to say that the curse of lycanthropy was also considered by some scholars as being a divine punishment. Werewolf literature shows many examples of God or saints allegedly cursing those who invoked their wrath with werewolfism. Such is the case of Lycaon, who was turned into a wolf by Zeus as punishment for slaughtering one of his own sons and serving his remains to the gods as a dinner. Those who were excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church were also said to become werewolves. The power of transforming others into wild beasts was attributed not only to malignant sorcerers, but to Christian saints as well. Omnes angeli, boni et Mali, ex virtute naturali habent potestatem transmutandi corpora nostra (“All In France, lycanthropes were called “Loups-garous”. The term is also used to describe a monster by Haitians, the French-speaking people in the Laurentian Mountains of Southern Quebec, Canada, and the Cajun peoples of the Louisiana bayou country. 14


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angels, good and bad have the power of transmutating our bodies”) was the dictum of St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Patrick was said to have transformed the Welsh king Vereticus into a wolf; Natalis supposedly cursed an illustrious Irish family whose members were each doomed to be a wolf for seven years. In other tales the divine agency is even more direct, while in Russia, again, men supposedly became werewolves when incurring the wrath of the Devil. I would say that lyncanthropy’s impact on reality was greater than that of Alchemy because to its adepts, it was something that could be done and undone at will. According to Woodward, various methods have existed for removing the werewolf form. In antiquity, the Ancient Greeks and Romans believed in the power of exhaustion in curing people of lycanthropy. The victim would be subjected to long periods of physical activity in the hope of being purged of the malady. This practice stemmed from the fact that many alleged werewolves would be left feeling weak and debilitated after committing depredations. In medieval Europe, traditionally, there are three methods one can use to cure a victim of werewolfism; medicinally (usually via the use of wolfsbane), surgically or by exorcism. However, many of the cures advocated by medieval medical practitioners proved fatal to the patients. A Sicilian belief of Arabic origin holds that a werewolf can be cured of its ailment by striking it on the forehead or scalp with a knife. Another belief from the same culture involves the piercing of the werewolf's hands with nails. Sometimes, less extreme methods were used. In the German lowland of Schleswig-Holstein, a werewolf could be cured if one were to simply address it three times by its Christian name, while one Danish belief holds that simply scolding a werewolf will cure it.

In modern times, the impact of lycanthropy on reality is still being felt. Lycanthropy has entered the arts, literature, and cinema. Before the end of the 19th century, the Greeks believed that the corpses of werewolves, if not destroyed, would return to life in the form of wolves or hyenas which prowled battlefields, drinking the blood of dying soldiers. In the same vein, in some rural areas of Germany, Lon Chaney Jr. as The Wolf Man (1941). Poland and Northern France, it was once Phot credit: Internet Movie Database (IMDB) believed that people who died in mortal sin came back to life as blood-drinking wolves. These “undead” werewolves would return to their human corpse form at daylight. They were dealt with by decapitation with a spade and exorcism by the parish priest. The head would then be thrown into a stream, where the weight of its sins was thought to weigh it down. Sometimes, the same methods used to dispose of ordinary vampires


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would be used. Examples of lycanthropy’s legacy, especially with regard to modern fiction include the following accounts: •

•

•

•

•

The 1897 novel Dracula drew on earlier mythologies of werewolves and similar legendary demons and “was to voice the anxieties of an age”, and the “fears of late Victorian patriarchy”. (Sellers, 2001) The first feature film to use an anthropomorphic werewolf was Werewolf of London in 1935. The main werewolf of this film is a dapper London scientist who retains some of his style and most of his human features after his transformation, as lead actor Henry Hull was unwilling to spend long hours being made up by makeup artist Jack Pierce. (Searles, 1988). Universal Studios drew on a Balkan tale of a plant associated with lycanthropy as there was no literary work to draw upon, unlike the case with vampires. There is no reference to silver nor other aspects of werewolf lore such as cannibalism. The Wolfman (1941). When his brother dies, Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney) returns to Wales and reconciles with his father (Claude Rains). While there, he visits an antique shop and, hoping to impress Gwen (Evelyn Ankers), the attractive shopkeeper, buys a silver walking cane. That same night he kills a wolf with it, only to later learn that he actually killed a man (Bela Lugosi). A gypsy (Maria Ouspenskaya) explains that it was her son, a werewolf, that he killed, and that Larry is now one himself. (YouTube) Underworld (2003). According to Wikipedia, the film centers on the secret history of vampires and lycans (an abbreviated form of lycanthrope, which means werewolf). It is the first installment in the Underworld franchise. The main plot revolves around Selene (Kate Beckinsale), a vampire Death Dealer hunting Lycans. She finds herself attracted to a human, Michael Corvin (Scott Speedman), who is being targeted by the Lycans. After Michael is bitten by a Lycan, Selene must decide whether to do her duty and kill him or go against her clan and save him. Alongside Beckinsale and Speedman, the film stars Michael Sheen, Shane Brolly, and Bill Nighy. Wer (2013). An attorney (A.K. Cook) oversees a series of medical tests conducted on an afflicted loner (Brian Scott O'Connor) suspected of slaughtering an entire family during a camping trip and discovers that he's a lycanthrope when he escapes to embark on a terrifying urban rampage. (IMDB)

Moreover, “Nazi Germany twice used ‘Werwolf’ (as the mythical creature's name is spelled in German). In 1942-43 it was the codename for one of Hitler's headquarters (Werwolf Wehrmacht HQ). In the war's final days, it was the name of ‘Operation Werwolf’ aimed at creating a commando force which would operate behind enemy lines as the Allies advanced through Germany itself. Two fictional depictions of ‘Operation Werwolf’ - the US television series True Blood and the 2012 novel Wolf Hunter, by J.L. Benét - mix the two meanings of ‘Werwolf’ by depicting the 1945 diehard Nazi commandos as being actual werewolves.” Of course not, the The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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werewolf movement did not involve actual werewolves, but the codename is proof that lycanthropy, as a myth, was deeply rooted in German culture. In a message that Werner Naumann, Goebbels’s top aide, sent out in early April 1945 to the Nazi Party’s regional propaganda offices he expressed his concern in these terms: “As was to be expected, the establishment of the Werewolves in the areas occupied by the enemy, but also in the Reich itself, has called forth all the most active fighters of our people. The proclamation of unconditional resistance will force a decision in Germany. ... We do not expect that the overwhelming majority of the German people will become Werewolf fighters in the next few days. ... Those critics of the Werewolf movement who do their best to come up with clever arguments against the call for total resistance must be pitilessly exposed, making it clear that their arguments are based only on their own miserable cowardice. ... Our situation is grave and difficult. The only way to escape this situation is unconditional resistance. If we make the enemy occupation of Germany hellishly difficult, sooner than some today expect he will rather give up than force his already weary troops to fight an underground terror movement. ... For us, the Werewolf movement is the symbol of unconditional resistance. We propagandists must now devote our full effort to that end.”

iii. Freemasonry and reality Contrary to popular belief, there is no superstition and no witchcraft in freemasonry. It is rather a fraternity; in fact, it’s the world’s oldest and largest fraternity. Regarding the fraternity’s organization, Wikipedia tells us that “it (Freemasonry or Masonry) consists of fraternal organizations that trace their origins to the local fraternities of stonemasons, which from the end of the fourteenth century regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities and clients. The degrees of freemasonry retain the three grades of medieval craft guilds, those of Apprentice, Journeyman or fellow (now called Fellowcraft), and Master Mason. These are the degrees offered by Craft (or Blue Lodge) Freemasonry. Members of these organizations are known as Freemasons or Masons. There are additional degrees, which vary with locality and jurisdiction, and are usually administered by different bodies than the craft degrees. The basic, local organizational unit of Freemasonry is the Lodge. The Lodges are usually supervised and governed at the regional level (usually coterminous with either a state, province, or national border) by a Grand Lodge or Grand Orient. There is no international, worldwide Grand Lodge that supervises all of Freemasonry; each Grand Lodge is independent, and they do not necessarily recognize each other as being legitimate. Modern Freemasonry broadly consists of two main recognition groups. Regular Freemasonry insists that a volume of scripture is open in a working lodge, that every member profess belief in a Supreme Being, that no women are admitted, and that the discussion of religion and politics is banned. Continental Freemasonry is now the general term for the ‘liberal’ jurisdictions who have removed some, or all, of these restrictions.”


