LUCA, Creature of the Vent

(For part 1 of this series on the first two chapters, click here.)

Having outlined the problem in Part I of The Vital Question, Nick Lane narrows down the conditions for the origin of life in Part II. Chapter 3 is titled “Energy at life’s origin” and Chapter 4 is “The emergence of cells”.

In Chapter 3, Lane cuts straight to the chase by outlining six requirements for a cell, assumed to be the smallest “unit” of a living organism.

·      A supply of reactive carbon

·      Free energy to drive some sort of metabolism

·      Catalysts (to overcome the “right” kinetic barriers)

·      A method to excrete “waste” products

·      Compartmentalization

·      Informational material that is heritable

He skips past the details I really care about (the formation of primitive metabolic cycles involving a range of small organics), but no fault of his as we simply don’t know at this stage what might have constituted these cycles. That’s why it is an area of active research I’m engaged in. If the answers were known, this would be less interesting.

Lane’s goal is to quickly narrow the cradle of life to just one viable option (that we are aware of) – alkaline hydrothermal vents. The argument is made by quickly and effectively dismissing other possibilities suggested in the literature. First, he rules out an open primordial ocean/soup. This makes sense because concentrations of suitable organic molecules would be miniscule, and no interesting chemistry will take place. He then rules out freezing environments. Although useful for concentrating organics, a mechanism for continuous supply of the building blocks is lacking. That’s a problem.

What might the source of carbon be? Lane thinks CO₂ is a good candidate (CO being too low in concentration), and there is some evidence that the amount of CO₂ was significantly higher on the Hadean earth compared to today. His candidate reaction to form organics such as formate, formaldehyde, methanol, methane (this list represents increasingly reduced C₁ molecules), is the reaction of CO₂ and H₂. The problem is that this reaction is not favorable within the same pH environment, however if there was a pH gradient then this might work. Lane calculates that the redox reaction is favorable if the oxidation of H₂ took place at pH 10, and CO₂ reduction to formaldehyde was at pH 6. His solution: An iron-sulfide semiconducting barrier that you might find in an alkaline hydrothermal vent. The outside of the vent has acidic waters (pH 5-7 has been suggested; I’ve even published a paper on this). The inside of the vent is alkaline.

There’s a nice vignette about the discovery of the Lost City alkaline hydrothermal vents of white smokers vindicating the predictions made by Martin Russell years before. Lane effectively argues against the black smokers (much hotter and more acidic) as the cradle of life. The higher temperatures and much more acidic conditions favor hydrolysis – it is hard to maintain any semblance of a short polymer (proteins, starches, DNA are all polymers) in this environment. Lane also enumerates characteristics of the milder white smokers that may allow both the concentration (via thermophoresis) and incubation of small organics. This could be the route to more complex molecules. He doesn’t specify details, and his group is building physical models to simulate these conditions to test his hypothesis. (That’s how science should work!) His model also ties in nicely with the proton pumps mentioned in Part 1.

Chapter 4 opens with the problem of lateral gene transfer in prokaryotes “erasing” the history that might otherwise be reconstructed through phylogenetics. (Bill Martin’s ‘amazing disappearing tree’ is used as an example.) Lane then enumerates some of the key differences between archaea and bacteria. What they share was likely present in the Last Common Universal Ancestor (LUCA). These include proteins and ribosome translational machinery, DNA and some form of transcription, and an ATP synthase – i.e. the ability to pump protons. However they differ in many other ways ranging from membrane composition to the DNA replication apparatus. Lane uses these odd similarities and dissimilarities to construct a hypothesis.

First, he narrows down fixing carbon to what may be the simplest and most ancestral pathway – the acetyl-CoA pathway – except that a simpler functional group could have initially substituted for CoA. Essentially he invokes the fundamental use of thioester chemistry in fixing CO₂ and H₂ into the bevy of organics required in a primitive biochemistry. He openly admits not knowing what this chemistry might look like in detail and he handwaves the formation of DNA (a gaping hole that may not be easy to solve given what we know from prebiotic syntheses). However, his picture is intriguing at the very least. The iron-sulfide cores of the hydrogenase and ferredoxin in methanogens suggest some continuity with the inorganic network that constitutes the hydrothermal vents.

LUCA may have started out lodged in the inorganic membrane between the acidic ocean and the alkaline hydrothermal liquid. The natural proton gradient results in an influx of protons from the acidic ocean into the cell. To maintain the influx requires relatively quick neutralization from the alkaline fluid, either by protons diffusing out the other side or from an influx of hydroxide. In any case, the membrane has to be leaky for this to work – this may be the case for simple fatty acids that are candidates for primitive cell membranes. (Many experiments suggest their synthesis is straightforward, and they allow for both growth and division of cell-like structures.) The problem is that LUCA is stuck where it is. Evolving a less permeable membrane kills the proton motive force to drive a primitive metabolism.

