Another exciting audiobook presentation that I had the chance to listen to while driving to and from work. This one is from cellular biologist and author Dr. Bruce H. Lipton.
The Wisdom of Your Cells: How Your Beliefs Control Your Biology is about an increasingly popular theory that I have been long an advocate of: our conscious and subconscious thoughts, and beliefs control how our body responds to environmental inputs.
Through Dr. Lipton's engaging explanations the cell membrane gains new dimensions. It becomes the great coordinator of our cell-level perceptions (the way external stimuli are being received and responded to) via the mechanisms of receptor and respondent proteins. We get a quick tour of cellular biology, history and some out-of-context criticism on church and religion.
The main point the author makes is that we are not the victims of our genes as current media would like us to believe. Genes do not control our lives. We do! Genes are "simply" providing options and possibilities rather than predetermined responses. It is the cell membrane that, through sophisticated interactions, will cause the genes to perform what they are meant to do: provide blueprints for production of those particular proteins that are required to carry out certain tasks. On a human level, again, it is our brain/mind that is the governor of which of the many possible responses to things that happen to us we should manifest, not our inherent genes.
This position is in stark contrast to the current trend that humans are nothing but toys in the "hands" of all-powerful external factors such as genetic inheritance. Free will, reason and decision are but whims of poets and philosophers. Anyone committing crime is just another victim... Don't even get me going on this topic.
I found the discussion on prenatal and early childhood development very enlightening. I new about children's ability to respond to stimuli in ways derivable from their parents' behaviour even from before birth. Dr. Lipton puts forward a very plausible and acceptable explanation. In his view the mother and the to-be-born baby share an information stream, the bloodstream carried through the placenta that provides a "direct download" of knowledge and behaviour patterns into the child. Also, during the first few years of the child's development, by observing the parents' reactions children will again "download" enormous amounts of information, good and bad, about the world around them.
Now I have to say something on the negative side as well.
Dr. Lipton's discussion of quantum mechanics is not entirely satisfactory. It involves a great deal of oversimplification. For instance, I cannot quite support his jump from the realm of subatomic particles to which the quantum mechanics theories he references apply to the realm of the conscious human without a reasonable transition. I do agree there is connection, but I do not agree with his assertion that there is an equivalence between the quantum interference of wavefunctions and a person's emotional response to the "good vibes" or "bad vibes" in a room full of people.
Also, the discussion of the Newtonian physics is distorted. Dr. Lipton brushes classical mechanics (deterministic laws describing the motion of macroscopic objects) aside as completely irrelevant on the premise that quantum mechanics has done away with all things non-relativistic or not probability based. He does not care to state that classical mechanics is still very much valid in the realm of everyday proportions. It still is the norm by which human-scale world operates. True, extremes of physics (subatomic particles, singularities, etc.) follow different laws. But one should try to operate a shower in the morning without considering classical mechanics.
The Wisdom of Your Cells: How Your Beliefs Control Your Biology is about an increasingly popular theory that I have been long an advocate of: our conscious and subconscious thoughts, and beliefs control how our body responds to environmental inputs.
Through Dr. Lipton's engaging explanations the cell membrane gains new dimensions. It becomes the great coordinator of our cell-level perceptions (the way external stimuli are being received and responded to) via the mechanisms of receptor and respondent proteins. We get a quick tour of cellular biology, history and some out-of-context criticism on church and religion.
The main point the author makes is that we are not the victims of our genes as current media would like us to believe. Genes do not control our lives. We do! Genes are "simply" providing options and possibilities rather than predetermined responses. It is the cell membrane that, through sophisticated interactions, will cause the genes to perform what they are meant to do: provide blueprints for production of those particular proteins that are required to carry out certain tasks. On a human level, again, it is our brain/mind that is the governor of which of the many possible responses to things that happen to us we should manifest, not our inherent genes.
This position is in stark contrast to the current trend that humans are nothing but toys in the "hands" of all-powerful external factors such as genetic inheritance. Free will, reason and decision are but whims of poets and philosophers. Anyone committing crime is just another victim... Don't even get me going on this topic.
I found the discussion on prenatal and early childhood development very enlightening. I new about children's ability to respond to stimuli in ways derivable from their parents' behaviour even from before birth. Dr. Lipton puts forward a very plausible and acceptable explanation. In his view the mother and the to-be-born baby share an information stream, the bloodstream carried through the placenta that provides a "direct download" of knowledge and behaviour patterns into the child. Also, during the first few years of the child's development, by observing the parents' reactions children will again "download" enormous amounts of information, good and bad, about the world around them.
Now I have to say something on the negative side as well.
Dr. Lipton's discussion of quantum mechanics is not entirely satisfactory. It involves a great deal of oversimplification. For instance, I cannot quite support his jump from the realm of subatomic particles to which the quantum mechanics theories he references apply to the realm of the conscious human without a reasonable transition. I do agree there is connection, but I do not agree with his assertion that there is an equivalence between the quantum interference of wavefunctions and a person's emotional response to the "good vibes" or "bad vibes" in a room full of people.
Also, the discussion of the Newtonian physics is distorted. Dr. Lipton brushes classical mechanics (deterministic laws describing the motion of macroscopic objects) aside as completely irrelevant on the premise that quantum mechanics has done away with all things non-relativistic or not probability based. He does not care to state that classical mechanics is still very much valid in the realm of everyday proportions. It still is the norm by which human-scale world operates. True, extremes of physics (subatomic particles, singularities, etc.) follow different laws. But one should try to operate a shower in the morning without considering classical mechanics.
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