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Another characteristic of freemasonry is that it “contains many of the elements of a religion; its teachings enjoin morality, charity, and obedience to the law of the land. For admission the applicant is required to be an adult male believing in the existence of a Supreme Being and in the immortality of the soul. In practice, some lodges have been charged with prejudice against Jews, Catholics, and nonwhites. Generally, Freemasonry in Latin countries has attracted freethinkers and anticlericals, whereas in the Anglo-Saxon countries, the membership is drawn largely from among white Protestants.” But, why then freemasonry is considered occult? First, let’s look at the fraternity’s history. Freemasonry evolved from the construction boom of cathedrals in the Middle Ages. The The Freemason Symbol builders were nothing more than stonemasons. But, as with any boom, there is always a cool down period or even a decline, cathedral building was set to experience a decline. Thus, the organizations, formally known as Lodges, responsible for recruiting members, started to accept non-Lodge members, called free masons, in order to stay afloat. The Freemason’s symbol is not a sigil (magical symbol). It represents a square and a compass, which are still among the traditional tools of stonemasons. The "G" stands for God and is to remind Masons that God is at the center of Freemasonry. In this context it can also stand for Great Architect of the Universe (a non-denominational reference to God). To answer the question as to why freemasonry is perceived as occult, it’s because after the decline of cathedral building, the organization, though no longer associated with cathedral building, retains its sine qua non condition to become a member: follow a multi-step initiation process marked by rituals known only by its members. I would say that freemasons have been misunderstood and stigmatized over the centuries. To lend an occult nature to the organization, some people go as far as assimilating the ‘eye’ on the US dollar bill with a masonic symbol when it’s not. That set of symbols was popular in the 18th century but existed way before then. “The Eye of Providence, often interpreted as the eye of God watching over man, depicts an eye enclosed in a triangle and surrounded by rays of light. Found on the back of the US one-dollar bill, the Eye was adopted as part of the country's Great Seal in 1782. While the symbol in its modern form emerged in the West in the 17th and 18th centuries, representations of an all-seeing eye existed in ancient Egypt.” (Worldbook, 2013) “Freemasons often say that they ‘are not a secret society, but rather a society with secrets’. The secrets of Freemasonry are the various modes of recognition – grips (handshakes), passwords and signs (hand gestures) that indicate one is a Freemason. While these (and the rest of masonic ritual) have all been exposed (multiple times) through the years, Freemasons continue act as if they were secret, and promise not to discuss them with outsiders (more out of tradition than a need for actual secrecy).” (Hodapp, 2005) And, of course, the unwillingness to discuss one’s secrets with outsiders, always leads to conspiracy theories. If you ask me for my position on how freemasonry affects reality, well, it’s two-fold. First, I would say The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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that the impact of freemasonry on our environment is a positive and a multi-centennial one if we consider the cathedrals they’ve built. They are, of course not only places of worship, but also historical landmarks throughout the world. “For many centuries cathedrals have stood in our towns and cities, visible signs of our Christian heritage and the focal point of the church in its locality. In the Middle Ages they were centres of learning and a source of inspiration through their art and architecture. Frequently they were the goal of pilgrims who travelled to visit the shrines of the saints. On these pilgrimages men and women and children of all walks of life, rich and poor, good and bad, travelled together. It was a time to share experiences, of storytelling, to receive and give support and encouragement in life’s journey or pilgrimage. Today our cathedrals are still at the center of the Christian life of the area, still serving their local communities and the thousands of people who visit them each year from all parts of the world. To these present-day pilgrims they offer a welcome, provide hospitality and a place of prayer, quiet reflection or meditation to people of all faiths or of none. There are guided tours, often on special themes, and presentations on a wide range of local, national and international issues. Through their Education Departments cathedrals work closely with local schools, offering visits and courses at all levels of the National Curriculum. In some cathedrals students can experience the daily life of the monks who lived there, in others they can trace the history of its building and decoration. Cathedrals are a focal point for the communities they serve and are there to be enjoyed by everyone!” Specifically, in America, the freemasons have left their legacy which the National Cathedral in Washington and the Statue of Liberty immortalize. Several eminent personalities have been freemasons. They include George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Winston Churchill, Mozart, Davy Crockett, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Houdini, Gerald Ford, Henry Ford, John Wayne, even Colonel Sanders. On the other hand, freemasonry has, however, a rather lackluster image because it does not embrace feminism. It’s an all-male organization. Although it claims not accept atheists and that believing in God is a plus when it comes to membership granting, it leaves out women who are also children of God. According to Julian Rees, “The male order, much as they may deny it, is all about wearing more and more elaborate regalia and advancing to a higher rank. Male masonry is peopled by old grey beards, the aristocracy, major generals of the army, and they're nearly all male chauvinists.” When I put side by side the facts that cathedrals are deeply rooted in most Western cultures and the gender-based nature of Freemasonry, I can deduce that it’s arguable that it affects reality, but in an ambivalent manner. Neither Alchemy, lycanthropy nor freemasonry, although they affect reality by having people think or behave a certain way, are not considered black magic because they’re devoid of the use of spells, witchcraft, and necromancy or the invocation of spirits. But, they all have a metaphysical aspect for they’re all about what’s out there to know (ontology) and they offer a way to explore or know it (epistemology). Now, the question is: does magic, especially black magic – defined as the


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attempt to influence the environment to one’s advantage – which falls into the metaphysical realm as well, affect reality?

d. Can black magic alter reality? Black magic is part of the broader concept known as occultism, which is divided into ceremonial magic or magic practiced by more than two individuals at a time during a ceremony-like performance and hermetic magic or magic practiced by one individual alone or with the help of an assistant. Usually, the occultists’ goal is to effectively influence the environment or reality at their advantage or somebody else’s advantage, usually considered as a client. The influence of reality may also include influencing people’s mind. I previously explained how the CIA tried to influence people’s mind through the MKULTRA project, now declassified. The Soviets thought they could do that too. In that line of activities, I also explained how the brain is not equipped to decode microwave messages let alone metaphysical and intangible messages emanating from somebody else’ thought process. That would take a miracle to achieve such goal. David Hume defines a miracle as an event that violates a law of nature (that view is not in line with that of religious people). To physically alter reality, one needs to resort to science and physics. But, occultists have always thought and still think they can bypass science and interface directly with reality. Superstition and Alchemy – see above – set the stage for the emergence of very influential 19thcentury occultists such as Éliphas Lévi, Helena Blavatsky, and Aleister Crowley, for example, who have redefined occultism. The scope of their views is far-reaching. They have influenced, each in his own way, their generations not through their magic rituals or wizardry but through their beliefs, views, or doctrines. But, the emergence and the influence of these occultism heavy weights have their roots in a period which spans at least over seven centuries, basically from the beginning of current era up until the Renaissance period with a peak in Medieval times. Magic, like we saw above for superstition, was arguably an integral part of reality, which it heavily impacted through maleficium, also called sorcery, witchcraft or black magic. Its impact on reality went down in history and is associated especially with the European witch-hunt era where thousands of people, namely women, lost their lives. Éliphas Lévi, Helena Blavatsky, and Aleister Crowley claimed to have engaged in high magic or transcendental magic, a kind of magic superior to that of the witches and their predecessors. So, let’s begin with the dynamics of magic in the time of the Romans. Helen Parish explains that Roman religion was one thing for Christians, and although they often called it both superstition and magic, magic generally was quite another. Christians knew that Roman law had condemned magic, especially magic worked by private practitioners for their own or their clients’ private and usually harmful ends, often as profoundly as Christians themselves did. Pliny the Elder had dismissed much magic in the Roman world as ‘magical vanities’. The magicians’ techniques included the use of incantations, inscribed amulets, images, texts, and the The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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use of magical substances. The emperor Augustus was said to have burned the books of the diviners; the third-century emperor Septimius Severus was said to have buried all the magic books his agents could collect in the tomb of Alexander the Great; an imperial law of 297 condemned sorcerers because of the private and secret nature of their activities and their destructive powers. The Christian historian Eusebius (260 – 340) accused Maxentius, the opponent of the Christianfavoring imperial claimant Constantine, of using magicians to defend Rome against Constantine’s legitimate invasion. Several panegyrics15 of Constantine and other early Christian emperors contrasted the ‘divine teachings’ that guided them to the ‘superstitious magic’ to which their pagan rivals resorted. In these instances, ‘magic’ seems to have meant to Christians something distinct from pagan religion in general, and the enemies of the Christian emperors were thus doubly condemned – for superstitious paganism and for the use of magic. “While ‘magic’ obviously served as a polemical term, even its polemical usage presupposed a shared understanding of magic as a cluster of countercultural rituals worked privately for the magicians’ personal ends or those of clients, the term ‘magic’ was sometimes used for the rituals of insiders (even members of elites) as well as outsiders or for the rites of people who became defined as outsiders only because they used magic. To brand a Christian, a pagan, or a Jew as a magician was to use a word with a prior and independent meaning and to give it abusive, polemical application” (Kieckhefer, 1994). These views will impact Roman Law. “In a law of 319/320 the emperor Constantine prohibited the private consultation of diviners, but also permitted the public practice of divination, an old and respected component of Roman religion, although he also noted that Christians could not legally be compelled to participate in public sacrifices. Constantine also prohibited any haruspex16 from entering a private house. Constantius II dealt savagely with those accused of any form of magic outside those permitted by Roman religion and custom.” (Barb, 1963). This evil-based view of magic or maleficium will set the stage for the witchcraft movement of Early modern Europe. The concept of witchcraft, as we know it today, was profoundly different in Early modern Europe. Witchcraft17 was practiced solely with the intent to harm. “Like magic itself, witchcraft is a term that carries manifold connotations. Very broadly construed, it can simply denote wicked or harmful magic. Witchcraft also typically entails common or low magic worked via simple spells, charms, and curses, as opposed to the complex ritual systems of high or learned magic. … Classical Greek and Roman literature contains many descriptions of women using harmful magic as well as descriptions of more profoundly malevolent creatures. Though of divine origin, Circe is often considered to be a witch. Certainly, she used harmful magic against Odysseus and his men, and there seems no real motivation for her actions other than some inherent malice toward humanity. 15

A panegyric is a speech or writing singing the praise of someone. See definition page 100. 17 The term veneficium was sometimes used by authorities to refer to witchcraft in medieval and early modern Europe. According to Michael Bailey, in the Roman world, venecium retained its first meaning of the act of poisoning, but it also became a more general term for harmful acts performed by any magical means. 16


