Microcosms (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, November 20, 2008, 09:27 (5635 days ago) @ David Turell

David is keeping us up to date with the latest discoveries relating to the "complexities of life". - First of all, I'd like to thank you for this invaluable research service, and for the brief summaries with which you comment on the articles. For non-scientists like myself, all of this is extremely helpful. - I was particularly impressed with the "tunnelling nanotubes". David and George disagree on whether such extraordinary mechanisms denote the workings of design or of chance, but reading about them has set me off on another track. Our bodies are simply filled with these organisms over which we have no control, and of which we are not even conscious. It's as if we ourselves are worlds harbouring various kinds of life, which operate independently yet interdependently. The unifying force is our self. This brings us back to the question of our identity: I am the sum of all my parts, but I sense that I am more than that sum, that I have a character that transcends my physical self. - If we stretch the analogy further, we might see the universe as a body. Its parts work independently but interdependently. And just as I am the unifying force for my cells, my DNA, my "tunnelling nanotubes", perhaps there is another unifying "I" that binds together our universe. I don't want to carry the analogy any further at this stage, and am aware that there is nothing original about the idea ... it is, after all, the very basis of David's panentheism ... but it poses the question: are we ourselves microcosms? If so, of what?