We live in the country, a dozen miles from the nearest town. We have met a lot of interesting people out here, people with different attitudes and worldviews. There's a lot of variety, and mostly really good folks. Arthur was one of these. He died today.
Arthur did a little of everything. He raised sheep and goats, and sheared sheep as part of his living. He raised border collies to be trained into their herding heritage. He raised guard dogs and llamas. He worked long and hard. He cut wood to heat his home with his wife Beth. He brought us some of his wood so that we would have heat during the 8 day power outage caused by last year's ice storm. Arthur was busy.
Some time back Arthur had a heart attack: blockage. He was restricted after that, and couldn't do many of the things he had done before. And yesterday he had his last heart attack.
An interesting thing about Arthur. His carotid artery was badly blocked. But new, smaller arteries were growing out from the artery at a point just before the blockage, and these new arteries were trying to reconnect with the carotid artery at the other side of the blockage. While the new arteries didn't make it in time, the fact that the body knew there was a problem, what the problem was, and then tried to manufacture a work-around to circumvent the problem came as a surprise to me.
The much ballyhooed genome breakthroughs haven't given us many of the deeper answers, as far as I know. A vast majority of the DNA is completely not understood; the focus of today's analytical abilities is on the manufacture of proteins by RNA using DNA templates. Predictably the rest of the DNA not involved in this process is called "junk". But the intelligent management of the bodily functions is not accomplished by just a bunch of proteins. Arthur's artery shows a very sophisticated and complex system management that functons in what would otherwise be termed an "intelligent" manner. Yet aren't bodily functions genetic? Aren't they deterministic?
The explanation for all this is very scientifically called: evolution. It covers everything, and requires no more explanation than that, for the sophisticated science oriented person. Oh, and this; science will explain it all some day. I think science probably will figure out most of the complexities of the human machine. But I doubt that science will truly figure out exactly how it got that way.
Meantime, I will miss Arthur.
4 comments:
Sorry for your loss. I regret that I don't have the time to interact with you more, what with state testing and various other kerfuffles in my neck of the woods. You've been a good sounding board, and I hope we can chat again in the future....SH
Beelz says,
Sorry to hear about Arthur. I've been in the firewood supply bus before also and it's damn hard work. Not a lot of call for firewood around here (Cal) much anymore. Wood burning stoves must all be EPA approved and are very exorbitant. Plus people want to flip a switch and get warm. Maybe rising fuel prices will change things.
And border collies, whew! had one, Arthur must have had his hands full.
I agree generally with your view about the complexity of biology. It IS mind boggling to imagine that it could all somehow come about on its own, the immune system, angiogenesis, brain architecture. I'm not an evolutionary bigot, if you will. If something better comes along I'll accept it. But now is too early to simply throw up our hands and give up on a material explanation, IMO.
Thanks guys!
Anonymous: "I'm not an evolutionary bigot, if you will."
and
Anonymous: "If something better comes along I'll accept it. But now is too early to simply throw up our hands and give up on a material explanation, IMO."
Please! These two statements were meant, when taken together, as a joke. Right?
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