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The character of Medea can be seen as even more profoundly malevolent. Depicted in numerous pieces of classical literature, she has somewhat different attributes, according to which version the myth is followed. She is often said to have killed her own brother and dismembered his body to perform a spell to protect her lover Jason as he fled with her from the land of Colchis. Later, when Jason fell in love with another princess, Medea gave her a robe that engulfed her in flames when she put it on. After this, to punish Jason, she killed her own children by him and fled in a chariot drawn by dragons. She was considered to be a priestess of the terrible goddess Hecate and in league with various forces of the underworld, and like Circe, she became a major archetype for witchcraft in later medieval and early modern Europe” (Bailey, 2007) Rumors, most of the time unfounded, and literature – oral and written – led to an inherent hatred manifested towards sorcery, sorcerers, and witches through a flurry of witch-hunts, trials, and extrajudicial executions – most often by immolation – throughout Europe. “However, after the beginning of the 16th century, trials for witchcraft declined in number quickly, even in those regions in which the trials had most quickly developed. In Lucerne, Lausanne, Fribourg, Bern and Neuchâtel, for example, where the number of trials had reached more than thirty in the decade between 1477 and 1486, and nearly twenty in the following decade, there were only ten trials in the decade 1497 – 1506, and none during the decade 1507 – 16.” (Blauert, 1989) “The decline of witch hunts, like their origins, was gradual. By the late 16th century, many prosperous and professional people in western Europe were accused, so that the leaders of society began to have a personal interest in checking the hunts. The legal use of torture declined in the 17th and 18th centuries, and there was a general retreat from religious intensity following the wars of religion (from the 1560s to 1640s). The gradual demise during the late 17th and early 18th century of the previous religious, philosophical, and legal worldview encouraged the ascendancy of an existent but often suppressed skepticism; increasing literacy, mobility, and means of communication set the stage for social acceptance of this changing outlook. Nevertheless, the reasons for the decline in the witch hunts are as difficult to discern as the reasons for their origins. The theory best supported by the evidence is that the increasing power of the centralized courts such as the Inquisition and the Parliament acted to begin a process of “decriminalization” of witchcraft. These courts reduced the number of witch trials significantly by 1600, half a century before legal theory, legislation, and theology began to dismiss the notion of witchcraft in France and other countries.” (Lewis et al., 2018) The leniency towards witchcraft adepts and the revisionism in favor of the whole concept will last about two centuries at the end of which magic will take on new meanings and became more and more accepted by society. Although still viewed as having major downsides, magic was about to be redefined and finally gained a ‘civilized’ status once and for all at the turn of the 19th century. First came Éliphas Lévi with his doctrine of high magic or transcendental magic. Then, Madame Blavatsky with her doctrine known as Theosophy, and Aleister Crowley with his doctrine Thelema.


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i. Éliphas Lévi (1810 - 1875) and reality He is the Father of high magic. He was born Alphonse Louis Constant in Paris and was better known as a ceremonial magician. But, he was a socialist politician turned occultist when the French Second Republic came to an end after the coup organized by Napoleon III. To understand his beliefs and his doctrine, it’s important to know what magic and being a magician represented for him. He defined magic as “the divinity of man conquered by science in union with faith; the true Magi are Men-Gods, in virtue of their intimate union with the divine principle. … practice magic is to be a quack; to know magic is to be a sage.” To him, the magician has the following duties: •

•

•

“He looks on the wicked as invalids whom one must pity and cure; the world, with its errors and vices, is to him God's hospital, and he wishes to serve in it. They are without fears and without desires, dominated by no falsehood, sharing no error, loving without illusion, suffering without impatience, reposing in the quietude of eternal thought... Éliphas Lévi a Magus cannot be ignorant, for magic implies superiority, mastership, majority, and majority signifies emancipation by knowledge. The Magus welcomes pleasure, accepts wealth, deserves honor, but is never the slave of one of them; he knows how to be poor, to abstain, and to suffer; he endures oblivion willingly because he is lord of his own happiness, and expects or fears nothing from the caprice of fortune. He can love without being beloved; he can create imperishable treasures and exalt himself above the level of honors or the prizes of the lottery. He possesses that which he seeks, namely, profound peace. He regrets nothing which must end but remembers with satisfaction that he has met with good in all. His hope is a certitude, for he knows that good is eternal and evil transitory. He enjoys solitude but does not fly the society of man; he is a child with children, joyous with the young, staid with the old, patient with the foolish, happy with the wise. He smiles with all who smile, and mourns with all who weep; applauding strength, he is yet indulgent to weakness; offending no one, he has himself no need to pardon, for he never thinks himself offended; he pities those who misconceive him, and seeks an opportunity to serve them; by the force of kindness only does he avenge himself on the ungrateful... Judge not; speak hardly at all; love and act.”

According to John Michael Greer, “Faith, for Lévi, begins where reason can go no further. This rule applies just as much to the die-hard rationalist skeptic as it does to the devout Christian; neither The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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one, after all, can carry out a complete, objective inventory of the things that exist in order to determine whether God is among them, and so the statements ‘there is a God’ and ‘there is no God’ are equally matters of faith. For that matter, the rationalist claim that human beings ought to make choices on the basis of reason, rather than any other criterion, isn’t a statement of fact but, rather, a value judgement that rests on a galaxy of (usually) unexamined preconceptions every bit as resistant to objective proof as the theological claims of the believer. Since every claim that can be made about things human beings cannot know is as faith based as any other, Lévi argued, the sensible course is to choose a faith that does not contradict anything that is known to be true about the world and yet appeals to those other human capacities – particularly the aesthetic sense and the needs of the heart – with which reason is not well equipped to deal” (Greer et al., 2017) “The generation of occultists that followed Levi regarded him as its guide and master. And it was not only in France that his name was revered. Kenneth Mackenzie, as we have seen, came to Paris to sit at his feet, MacGregor Mathers called him a 'great qabalist', and Aleister Crowley believed himself to be a reincarnation of Levi. All of these men were involved, at various times, in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn which had a profound influence on the development of occultism in the West. Levi, therefore, can be considered as one of the key figures in the history of modern occultism. ... As a radical thinker Levi introduced no very original ideas. But he was in many ways ahead of his time and he differed from many of his fellow socialists in adhering firmly to Catholicism and in attempting to base his political philosophy on Christian principles. Though he was not capable of constructing a profound political theory he did have the ability to see certain truths and to point them out in a succinct and pithy way. For example, in Les Portes de l'avenir, he says: ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity! Three words which seem to shine and are in fact full of shadow! Three truths which, in coming together, form a triple lie! For they destroy one another. Liberty necessarily manifests inequality, and equality is a levelling process that does not permit liberty, because the heads that rise higher than others must always be forced down to the mean. The attempt to establish equality and liberty together produce an interminable struggle ... that makes fraternity among men impossible.’” (McIntosh, 2011) It's important to note that Lévi was an innovator in the sense that he related the Cabala with the Taro. “In his “Doctrine et rituel de la haute magie”, he connects the twenty-two trumps with the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the four suits with the four letters of the tetragrammaton or Name of God and the ten numbered cards of each suit with the ten Sephiroth.” He also reshuffled traditional magic by introducing the notion of ‘Astral Light’ or ‘Universal Agent’, which he perhaps borrowed from Mesmer. “He used this to explain all magical workings and apparitions. ‘The primordial light,’ he wrote, ‘which is the vehicle of all ideas, is the mother of all forms . . . Hence the Astral Light, or terrestrial fluid, which we call the Great Magnetic Agent, is saturated with all kinds of images and reflections.’” “The importance of the astral light of Lévi’s teachings is that it allows a psychological interpretation of magic to explain some of the The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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things that magic is traditionally held to be able to do. According to the traditions of folklore and the manuals of magic alike, a magical blessing or curse can affect a person who does not know that the powers of magic have been invoked for his help or damnation. A purely psychological account that accepts modern notions about the absolute dependence of mind on matter and conceives of thought as a mere side effect of certain lumps of meat called human brains, cannot explain this sort of action at a distance. The existence of a medium that allows influences to pass from one mind to another takes care of this difficulty. It also solves several other crucial questions raised by any attempt to take traditional magical lore seriously in the modern world. The predictive power of astrology, for example, can readily be explained by a subtle medium that is influenced in complex ways by the angles of the sun, moon, and planets make with one another in relation to an observer, while other forms of divination can be understood as different modes of sensing the flow of influences through the astral light. Lévi argues that every thought, word, and action, shapes the astral light to some extent. Under most conditions, though, these effects are short lived and have little impact, because they are poorly formulated and sent out into the astral light with very little momentum. The more clearly we formulate an intention and the more forcefully we back it up with concentration and will, on the other hand, the more influence it will have on the astral light, and the more effectively it will shape the thoughts and actions of other beings. One core aspect of the training of the magician, therefore, centers on learning how to use the imagination and will to define an intention clearly and project it out into the astral light with as much force as possible. Another consists of learning how not to be influenced by the intentions and imaginations of other beings, in order to have the freedom to act independently … Lévi’s Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic is thus also a magical handbook, one that lays out a specific and entirely workable course of training that can be followed by the aspiring mage. His goal throughout The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic is to force his readers to think for themselves, to look past the obvious surface meanings of his words to grasp a message that is not meant for the clueless.” (Greer, 2017) How should Lévi’s legacy in occultism be translated? “Whereas magic had hitherto been regarded by most people as a means of manipulating the forces of nature and by many as a dangerous superstition, Levi presented it as a way of drawing the will through certain channels and turning the magician into a more fully realized human being. This has, of course, always been the real purpose of theurgy as opposed to the cruder forms of magic, and Levi was not the first to express it in writing, but he was the first to popularize it on a large scale.” Moreover, as opposed to Helena Blavatsky and Aleister Crowley (see below) whose personalities were largely criticized, Lévi was a man of good character “Apart from his rather shabby treatment of his mistress Eugenie, the mother of the son he never saw, there seems to have been little that was ignoble in Levi’s life. All testament points to his having been a man of courage, honesty, warmth and compassion. It was these qualities, as much as his teaching, that endeared him to his pupils.”