Lane thinks there might be an ingenious solution that kills two birds with one stone. The evolution of Na/H antiporters as a ‘preadaptation’ may have led to the further evolution of active pumping proteins, which would co-evolve with increasing membrane permeability. These could allow the cells increasing freedom from being stuck in the inorganic layer allowing them to ‘colonize’ other areas, be it in the vent system or possibly further afield. The bacteria and archaea may have come from two different evolutionary routes in this process. It may (in broad sweeping terms) explain the similarities and differences between the two domains of life. It certainly avoids some of the other problems that attempt to find the root to the tree of life (Lane enumerates the different possibilities, which he then argues against.)

The factoid that jumped out at me while reading this section was the amount of ‘waste’ generated compared to biomass synthesized. The ratio is 40 to 1. Methanogens spend most of their energy budget generating methane (and water) to pump protons. That’s the price to be paid in a free-living cell. In the leaky membrane of a cell attached to the wall of a hydrothermal vent, more energy may have been available in a natural proton gradient to drive a primitive (and evolving) carbon metabolism synthesizing the building blocks of proteins and nucleic acids. LUCA was a creature of the vent. Could we find LUCA now? Unfortunately not, as any other vent organisms now would devour metabolites and outcompete anything as primitive as LUCA. Could we build a LUCA under artificial conditions? Possibly. It won’t be easy, but it will be very interesting if some research group succeeds!

Magischola, and Teaching Magic

A colleague at the University of Richmond recently alerted me to New World Magischola (NWM). He found out about it because the university sent the faculty and staff an e-mail to tell them that there might be strange-looking folks around the campus during several four-day stretches this summer. Mr. Dursley would have been highly irritated by this. Here is a redacted snippet from that e-mail.

“New World Magischola participants will be staying in [named buildings]; eating in the Dining Center; and using classroom space in [named buildings]. As such, the campus community might encounter participants in masks, robes, and costumes and/or observe smoke in classrooms or labs.” And in addition: “Event organizers have asked that faculty, staff, and students not interact with participants while they are on campus.” I wonder if that would the tarnish the Live Action Role Playing (LARP) experience, or alternatively it could be more realistic by having “magic-users” questioned incredulously by those not of their kind.

Apparently the founders were inspired by their experience in Poland (mentioned in my previous blog post) a year ago, and they were able to easily raise funds on Kickstarter (according to this HuffPost article). That’s perhaps an indication of how many people desire such an experience. I wonder if I can parlay it into a contract job as a “professor”. The Huffpost article has a gif illustrating what might be a potions class with solutions in Erlenmeyer flasks. The revolving banner on NWM’s website has several classroom scenes. Interestingly, some of them show students looking a little bored or stumped in the classroom, perhaps an indication of old-school boring lessons (maybe it was History of Magic with a ghost-like Professor Binns). There are also scenes that might be part of a chemistry lab course. In fact, I’m guessing this is the most interesting class they could run that would be akin to Potions. It’s not so easy to mimic Care of Magical Creatures, Charms, or Transfiguration. I could clearly teach Potions and Arithmancy, if this was the Harry Potter world. But it’s not.

According to the NWM website, there are six possible “paths” (akin to majors). You could study to become a Cursebreaker, Healer, Astromancer, Artificier, Cryptozoologist, or Marshal. The upcoming Fantastic Beasts movie is bound to increase the subscription for Cryptozoology, and there are many weird fascinating creatures out there. (Here’s my take on chimeras.) Of the six, I would be most knowledgeable in helping students on the path to be Artificiers. According to the description: “Artificiers develop the most detailed understanding of how magic affects the physical world.” Regular readers will know this sounds right up my alley and I’ve explored the topic in several posts. The rest of the description however is rather garbled, but there are some interesting claims. For example, “This type of magical creation is not nearly as forgiving as spell casting or potion brewing, requiring a detailed exactness in order to make functioning objects that also last.” And this is why, folks, you need to learn chemistry at the molecular level – detailed exactness!

How does one become a professor at NWM? Like other LARPs, you can apply to be one during the 4-day session but spots are limited. Doesn’t look like any training is necessary which makes me wonder about the depth or realism of the “classes”. But that’s not the most important thing at the moment since this is a LARP, and an introductory one at that. After several rounds, when participants are searching for more depth, that’s where I might come in. In the meantime I can start writing a textbook on Magical Theory. (I’ve been thinking about the introductory chapter and am converging on it being about the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and matter. And yes, this textbook is a disguise to teach chemistry.) Maybe I could even be the ghostwriter for Adalbert Waffling, who being addled and a waffler, might not be the most reliable textbook writer.

