One Hand Clapping evaluation: Provocative e book units out to resolve the exhausting downside of consciousness

One Hand Clapping
Nikolay Kukushkin

Swift Press (UK);
Prometheus Books (US)

“If two palms come collectively and make a sound, what’s the sound of 1 hand clapping?”

Meditate on this Zen Buddhist koan (a paradox used to coach Zen Buddhist monks) lengthy sufficient, guarantees neuroscientist Nikolay Kukushkin at first of his e book, and the origins of thoughts, and maybe even human expertise, will turn into clear.

However as many Buddhists additionally know, the trail to enlightenment is lengthy and tough, even whether it is finally rewarding, and One Hand Clapping is not any totally different.

First revealed in Russian, the e book has been translated into English by its writer, now at New York College. In it, Kukushkin explores the origins of life and its evolution alongside splendidly various branches. He encourages us to consider origin tales, not in any crudely reductionist method, however by way of what he calls nature’s concepts or essences.

Being savvy to the nuances of such phrases, Kukushkin is evident: “Don’t name it an concept when you assume that’s too spooky or unscientific – name it an essence, nature’s concept: a rational fruit of choice.” He connects this to Plato, who known as nature’s concept’s eidos, or essences.

Utilizing this filter, hydrothermal vents (his favoured location for all times’s origin) aren’t simply porous rocks and flowing fluids, but in addition patterns of exercise that pop up all through nature. There may be, as an illustration, a bent for beings to turn into complicated by tapping into extra vitality – a dynamic widespread in deep sea vents, photosynthesising cells and people burning fossil fuels.

Different essences spotlight movement and freedom, or the excellence between wanting and liking. However I discovered that Kukushkin’s analysis into the ocean slug Aplysia californica supplied the clearest instance of their energy, as he explored how the standard slug created an summary concept very important for its survival.

This takes the e book a couple of pages, nevertheless it entails the interplay of sensory and motor neurons, and muscle tissue and the siphon, a key respiration organ on the slug’s again. Every of the neurons’ actions has “totally different meanings”, writes Kukushkin, like “contact to the tail” or “contact to the physique no matter location”. Because the slug learns the place hazard is more likely to come from (and on condition that the siphon should all the time be protected), it makes use of the abstraction of “harmful contact no matter location” to make good selections.

Kukushkin causes that whereas human minds are extra complicated, related pattern-finding and abstraction is the premise of our considering. On high of those easy abstractions, we layer extra that drive all facets of our expertise, from imaginative and prescient to language.

One Hand Clapping covers a whole lot of floor, which may make it appear to be an entertaining lecture collection, with amusing sketches. Some might discover Kukushkin’s playfulness a bit a lot. However stick with it.

Fashionable scientists are likely to draw back from attributing rationality or creativity to organic or chemical methods, and from notions of company or course in life. Kukushkin reminds us the ancients had no such points. And just lately, amongst some biologists, there was a resurgence of the concept that evolution occurs, in some sense, “on goal”.

Scientists might worry this feels like pseudoscience, or the “clever design” of spiritual teams. However we might must revisit ideas we discover uncomfortable by affiliation – significantly when tackling existential questions just like the origins of life and thoughts.

We’re manufactured from the identical stuff because the bodily world, but there’s something about subjective expertise that appears profoundly totally different – the “exhausting downside” of consciousness.

For Kukushkin, the reply lies within the lengthy arc of eidos, from atoms to cells and brains, goal in that they’re “on the market”. We have a tendency to consider abstractions, nevertheless, as inside and subjective. “What if,” he asks, “the subjective is only a difficult type of the target? What if all concepts… are essences?”

This can be a neat try to cause that goal and subjective are two sides of the identical coin. If you concentrate on it lengthy sufficient, Kukushkin assures us, the exhausting downside dissolves. Personally, I don’t purchase it: the outstanding high quality of acutely aware expertise that binds collectively our senses, feelings and ideas makes extra sense when reframed this manner, however I wrestle to see the way it can fully bridge the gulf between topic and object.

Maybe we are going to by no means resolve this. However for now, at the very least, One Hand Clapping is a welcome koan, through which “the method of attending to the which means means greater than the which means itself”.