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ii. Helena Blavatsky (1831 – 1891) and reality She was born Yelena Petrovna von Hahn in Yekaterinoslav, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) and was known as Madame Blavatsky – though she preferred to be called HPB. In 1875, she co-founded in New York City with Olcott and William Quan Judge the Theosophical Society which promoted Theosophy, an esoteric religion, meaning a religion not open to the public (as opposed to Aleister Crowley’s Thelema, see below). Theosophy itself comes from Greek Theos = God, and Sophia = wisdom. Thus, Theosophy means god-wisdom or divine wisdom. She laid out her views and beliefs in her book Isis Unveiled, in which she described Theosophy as “the synthesis of science, religion and philosophy”. Five years later, in 1880, she and Olcott moved to India and converted to Buddhism but held onto Theosophy. Her efforts to promote it were met with British opposition. In 1885, she returned to Europe and Madame Blavatsky, c. 1877 settled in London where she published many books, among them The Secret Doctrine. Blavatsky’s views were influenced by Western esoteric currents like Ariosophy, Anthroposophy, and the New Age Movement. At the peak of her career, she was accused of being a charlatan, a psychic, and a fraudster who exploited the public’s naiveté. Commenting on Blavatsky’s views and beliefs, historian Goodrick-Clarke stated: “The underlying theme among these diverse topics [in Isis Unveiled] is the existence of an ancient wisdom-religion, an ageless occult guide to the cosmos, nature and human life. The many faiths of man are said to derive from a universal religion known to both Plato and the ancient Hindu sages. The wisdomreligion is also identified with Hermetic philosophy as ‘the only possible key to the Absolute in science and theology’ (I, vii). Every religion is based on the same truth or ‘secret doctrine’, which contains ‘the alpha and omega of universal science’ (I, 511). This ancient wisdom-religion will become the religion of the future (I, 613). … Revolving around Blavatsky's idea that all the world's religions stemmed from a single ‘Ancient Wisdom’, which she connected to the Western esotericism of ancient Hermeticism and Neoplatonism. … Theosophy disseminated an elaborate philosophical edifice involving a cosmogony, the macrocosm of the universe, spiritual hierarchies, and intermediary beings, the latter having correspondences with a hierarchical conception of the microcosm of man” (Goodrick-Clarke, 2004) Peter Washington identified three main objectives behind Blavatsky’s doctrine: 1. “To form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color. 2. To encourage the study of Comparative Religion, Philosophy, and Science. The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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3. To investigate the unexplained laws of Nature and the powers latent in man.

He believed that these three precepts aimed at the ‘discovery of the powers latent in man through the occult study of science, philosophy and religion [which] shall be the preferred route to the social harmony and equality which will prefigure – and perhaps become – the divine harmony.’” (Washington, 1993) Blavatsky’s doctrine was eclectic. As Goodrick-Clarke put it: “Blavatsky's writings garnered the materials of Neoplatonism, Renaissance magic, Kabbalah, and Freemasonry, together with ancient Egyptian and Greco-Roman mythology and religion, joined by Eastern doctrines taken from Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta to present the idea of an ancient wisdom handed down from prehistoric times.” Her views on the origins of life resembled rather a fairy tale. She divided the races into root races, each one having originated from different parts of the planet and from Atlantis. Some incoherence may also be noted. For example, at first, she didn’t believe in reincarnation, but changed her view after her trip to India. She went down in history for what she was: a popular occultist because esotericism was popular during her lifetime. Her impact on her contemporaries and on posterity is highly questionable. The authenticity of her writings was questioned. “For our own part, we regard [Blavatsky] neither as the mouthpiece of hidden seers, nor as a mere vulgar adventuress; we think that she has achieved a title to permanent remembrance as one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting imposters in history.” (Campbell, 1980) However, Blavatsky did have some influence and her doctrine was positively received by some. Freemasonry – see above – drew from Blavatsky’s doctrine, Theosophy. “For all its modern character as an ‘old boys club’, Freemasonry began as an expression of universal brotherhood and egalitarianism, two ideals that were at the foundation of Theosophy. The truth was out there, and Helena Petrovna was determined to find it. She was indeed ‘in search of the unknown,’ and now, having absorbed her great grandfather’s library, she had some idea of where to look for it” (Lachman, 2012) “[Blavatsky was] one of the most significant, controversial, and prolific of modern esotericists. ... It is more than evident that, whatever one thinks of the more flamboyant aspects of this remarkable and many-sided woman, she possessed a keen intellect and a wideranging vision of what occultism could be in the modern world.” (Ellwood, 2005) As opposed to Freemasonry, “Blavatsky's Theosophy was able to appeal to women by de-emphasizing the importance of gender and allowing them to take on spiritual leadership equal to that of men, thus allowing them a greater role than that permitted in traditional Christianity” (Bednarowski, 1980), “Blavatsky's Theosophy has been cited as an influence on the New Age Movement, an esoteric current that emerged in Western nations during the 1970s.” (Bevir, 1994) According to New Age The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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encyclopedia, “No single organization or movement has contributed so many components to the New Age Movement as the Theosophical Society. ... It has been the major force in the dissemination of occult literature in the West in the twentieth century.” Finally, the mission statement of the Theosophical Society co-founded by Blavatsky could serve as model for many modern society’s organizations: 1. To form the nucleus of a universal brotherhood of humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color. 2. The study of ancient and modern religions, philosophies, and sciences, and the demonstration of the importance of such study. 3. The investigation of the unexplained laws of nature and the psychical powers latent in man.

iii. Aleister Crowley (1875 – 1947) and reality Aleister Crowley was born Edward Alexander Crowley in Hastings, East Sussex, England, United Kingdom. He was notorious especially because he was a recreational drug user, a bisexual, and an individualist social critic. He was dubbed “the wickedest man in the world” and he was a Satanist. He was also a sexual magic adept. If it all stopped there, present generations wouldn’t probably know about him. His impact on reality cuts deeper. We need to look beyond the man and his sexual orientation. What was the essence of Crowley’s views? He created a belief system, Thelema, that scholars describe as a religion. To some, it looked more like a new religious movement and a magico-religious doctrine at the same time. His goal was to bring oriental wisdom to Europe and to restore paganism in a purer form. Crowley wasn’t clear about what he meant by paganism. Also, he had several definitions of magic. In his book Magick in Theory and Practice, Crowley defined Magick as “the Science and Art of causing change to occur in Crowley in ceremonial garb, conformity with Will”. He also told his disciple Karl Germer that in 1912 “Magick is getting into communication with individuals who exist on a higher plane than ours. Mysticism is the raising of oneself to their level.” (Churton, 2011). “Crowley incorporated concepts and terminology from South Asian religious traditions like yoga and Tantra into his Thelemic system, believing that there was a fundamental underlying resemblance between Western and Eastern spiritual systems.” (Djurdjevic, 2014). Crowley believed that the twentieth century marked humanity's entry to the Aeon of Horus, a new era in which humans would take increasing control of their destiny. He believed that this Aeon follows on from the Aeon of Osiris, in which paternalistic religions like Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism dominated the world, and that this in turn had followed the Aeon of Isis, which had been maternalistic and dominated by goddess worship. (Drury, 2012). Magick, for Crowley, is a third The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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way between religion and science, giving The Equinox the subtitle of “The Method of Science; the Aim of Religion.” (Asprem, 2008) Colin D. Campbell describes Crowley’s philosophy, Thelema, in these terms: “Thelema means ‘will’ in Greek, spelled Qelhma, and adherents to the philosophy are generally known as Thelemites. Based on his acceptance and understanding of The Book of The Law, Crowley holds Thelema apart from many religious movements in that it’s highly individualistic and focuses on every individual doing their will. There is no universal moral that every adherent must be held accountable to, save for that one injunction, whose exercise and practice is left to every individual. … Perhaps the best-known (and equally misunderstood) tenet of Thelema is held in its principal maxim: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. It is without a doubt the most potent expression of the central idea of Thelema, and without context seems to advocate the abandonment of all principled behavior entirely! However, doing your will is quite different than doing what you want, and considerably more difficult. After all, the hedonistic acquiescence to every fleeting whim is likely a distraction from what you feel you should be doing with your life. Though momentarily fulfilling, staying true to your will requires a great deal more discipline than most people think. What you will to do is truly your life’s calling, discovered over time as the natural course of an introspective life steers you toward an understanding of who you are.” (Campbell, 2018) With regard to Crowley’s influence, Marco Pasi said that “Crowley has remained an influential figure, both amongst occultists and in popular culture, particularly that of Britain, but also of other parts of the world. In 2002, a BBC poll placed Crowley seventy-third in a list of the 100 Greatest Britons. … [H]e is today looked upon as a source of inspiration by many people in search of spiritual enlightenment and/ or instructions in magical practice. Thus, while during his life his books hardly sold, and his disciples were never very numerous, nowadays all his important works are constantly in print, and the people defining themselves as ‘thelemites’ (that is, followers of Crowley's new religion) number several thousand all over the world. Furthermore, Crowley's influence over magically oriented new religious movements has in some cases been very deep and pervasive. It would be difficult to understand, for instance, some aspects of Anglo-Saxon neopaganism and contemporary Satanism without a solid knowledge of Crowley's doctrines and ideas. In other fields, such as poetry, alpinism and painting, he may have been a minor figure, but it is only fair to admit that, in the limited context of occultism, he has played and still plays a major role.” Crowley’s belief system, Thelema, outlived him. Several Western esoteric traditions other than Thelema were also influenced by Crowley, with Djurdjevic observing that “Crowley's influence on twentieth-century and contemporary esotericism has been enormous.” Gerald Gardner, founder of Gardnerian Wicca, made use of much of Crowley's published material when composing the Gardnerian ritual liturgy, (Hutton, 1999) and the Australian witch Rosaleen Norton was also heavily influenced by Crowley's ideas. (Richmond, 2012). Crowley also had a wider The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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influence in British popular culture. He was included as one of the figures on the cover art of The Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), … and his motto of “Do What Thou Wilt” was inscribed on the vinyl of Led Zeppelin's album Led Zeppelin III (1970). ... David Bowie made reference to Crowley in the lyrics of his song “Quicksand” (1971), (Bogdan et al. 2012) while Ozzy Osbourne and his lyricist Bob Daisley wrote a song titled “Mr. Crowley” (1980). (Mooreman, 2003). Crowley began to receive scholarly attention from academics in the late 1990s. (Hutton, 1999). Crowley himself predicted his own influence when he wrote: “1000 years from now, the world will be sitting in the sunset of Crowlianity.” To reiterate, Aleister Crowley did not alter reality with the use of spells and invocations. Although, according to his definition of magic (see above), he believed that the latter could in fact alter reality. But his views changed how people see magic. Yes, the Cambridge-educated occultist and inventor of the religion of Thelema impacted reality the same way the behaviorist psychologists turned things around after World War II. “Crowley is not only a fascinating figure worthy of attention by scholars of religion, but he is also of profound importance for the understanding of modern Western spirituality and culture as a whole. This importance is at least threefold. First, with his radical rejection of Victorian morality and his central emphasis on sex as the supreme magical power, Crowley is a remarkable reflection of his era and of the sexual attitudes of late and post-Victorian England. Second, with his study of Hinduism and Buddhism, he was also a key figure in the transmission of Indian religious traditions to the West, including the controversial traditions of Indian Tantra. Finally, in part because of this equation of Tantra and sexual magic, Crowley has also been one of the most influential figures in the revival of magic and a variety of alternative religions at the turn of the new millennium.” (Urban, 2003)