Or maybe I should make my project more manageable and do Seven Brief Lessons on Magic Fundamentals, akin to Carlo Rovelli’s Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, originally a series of newspaper articles introducing science to the general public. It has seven short chapters, my favorite being the one on statistical mechanics. Rovelli’s text is engaging, and has good examples. Here’s one that connects time, heat, entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. The punch line is excellent. If you know about the Boltzmann distribution, you’ll get it!

“While there is no friction, for instance, a pendulum can swing forever. But if there is friction, then the pendulum heats its supports slightly, loses energy and slows down. Friction produces heat. And immediately we are able to distinguish the future (toward which the pendulum slows) from the past… The difference between past and future exists only when there is heat. The fundamental phenomenon that distinguishes the future from the past is the fact that heat passes from things that are hotter to things that are colder. So, again, why as time goes by, does heat pass from hot things to cold and not the other way around? The reason was discovered by Boltzmann and is surprisingly simple: it is sheer chance.”

Maybe I can start with a serialized version of blog posts. To get a larger project done, it’s always good to break it down into bite-sized pieces. So instead of Potions For Muggles, I will be teaching Chemistry for Magic Users, which I have claimed is crucial for more powerful spellcasting. Certainly any Artificier had better learn some (or possibly a lot of) chemistry. And physics. Okay, some biology and engineering would be useful too. Okay, I’m off to ponder this some more on.

P.S. For her vacation reading, my spouse is re-reading the entire Harry Potter series. I’m trying to persuade her to write a guest post! (Looks like she’s almost done with Book 4.) Unlike me, she reads fast.

What is Living?

In 1944, the physicist Erwin Schrodinger published the landmark What is Life. Since then it is requisite for origin-of-life books to address this question early on. In Nick Lane’s The Vital Question (one of my summer reading goals), the first chapter is unsurprisingly titled “What is Life?” Lane goes through the usual discussion, with very engaging prose – accessible to the non-scientist, and strewn with nuggets that the experts will appreciate. Here’s a paragraph on genomes.

“Genomes are the gateway to an enchanted land. The reams of code, 3 billion letters in our own case, read like an experimental novel, an occasionally coherent story in short chapters broken up by blocks of repetitive text, verses, blank pages, streams of consciousness: and peculiar punctuation. A tiny proportion of our own genome, less than 2%, codes for proteins; a larger portion is regulatory; and the function of the rest is liable to cause intemperate rows among otherwise polite scientists.”

But having briefly set the stage, Lane goes on to what he thinks is the much more important question “What is Living?” – the title of the second chapter. This, I think, is much more appropriate and useful and I think he is on the right track in his focus on energy transduction. Two main questions are posed by Lane in this chapter. “Why does all life conserve energy in the form of proton gradients across membranes? And how (and when) did this peculiar but fundamental process evolve?”

It does seem very curious that living systems essentially make use of redox chemistry, the transfer of electrons for all its bioenergetic needs. While different organisms use different redox carriers and “food” sources, they all make use of proton gradients. Lane also emphasizes the interplay between thermodynamics and kinetics. Thermodynamics may drive the redox reaction, but it is the existence of kinetic barriers under our particular environmental conditions that allows life to flourish. If not for these barriers, organic matter would explode in a ball of fire releasing (and wasting) heat all in one go. But life has evolved to exploit the margins in between, and the cascade of intricate molecular machines that have evolved to extract this “vital” energy are a thing of beauty.

The second law of thermodynamics plays a key role in allowing the formation of complex mixtures of molecules, linked together in cyclic dances, and increasing the overall entropy spreading it out across both space and time. Emphasized throughout the first two chapters is the importance in considering the environment that bathes such molecular systems. This is another part of Lane’s approach that I think is right on the money. He has a great illustration that even references the Harry Potter books.

“The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy – disorder – must increase, so it seems odd at first glance that a spore or a virus should be so stable… Take a spore and smash it to smithereens… Surely entropy must have increased! What was once a beautifully ordered system, capable of resuming growth as soon as it found suitable conditions, is now a random non-functional assortment of bits – high entropy by definition. But no!... Grind up a spore and the overall entropy hardly changes, because although the crushed spore itself is more disordered, the component parts now have a higher energy than they did before – oils are mixed with water, immiscible proteins are rammed hard together. This physically ‘uncomfortable’ state costs energy. If a physically comfortable state releases energy into the surroundings as heat, a physically uncomfortable state does the opposite. Energy has to be absorbed from the surroundings, lowering their entropy, cooling them down. Writers of horror stories grasp the central point in their chilling narratives – almost literally. Spectres, poltergeists and Dementors chill, or even freeze, their immediate surroundings, sucking out energy to pay for their unnatural existence.”