Question No. 5: What is space and are we alone in the universe? Why should we be concerned about space? What kinds of dynamics is space subject to? Before giving a precise answer, first, these two questions should be combined into one: why is astronomy important? The quick answer is: because the demise of our planet and our species is likely to come from space like the extinction of the dinosaurs came from space. In fact, in eschatology or the study of the ultimate fate of humanity, besides terrestrial factors such as earthquakes or volcano eruptions and anthropogenic factors such as global nuclear war and pandemics, extraterrestrial factors such as asteroids and death of a star in our galaxy that could emit gamma rays likely to destroy Earth’s Ozone layer are just as important. But at the same time, astronomy allows us to better understand our planet, our solar system, and other galaxies. Therefore, before talking about space, it’s important to define astronomy. It’s the branch of science that deals with celestial objects, space itself, and the physical universe as a whole. Etymologically, astronomy comes from Greek ‘astronomia’, meaning literally star arrangement, from ‘astron’ = star, and ‘nomos’ = arranging, The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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Question No. 5: What is Space and Are We Alone in the Universe?

regulating. Because every celestial object occupies a space in space – and on Earth for that matter – Astronomy is rather an umbrella term that covers anything that’s happening in outer space. Specialists in astronomy are called astronomers, and they may never have left Earth to be worthy of that title. However, people who conduct studies and experiments or travel in space are called astronauts or cosmonauts. The only difference between an astronaut and a cosmonaut is that a cosmonaut is a Russian astronaut.

a. What is space? On Earth, space is defined as a three-dimensional area in which any object or event has a relative position and direction, meaning they occupy a specific spot within that area that no other object can occupy at the same time and they can either move up and down, back and forth, or left to right. But, I’m not concerned with that kind of space for now. I will come back to it in future publications. For now, the space that I would like to talk about is outer space, which “is a zone that occurs about 100 kilometers (60 miles) above the planet, where there is no appreciable air to breathe or to scatter light. In that area, blue gives way to black because oxygen molecules are not in enough abundance to make the sky blue...Further, space is a vacuum, meaning that sound cannot carry because molecules are not close enough together to transmit sound between them. That's not to say that space is empty, however. Gas, dust and other bits of matter float around ‘emptier’ areas of the universe, while more crowded regions can host planets, stars and galaxies...No one knows exactly how big space is. The difficulty arises because of what we can see in our detectors. We measure long distances in space in ‘light-years,’ representing the distance it takes for light to travel in a year (roughly 5.8 trillion miles, or 9.3 trillion kilometers… From light that is visible in our telescopes, we have charted galaxies reaching almost as far back as the Big Bang, which is thought to have started our universe 13.7 billion years ago. This means we can ‘see’ into space at a distance of almost 13.7 billion light-years. However, astronomers are not sure if our universe is the only universe that exists. This means that space could be a lot bigger than it appears to us.).” (Howell, 2017). I would like to note that the space between the Earth and the Moon is called cislunar space, while translunar space is the space lying beyond the Moon. Today, any high school graduate is expected to have an idea about planets, galaxies, and space. But, that wasn’t always the case, especially during the time when ancient civilizations would wake up every day to see the sun rise and set and see the moon and the stars light up the night sky without knowing why. Because humans have always been fascinated by the unknown, some of those civilizations deemed relevant to worship the Sun, others the moon. Today, we know for sure that planet Earth is not the center of our universe, much less our Sun because both the Ptolemaic model (geocentricity: Earth as the center of universe) and the Copernican model (heliocentricity: the Sun as the center of the universe) have been proven untrue by Edwin Hubble who proved that many The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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spiral-shaped nebulae, such as Andromeda, which scientist thought to be just clouds of gas that glow, were, in fact, galaxies of their own and were, therefore, located outside of our galaxy. Here we are with a new paradigm. Before I go any further, I would to say a few words about the Sun since it all started with it.

i. The Sun and our galaxy, the Milky Way When we consider the Sun in relation to reality, it’s important to note that every time we look at the Sun, what we see is not reality, it’s how the Sun was 8.5 minutes ago, the time it takes the light emitted by the Sun to reach our planet. The Sun is the largest celestial object in our solar system. It’s 1,392,082.56 (865,000 miles) across – 109 times that of Earth, and its mass is about 330,000 times that of Earth – and represents 99% of our solar system. The planets make up the remaining 1%. The Sun is ‘just’ a star18 and there are about 100 billion stars or suns in the Milky Way, our galaxy, which itself is only one of about 3 trillion galaxies in the known universe. That gives you an idea of how immeasurable reality may be. How far is the Sun from Earth? 49.604.618,24 kilometers (92,960,000 miles). How hot is the Sun? On its surface, the Sun is 10 million degrees Fahrenheit (5.555.537,8 degrees Celcius). At its core, it's 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (14,999,982.2 degrees Celcius). Nuclear fusion produces huge amounts of energy. As the Sun ages, it will get bigger and will be a red giant (that will have used up all of its hydrogen at its center) which will pass its orbit swallowing all the planets, including Earth. By the time that happens, we might no longer exist as a species. So, there is no cause for concern here. Within our galaxy, the Milky Way, the closest Sun or star to our own Sun is Alpha Centauri, which consists of three stars: the pair Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B and a small and faint red dwarf, Proxima Centauri, that may be gravitationally bound to the other two. The biggest star in our galaxy is UY Scuti. The closest galaxy to the Milky Way is Andromeda. How big is the Milky Way galaxy? The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy some 100,000 – 120,000 light-years19 in diameter which contains 100 – 400 billion stars. It may contain at least as many planets as well. Astrophysicists have predicted that the Milky Way and Andromeda will collide in about 5 billion years to finally merge after another several billion years, forming, at the end, a new elliptical galaxy. An elliptical galaxy is approximately ellipsoidal in shape whereas a circular galaxy is more three-dimensional with stars that orbit randomly at their centers. Galaxies are not the only ones to collide. So, do stars or suns. When two or more stars collide, they produce superb explosions called supernovae that are 10,000 to 100,000 times as bright as the sun. Our solar system is 4.6 billion years old. Our universe, which is comprised of all existing matter and space, is 13 billion years old and is at least 10 billion

18

A group of stars visible within a specific region of the night sky is called a constellation. Light year is the distance traveled by light in one year, at a speed of 299,337.984 kilometers (186, 000 miles per second. 19


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light years in diameter and contains a vast number of galaxies. Other names given to the universe include: cosmos, macrocosm, or totality. Space or interstellar dynamics is not to be taken lightly. First, there is something called black hole. According to NASA, “A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light cannot get out. The gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. This can happen when a star is dying. Because no light can get out, people can't see black holes. They are invisible. Space telescopes with special tools can help find black holes. The special tools can see how stars that are very close to black holes act differently than other stars...Black holes can be big or small. Scientists think the smallest black holes are as small as just one atom. These black holes are very tiny but have the mass of a large mountain. Mass is the amount of matter, or ‘stuff,’ in an object. Another kind of black hole is called ‘stellar.’ Its mass can be up to 20 times more than the mass of the sun. There may be many, many stellar mass black holes in Earth's galaxy. Earth's galaxy is called the Milky Way. The largest black holes are called ‘supermassive.’ These black holes have masses that are more than 1 million suns together. Scientists have found proof that every large galaxy contains a supermassive black hole at its center. The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy is called Sagittarius A. It has a mass equal to about 4 million suns and would fit inside a very large ball that could hold a few million Earths. Scientists think the smallest black holes formed when the universe began...Stellar black holes are made when the center of a very big star falls in upon itself, or collapses. When this happens, it causes a supernova... Scientists think supermassive black holes were made at the same time as the galaxy they are in.” Celestial objects are not limited to the planets and the Sun. For example, between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter, there is a region called the asteroid belt, which is populated by bodies called asteroids and whose shapes are irregular. These asteroids are also called minor planets. After entering and surviving Earth’s atmosphere, an asteroid is called a meteorite. Asteroids may or may not be located close to our planet. When they are, they’re called Near-Earth Object (NEO). 433 Eros is an S-type near-Earth asteroid approximately 34.4×11.2×11.2 kilometers in size, the secondlargest near-Earth asteroid after 1036 Ganymede. Comets are another example of celestial bodies. Comets are composed mainly of ice and rock. Comets follow a regular trajectory. As a comet nears the Sun, a portion of the ice it contains in its nucleus or center turns into gas that comes out of the side lit up by the Sun. Then, the solar wind pushes the gas outward, which gives it its tail shape. When a celestial body orbits another large celestial body, we refer to it as a satellite. For example, Earth is a satellite of the Sun. The Moon is a satellite of Earth. Planet Jupiter has more than 60 satellites or moons, the four largest among them being: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Calisto. The branch of astronomy that deals with the nature and origin of the physical features of Earth’s moon is called selenology. The satellites that we send out in space for a purpose are called artificial satellites. They can be of many types: scientific research satellites, weather satellites, communication satellites, navigation satellites, Earth observation satellites, military satellites, etc. The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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To observe what’s going on in space, the most popular tool is, to this day, the telescope, which is an optical instrument used to observe distant celestial objects. The observation is made possible by the collection of electromagnetic radiation. An example of such radiation is the visible light. You probably didn’t know it, but a telescope is a time machine. Like I explained above in the case of the light emitted by the Sun, if we observe a celestial object (galaxy, star, planet, etc.) located at 10,000 thousand light years from Earth, that means the light coming from that object takes 10,000 light years to reach Earth. Therefore, the age of the light observed by the telescope is how much time it took the former to reach Earth. This is then how far we've traveled back to time. Telescopes can be either terrestrial or outer space. Outer space telescopes or just space telescopes have the advantage of escaping Earth’s atmosphere and interference and, thus, provide much better images. Currently, the Hubble space telescope is the most advanced telescope. It was launched in 1990. But, its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) due for launch in 2019, will be by far the most advanced space telescope. “The James Webb Space Telescope (sometimes called JWST or Webb) will be a large infrared telescope with a 6.5-meter primary mirror. The telescope will be launched on an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana in Spring 2019. Webb will be the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It will study every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System. Webb was formerly known as the "Next Generation Space Telescope" (NGST); it was renamed in Sept. 2002 after a former NASA administrator, James Webb.” Thanks to space telescopes, scientists have gotten better in measures distances between celestial objects. Telescopes, as measuring instruments, are a far cry from classical instruments such as the astrolabe or the sextant. Parallax is a much more modern technique (not an instrument). To demonstrate parallax, you just have to hold up one finger. Look at it first with one eye and then with the other. Notice how the finger seems to change position in relation to more distant objects when seen with one eye and then with the other. Explanation: When you look with two eyes, each eye uses nearby things from a slightly different direction. Your mind solves parallax problems when you look at nearby objects, and you tell how far away they are. A person blind has no parallax vision and may have difficulties judging the distance of nearby objects. Instruments like sextant and astrolabe use parallax. “Astronomers estimate the distance of nearby objects in space by using a method called stellar parallax, or trigonometric parallax. Simply put, they measure a star's apparent movement against the background of more distant stars as Earth revolves around the sun...Parallax is ‘the best way to get distance in astronomy,’ said Mark Reid, an astronomer at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He described parallax as the ‘gold standard’ for measuring stellar distances because it does not involve physics; rather, it relies solely on geometry. The method is based on measuring two angles and the included side of a triangle formed by the The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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star, Earth on one side of its orbit and Earth six months later on the other side of its orbit, according to Edward L. Wright, a professor at UCLA...If we do not know the distance to an object, it is not possible to measure an apparent sideways change in its position against the background in length units. However, we can measure it in angular units, i.e., the portion of a complete circle the object appears to move against the background…Once we have determined the apparent angular displacement of the object caused by viewing it from a different angle, or its parallax, we need to measure the distance between the observation points, or the baseline. We then take the baseline measurement and divide that by the tangent of the parallax angle to obtain the distance to the object.” (Lucas, 2015). I previously said that space, planet Earth, and the other planets in our solar system, including the moons (Earth’s moon, Jupiter’s moons, etc.) have become common knowledge. While scientists and astrophysicists are puzzled by our universe and are desirous to explore it further and further, how Earth was formed is still a hot topic. Earth is special because it is where humans live. Though extraterrestrial life is a possibility, it has not been confirmed yet and it looks like we still have a lot of waiting ahead of us. Meanwhile, it’s important to know where we came from in order to know where we’re heading. The quest into the formation of planet Earth can provide important insight into who else is out there.

ii. Birth of planet Earth and the Moon When it comes to the scientific study of the birth of our planet, the most popular theory is the Big Bang theory according to which, 13.7 billion years ago, all matter in the universe was concentrated in a single and incredibly small point that suddenly exploded and started to grow larger and larger, yielding to all the planets, stars, galaxies, and the universe in the process. To support this theory, scientists showed that, to this day, the effects of that initial explosion are still alive because the universe is still expanding, meaning that the stars and the galaxies are still spreading apart from each other. They also point out the fact that the initial explosion did not happen in empty space (meaning Artist's conception of Earth's solar system. that space did not exist before the big bang). On the Credit: NASA/JPL contrary, it’s the big bang that created space, which is comprised of dark matter and dark energy resulting from the big bang itself. They call that initial point of explosion space singularity. That The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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begs the question: what was there before the Big Bang? “Most physicists, he begins, agree on the big-bang theory, which says that 14 billion years ago the entire observable universe was ‘roughly a million billion billion times smaller than a single atom’ and has been expanding ever since, to its current size of something like 100 billion galaxies. Thereafter, theories diverge: There’s the ‘TwoHeaded Time’ school, which sees the BB as sort of a pothole in the long road of time, with the future pointing away from that moment in two opposing directions. In this theory, time moved in a way we would consider backward for billions of years — with the universe contracting all the while — until it shrank to subatomic size. Then the big bang occurred, and time began to progress, and the universe expanded, in the way we see now. The other theory posits that the universe materialized literally out of nothing. As Stephen Hawking puts it, in this theory the universe “would be neither created nor destroyed. It would just BE. Physicists in this school point to a documented phenomenon known as quantum tunneling, in which very small particles appear in different places at the same time. This happens only to particles smaller than an atom. But since at the time of the big bang the entire universe was subatomic, the entire universe could have suddenly appeared where it had not been before.” (Szokan, 2016). The above is rather a description of the big picture or the birth of our universe all together. But, the birth of our planet followed its own path after the initial big bang. According to BBC, “The Earth is thought to have been formed about 4.6 billion years ago by collisions in the giant discshaped cloud of material that also formed the Sun. Gravity slowly gathered this gas and dust together into clumps that became asteroids and small early planets called planetesimals. These objects collided repeatedly and gradually got bigger, building up the planets in the Solar System, including the Earth. The details of how the Earth formed are still being worked out. Scientists study meteorites and the oldest rocks on Earth to understand what happened in these earliest times in the Solar System. They also observe other solar systems in our galaxy, the Milky Way.” As to the formation of the Moon, three theories are to be considered: the giant impact hypothesis, the co-formation theory and the capture theory. The giant impact theory is the one that scientists prefer. According to this theory, Earth and the other planets were formed from the remaining dust and gas from the Sun following the big bang. At that early stage there were still many celestial bodies of significant sizes, although not planetary, that would collide with one another every five or ten thousand years, which made for a violent region. The Moon was formed as a result of a collision between one of those celestial bodies, called Theia (about the size of Mars) and the young Earth, taking out a huge chunk of our planet and some of its atmosphere. The dust and gas came together over time and were attracted by Earth’s gravity. Earth’s core was untouched by the collision, which explains why the moon is much lighter than the Earth. According to NASA, “When the young Earth and this rogue body collided, the energy involved was 100 million times larger than the much later event believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs.”


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On the other hand, the co-formation theory suggests that in general, planets and their moons are formed at the same time and that the advent of both Earth and the Moon are concomitant. The problem is, if that was the case, the Moon would not have been much less dense than the Earth and would have the same heavy elements at its core. Finally, according to the capture theory, the Moon may have just been formed outside of our solar system and was captured by Earth’s gravity as it was passing by, like it was the case for the Martian moons of Phobos and Deimos. That would explain the differences in the compositions of Earth and the Moon. All things considered, almost everything in the universe, except dark matter, is made up of star dust and gas. We, humans, are a microcosm of what’s out there. We are also star dust. There is life on our planet because of its distance from the Sun, which creates the ideal conditions (atmosphere, climate, vegetation, water, etc.) that sustain life. Recent discoveries suggest that such conditions exist somewhere else in our galaxy. This is not surprising because when we put things in perspective and factor in the vastness of our universe, it’s no wonder that, in solar systems, the same conditions exist. Remember that there are trillions of Suns or stars in our universe. Each of those also have planets that orbit them, just like in our solar system. Water does exist in other spots of the universe. Where there is water, the probability that life also exists is high. Based on that truism, isn’t it legitimate for humans to wonder whether life exists in places other than Earth? Isn’t our quest to discover if we are alone in the universe logical?

b. Are we alone in the universe? Right now, no precise answer can be brought to this question. As I explained before, the conditions that make life possible on Earth are present at other places in our universe. They are in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, which has billions of suns like ours. First, what’s the difference between an Earthlike planet and a rocky or terrestrial planet? An earthlike planet is a planet that has similar characteristics and conditions (weather and geology) to Earth's and that can sustain life. No other planet – besides Earth – in our solar system is earthlike. A terrestrial or rocky planet is a planet having a compact rocky surface like the Earth's. In our solar system, there are four rocky or terrestrial planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars (from closest to the Sun to furthest). The terrestrial planets of our solar system are also called inner planets. All the other planets are made of gas. When it comes to the question “are we alone in the universe?”, we are faced with an important paradox, often called the Fermi paradox, named for Italian physicist Enrico Fermi (1901 – 1954). The paradox is based both on the insufficient evidence that we have regarding extraterrestrial life and the high probability that there may be extraterrestrial life considering that there are billions of galaxies in our universe. In other words, our universe is too vast for us to be alone. But, if we’re not alone, where is everybody? Enrico Fermi and Michael H. Hart made their points by stating: The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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There are billions of stars in the galaxy that are similar to the Sun, and many of these stars are billions of years older than the Solar system. With high probability, some of these stars have Earth-like planets, and if the Earth is typical, some may have developed intelligent life. Some of these civilizations may have developed interstellar travel, a step the Earth is investigating now. Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years.

Based on these arguments, the two men argued that Earth should have already been visited by Alien civilization(s) if there were any. Along with the Fermi paradox, scientists like to also consider the Drake equation, to which I will come back later in this book, but for now, let me say that on July 23, 2015, the space telescope Kepler spotted an Earthlike planet, named Kepler 452b. According to NASA’s website, “NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet in the ‘habitable zone’ around a sun-like star. This discovery and the introduction of 11 other new small habitable zone candidate planets mark another milestone in the journey to finding another ‘Earth.’ The newly discovered Kepler-452b is the smallest planet to date discovered orbiting in the habitable zone -- the area around a This size and scale of the Kepler-452 system compared alongside the Kepler-186 system and the solar system. Kepler-186 is a miniature star where liquid water could pool on the solar system that would fit entirely inside the orbit of Mercury. surface of an orbiting planet -- of a G2Credits: NASA/JPL-CalTech/R. Hurt type star, like our sun. The confirmation of Kepler-452b brings the total number of confirmed planets to 1,030. ‘On the 20th anniversary year of the discovery that proved other suns host planets, the Kepler exoplanet explorer has discovered a planet and star which most closely resemble the Earth and our Sun,’ said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. ‘This exciting result brings us one step closer to finding an Earth 2.0.’ Kepler-452b is 60 percent larger in diameter than Earth and is considered a super-Earth-size planet. While its mass and composition are not yet determined, previous research suggests that planets the size of Kepler-452b have a good chance of being rocky. While Kepler-452b is larger than Earth, its 385-day orbit is only 5 percent longer. The planet is 5 percent farther from its parent star Kepler452 than Earth is from the Sun. Kepler-452 is 6 billion years old, 1.5 billion years older than our The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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sun, has the same temperature, and is 20 percent brighter and has a diameter 10 percent larger. The Kepler-452 system is located 1,400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. The research paper reporting this finding has been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal. In addition to confirming Kepler-452b, the Kepler team has increased the number of new exoplanet candidates by 521 from their analysis of observations conducted from May 2009 to May 2013, raising the number of planet candidates detected by the Kepler mission to 4,696. Candidates require follow-up observations and analysis to verify they are actual planets.” One year later, on August 24, 2016, another terrestrial planet, Proxima Centauri b or Proxima b was discovered. It is the nearest terrestrial exoplanet candidate by distance from the sun in lightyears. But, the conditions for life are not quite promising. “Well, the planet’s real, but don’t pack your interstellar bags yet, because this alien world is probably far from homely...The planet – Proxima b – was discovered by astronomers who spent years looking for signs of the tiny gravitational tug exerted by a planet on its star, after spotting hints of such disruption in 2013. Proxima Centauri is 4.25 light years from Earth, making it slightly closer than the binary star system of Alpha Centauri, which the Proxima star is thought to loosely orbit...The team says the planet is likely to be 30 per cent more massive than Earth, although it could be bigger than that. It orbits the star at a distance of 7.3 million kilometers – less than 5 per cent of the distance between Earth and the sun – making its year last just 11.2 Earth days...You might think such a tight orbit would scorch the surface of the planet. But Proxima Centauri is a small, red dwarf star and shines much less fiercely than the sun. Standing on the surface of the planet, you’d see the star as a dull red orb, about three times as large as the sun appears from Earth. As a result, the planet sits in its star’s habitable zone, and its surface temperature may be right for it to host liquid water...The planet is rocky, of a similar mass to Earth, and temperate – all conditions that are promising for life. But Proxima b isn’t a second Earth ... ‘The similarities end there’, says Anglada-Escudé. Even our knowledge of the surface temperature is fairly uncertain, ranging from a possible -33 °C to the high hundreds, depending on its atmosphere...That’s just the average temperature. However, Proxima b and its star are probably tidally locked, so the same face of the planet always points towards the star. So, one half of the globe is in perpetual day, the other in never-ending night. ‘That’s not very Earth-like,’ Anglada-Escudé says...Whether life could exist on such a planet also depends on the nature of its atmosphere, which we know nothing about. ‘The planet’s atmosphere, if it indeed exists, might be something completely different from what we are used to seeing in the solar system,’ says Mikko Tuomi of the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, UK, who was the first to spot signs of the planet when studying archival data … ‘Before we know much more about the atmosphere of the planet and its physical properties, I would be very wary,’ says Brice-Olivier Demory at the University of Cambridge...The atmosphere could be purely carbon dioxide, as Earth’s was before the emergence of life, and with a density that is anything from a Mars-like wisp


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to the choking clouds of Venus. A dense-enough atmosphere would trap heat from the star, and potentially distribute it to Proxima b’s permanent dark side.” (Aron, 2016). Ok, now we know for sure there are other rocky planets than just the four that are in our solar system. There are even Earthlike planets – like Kepler 452b – than can sustain life. Those planets (Earthlike and terrestrial or rocky alike) are called exoplanets, meaning outside of our solar system. But, the real question to which every Earthling wants an answer is: is there alien life out there, somewhere in the universe? Well, nobody knows. But, space telescopes, each new one more powerful than the previous, may ultimately help us find out whether there is life out there without even leaving our planet. New planets have been discovered thanks to a ‘simple’ technique: scientists noticed that every time a planet places itself between Earth and its star, the latter becomes so dimmed that the instruments used can detect the dimming. Thus far, over 200 planets have been discovered, using this technique. There is another technique used, for example, in metal detection across huge distances such as distant stars. It’s called spectral lines analysis. We can know that a specific metal is present in a distant star, without being there to analyze it. Say we need to know if iron is present in a star or on a planet, all we need to do is look at the spectral lines produced by the light from that star or that planet. If the lines match those of light given off by iron vaporized here on earth, the conclusion is that iron is also present in that star. Because living organisms have a set of specific characteristics – for example, have cells, use energy, breath oxygen and exhales Co2 – this technique can be used to analyze possible alien life located on other planets. Molecules of living organisms are complex and should have spectral lines that are specific to them. No one expects alien life to have an appearance similar to that of terrestrial life. Homo Sapiens, the name of our species, have come a long way. From Australopithecus to Homo Erectus, Neanderthals, and Denisovans to Homo Sapiens, there have been a lot of in-betweens. Our genetic makeup is a culmination of eons of evolution that is specific to our planet and may not be found anywhere else in the universe. But, life is life. As I previously explained, living organisms have cells, use energy, develop and grow, react and adapt to their environments, and reproduce. If there is life somewhere else, its fundamental dynamics should resemble those of life on Earth. My gut feeling is yes, there is life somewhere else in the universe. But, who am I to be taken seriously?

The Drake Equation “The Drake equation is a probabilistic argument used to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. The number of such civilizations N, is assumed to be equal to the mathematical product of:


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1. R∗, the average rate of star formations, in our galaxy, 2. fp, the fraction of formed stars that have planets, 3. ne for stars that have planets, the average number of planets that can potentially support life, 4. fl, the fraction of those planets that actually develop life, 5. fi, the fraction of planets bearing life on which intelligent, civilized life, has developed, 6. fc, the fraction of these civilizations that have developed communications, i.e., technologies that release detectable signs into space, and 7. L, the length of time over which such civilizations release detectable signals, for a combined expression of: N = R * fp * ne * fl * fi * fc * L The equation was written in 1961 by Frank Drake, not for purposes of quantifying the number of civilizations, but as a way to stimulate scientific dialogue at the first scientific meeting on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The equation summarizes the main concepts which scientists must contemplate when considering the question of other radio-communicative life. It is more properly thought of as a Fermi problem rather than as a serious attempt to nail down a precise number. Criticism related to the Drake equation focuses not on the equation itself, but on the fact that the estimated values for several of its factors are highly conjectural, the combined effect being that the uncertainty associated with any derived value is so large that the equation cannot be used to draw firm conclusions. As many observers have pointed out, the Drake equation is a very simple model that does not include potentially relevant parameters, and many changes and modifications to the equation have been proposed. One line of modification, for example, attempts to account for the uncertainty inherent in many of the terms. Others note that the Drake equation ignores many concepts that might be relevant to the odds of contacting other civilizations. For example, David Brin states: ‘The Drake equation merely speaks of the number of sites at which ETIs spontaneously arise. The equation says nothing directly about the contact cross-section between an ETIS and contemporary human society’. Because it is the contact cross-section that is of interest to the SETI community, many additional factors and modifications of the Drake equation have been proposed.” (Wikipedia, 2018)20

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These notes on the Drake equation have been taken from Wikipedia. If you disagree with any part, you can go online and edit the article by following this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation. The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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Will we know, for sure, if we are alone in the universe? I think so. We are on a royal path to know it. If the James Webb space telescope does not bring the answer, its successor probably will. We’re not far from finding out. We just need be persistent by peering deeper and deeper into space and by stressing the importance of astronomy, which is, by all accounts, the only science that will ultimately bring an answer to this age-old question. Astronomy enlightens us, helps us understand our place in the universe, and has the potential to take us far beyond our galaxy. When we look at how ancient civilizations would construe the movements of celestial objects as prophecies, we express doubt and created a name for it: astrology, which is different from astronomy. As Dave Finley stated in 2013 in defense of radio astronomy, “In sum, astronomy has been a cornerstone of technological progress throughout history, has much to contribute in the future, and offers all humans a fundamental sense of our place in an unimaginably vast and exciting Universe.” Today, astronomy is a leading science that helps answer basic questions and begets innovation. But, really, before looking up, it is also important to look down. We, humans, first need to understand our world, especially our underworld or the bottom of our ocean before looking for alien civilizations. Will the discovery of alien life motivate us to better understand our planet or will a better understanding of our planet enhance our eagerness to discover alien life? It’s anyone’s guess. No, Earth is not the only life-sustaining planet out there, but for now, we are the only known civilization in the universe. “You may as well get a lot friendlier with life on Earth – every microbe and mammal, every bird and bug, and especially every human being. Because when it comes to biology, our planet may be the whole show. Forget the overwhelming math – those trillions upon trillions of planets that are likely out there, at least some of which should be inhabited. Snuff out the one match head that is life on Earth, and the whole universe goes biologically black. We can search for biology all we want, send up all the here-we-are signal flares we can invent, but the fact is, no one will answer – ever – because no one is there. Paul Davies, a cosmologist at Arizona State University and the author of the book Eerie Silence – which takes exactly the dim view of our ever encountering an alien intelligence that its title suggests – finds almost no part of the intelligent-life argument persuasive. The biggest hole he finds in the Drake equation is the one involving the subset of planets that could support life that actually do. The fact is, we have absolutely no empirical data that allows us to put a value on that variable in a responsible way. We know of precisely one world on which life has existed, and the rest is largely guesswork. Fill in that one Drake blank with a zero, and the entire equation collapses to zero too.” (Kluger, 2015).

………………………… The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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CONCLUSION If you still feel puzzled after reading the above arguments, that’s perfectly alright. Reality, or what we think is reality, will be always be there, so long as we exist as a species. No matter what we do, reality will always be similar to an unfinished work. If reality was clear, static and was the same for all of us, what a dull world our world would be! Reality is as uncontrollable as a dream that’s unfolding only because you’re alive but whose scenario does not depend on you, although you always play the main character in it. Reality is elusive. Reality is a composite. For instance, we saw how psychology allows for a better understanding of the human mind through behaviorism. But the fact is there will always be at least two people within each individual: the person we think we are (self-concept) and the person other people think we are (social perception21). Reality is the sum of our individual experiences and also the sum of our collective experiences as a species. The elements that yield to that sum are not always in order, which gives reality its chaotic and puzzling aspect. Until proven otherwise, humans are the only species equipped with imagination and intelligence. Our senses and perception may not be as developed as those of some animals, but we have the ability to enhance them thanks to the development of special tools or machines. I explained in chapter one how our senses can play tricks on us, but at the same time we saw how we can explain those discrepancies thanks to our intelligence. We have been able to discover our other five invisible senses and explain their roles in our own reality. Humans have developed an acute awareness about the environment because our senses, our perception, our brain, and our mind work together to give us a sense of reality that animals lack. I explained how the human brain is unique not only because of its size but also because of its dynamism and mechanism. In chapter two, I presented the essence of the anatomy of the brain. I also explained how each part of the brain plays a specific role in our perception, our interaction with our counterparts, and in our day-to-day lives. Although far from being the largest organ in our body, the brain consumes 20 percent of our energy, and a whopping 80 percent of our genes are coded just for the brain. I explained how the brain plays a central role not only in our life but also in the determination of death. Chapter two showed how that time when professionals in the medical field used to go only by the absence of pulse and heartbeat to decide on the death of a person is gone. Brain death has become a major player in the determination of death. Humans are becoming more and more aware of the power of the brain. We are able to see the brain in action thanks to advanced imaging techniques such as positron emission tomography (PET). The understanding of the brain – its anatomy and its physiology – makes for the understanding of what I call the ultimate maker of reality: the mind. I showed the close relationship between the brain and the mind although the mind, as opposed to the brain, is not visible nor tangible. In chapter three, I labeled the mind as a mystery because for 21

Social perception is the processes through which people form impressions of others and interpret information about them. (Strickland, 2001). The Realities of ‘Reality’ – Part I: It All Starts from Within. Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. March 20, 2018.

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millennia, it has given and continues to give scientists, psychologists, and philosophers alike a run for the money. The confusion stemmed from not being able to pinpoint its location. I explained that the mind functions only at the conscious level, which makes it irrelevant when we sleep. Consequently, we spend one third of our lives without our minds. In chapter three, I also explained how World War II was a game changer in the study of the human mind or psychology. While the mind had not changed from the pre-WWII and post-WWII periods, the way psychologists approached its study changed from being subjective to scientific. I presented the differences on the ground that the War motivated psychologists to consider a behavioral approach. For example, we saw how the Milgram’s experience, which studied the relationship between authority and obedience was a turning point in the understanding of human behavior. Chapter three gave a prelude of what the mind will be capable of in the future thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR), which will enable us to upload and download people’s mind at will in the future. Finally, in chapter four, I attempted to make sense of reality through five questions that I occasionally ask myself but that I know most people ask themselves as well: what are things and why do they look different from one another? What is life and its origins? What is death? What is superstition? And what is space and are we alone in the universe? I don’t claim that the answers I gave to these questions should be unanimously accepted. That would be contradictory to an earlier statement that I made: we all see reality differently and that’s why there is more than one reality. The title of this series is “The realities of ‘reality’” for that matter. I explained why matter comes in different shapes and sizes: it has to do with atoms whose numbers are different in each thing and which have a different configuration in each thing. In my analysis of life and death, I showed how both of them are complicated and mysterious, complementary to each other yet so different from each other. While death is an integral part of existence, it’s rejected because of our advanced survival instinct. At the same time, we try to embrace it by looking beyond it to eventually lay a firmer hand on life itself. This book has shown how life, death, and superstition are all intertwined and how the resort to superstition is just an attempt by us to fathom reality. From alchemy, lycanthropy, Freemasonry to black magic and the quest to understand if we are alone in the universe, we display, as a species, the vastness and the versatility of our mind and our imagination which set us apart from animals. The recurring and underlying theme of chapter four is how vast, mysterious, and elusive reality can be. On Earth, the metaphysical questions we ask in an effort to grasp reality get even more complex when we gaze at space. I addressed the question of the nature of space and the question as to whether we are its only occupants by showing that while there are other Earthlike planets in the universe, it is the way our planet functions and its distance from our Sun which have made life possible. The exact same conditions would have to be similar for there to be life as we know it somewhere else in the universe. The question: what is space and are we alone in the universe is as hypothetical as the question: what is life and its origins.


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You might say that this part one of the series has opened a can of worms. That might be true in the sense that it met its goal, which was to bring to bear some existential and metaphysical questions and some problems that we face as a species. My goal for now was to show the paradoxical aspect of mankind: we have big brains, we have imagination, and we use tools but explaining reality, finding out where we came from, or if we are the only life forms in the whole universe remain a mystery. At least, this part one has shown how important is our inner self in the perception of reality, which starts from the deepest part of each of us and walks its way out. It has also showed that without human beings there may not be reality. Another important fact about this part one of the series is that it shows that whatever we believe in can and will affect reality. For example, superstition and magic, though supernatural do affect the natural by impacting our behavior and thought. We saw in question number four – what is superstition? – how magic and witchcraft impacted reality just because magicians and witches alike believed that their actions could physically alter reality, which makes belief a powerful factor. This book showed how powerless we still are in our quest to understand death and to find out if there is life after death. Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. The reality is, if we will find out, it will be an extremely long endeavor lasting perhaps centuries or millennia. However, like I explained in my analysis of death, we now have other definitions of death, which includes the brain. I also point out the fact that today, cardiopulmonary arrest may just be an emergency instead of a reason to call for someone’s death as it once was the case. This part one has revealed our strengths especially in terms of the power of our brain and our mind which are unique in the animal kingdom. It has also exposed our weaknesses, confusion, apprehensions, and uncertainties by showing our deception coming from the ignorance of our origins, our confusion about the purpose of life, and our fear of dying. Finally, it shows how hopeful we are and our resolve to challenge the concept of existence by taking death out of equation and ensure immortality both on Earth and in space. I ended it with an explanation of space because, even though reality starts from within, we need to also look outward and upward to understand who we are and where we probably came from. But, I will certainly come back on Earth in future publications to explain reality in relation to science and technology, philosophy, art, literature, and so on. Although I strongly suggest that Part I of the series be read first – which you did – it is not necessary that the subsequent parts be read in sequence.

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FROM THE SAME AUTHOR • • • • • • •

Exploring the Possibilities for the Emergence of a Single and Global Native Language Philosophical Essay on the Works of Louise-Victorine Ackermann Technological Singularity, a Grandiose Dream: A Would-Be Glorious Achievement for Its Proponents, but an Idea Eliciting Second Thoughts from the Sceptic The South China Sea: A Look into China's Modern Times Maritime Silk Road and its Geopolitical Implications Understanding What Makes a Person Unique: A Multipronged Approach Is the US Electoral College a Polite Fiction That Should Be Abolished? How Translational Medicine Is Progressively Redefining Healthcare

…………………………. The title of the French version of this book is: Les réalités de la ‘réalité – Première partie: l’intériorité comme point de départ: pourquoi la réalité pique-t’elle encore notre curiosité? Pourquoi avons-nous encore le sentiment d’être perdus 200.000 ans plus tard? Quel est l’avenir de la réalité? Fritz Dufour may be contacted by email. Keywords: reality, role of the brain, role of the mind, what is life, what is death, life after death, near-death experience, what is space Classification: Philosophy

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