While Lane’s ideas on bioenergetics are not new, it is his masterful weaving together of physics, chemistry and biology that will allow him to support an intriguing hypothesis for the source of life’s origins. I will get to those details in a subsequent post as I make my way slowly through subsequent chapters. In the meantime, Lane points out many interesting observations in the world of molecular biology. Eukaryotic radiation is oddly monophyletic compared to the diversity of bacteria and archaea. (He will suggest a single endosymbiotic event compared to the Margulis serial endosymbiosis theory.) He also effectively argues that the archezoa (eukaryotes lacking mitochondria) came later. And he marvels at the surprising complexity of the eukaryote – something I had not quite appreciated until reading his examples and illustrations.

Several years ago, when I decided to move some of my research projects towards understanding the origin of life, I was looking to leverage my expertise as a computational chemist to ask some interesting questions. I settled on the importance of mapping the free energy of molecular systems as they “complexified” and how the thermodynamics and kinetics would change under different environmental conditions. (Hence, I think Lane asks the right questions.) I’m nowhere close to answering the questions (although I am working on it), but it is the asking of good questions that is key. I hope that is something my students learn in my chemistry classes. How do you ask good questions? (They seem much more interested in quickly finding the “correct” answer.) One thing I appreciate about Lane’s first two chapters is that he poses one interesting question after another!

Vacation and Slowing Down

I’m enjoying the beginning of a two-week vacation! Lots of sleeping, eating good food and enjoying the company of family. There is also reading leisurely, which I already do regularly even when I’m not on vacation. What better way to start than with The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy by Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber. I first heard about this book from an Inside HigherEd review. Then, my university organized a faculty summer book club to read it, so I signed up. (It’s a short read – purposefully so, otherwise you won’t start reading it because you might feel daunted by the tyranny of time, a subject tackled by the book.) Since one of my goals for the summer is taking the time to think by slowing my pace, I decided to start reading the book on the long plane ride. That way, I could read several pages or sections, then close my eyes, and think! The importance of taking the time to think, and its importance to teaching and scholarship, is one key message from Berg and Seeber.

The book takes inspiration from the Slow Food movement rebelling against the modern agricultural industrial complex. Here, the culprit is the corporatization of the university. Having taken on heavy administrative tasks the last few years (before taking a break this year), much of the book resonates with me. Perhaps I was also primed by reading books about the history of universities and how administration has taken an increasing role from the managerial world, in some aspects for the better, but in many other aspects for the worse. There is no simple solution. Berg and Seeber do not provide one – that is not their aim. And anyone who claims to have found the magic bullet to “solve this problem” should probably not be believed. These are the folks who got us into this situation in the first place.

This reminds me of an essay a couple of months ago by David West titled The Managerial University: A Failed Experiment? It’s a striking and succinct summary of the problem. Here’s the third paragraph that sets the stage for the essay: “In their enthusiasm for the ‘new managerialism’ and the ‘modern university’, however, politicians, bureaucrats and those academics who have hitched their fortunes to the new model seem wilfully blind to the practical results of their reforms. There is some truth in their criticisms of the old idea of the university, but in practice the management of the modern university also leaves too much to be desired. Some of the problems that beset the new model were anticipated by sceptical academics. Their criticisms were dismissed as the products of antiquated thinking and self-interest. What can you expect from academics defending their own privileges.”

While Berg and Seeber exhort faculty to band together as a community to resist the corporatization of the university, this message is not shouted from the rooftops. Rather, it is weaved into a narrative that emphasizes the benefits of slow-thinking, not slowness in terms of speed but rather in terms of richness and enjoyment. There is a chapter devoted to the enjoyment of teaching as a Slow Professor, and another that discusses research and scholarship. There is also an interesting chapter on ‘collegiality’ and community-building, as a counterpoint to the individualistic competitive ethos that permeates corporate culture at its base. This gives the book a very different tone from the more militant warnings of crisis (which have their place). Perhaps if we applied some slow-thinking to the current situation, we may collectively approach a multi-faceted response (there is no “one size fits all”) to the problems plaguing higher education, instead of allowing disruptive demagogues to hold sway. Disruption in itself is not a bad thing, but if we are students of history, we should know that what seems shiny and new is often the repackaging of old ideas – and we should be reflective and skeptical as academics.

What else did I bring along for my vacation reading? Two books that I have recently read, that could do with another round at a slower and more reflective pace. I mentioned one in a previous blog post, The Vital Question, by Nick Lane on an interesting and provocative scenario for locating the origin-of-life in hydrothermal vents. The other is a short but provocative book on learning and teaching by Frank Smith, The Book of Learning and Forgetting. Here’s the teaser: If you really want to learn something, there is nothing that can stop you. If you have no interest in learning something, all the novel pedagogy and tricks will be of no use, because you will simply forget what you are cramming as soon as you can. The author traces the institutionalization of learning with unflattering comparisons to the military complex and managerial standardization, an early version if you like to the corporate tactics of today.

Here’s to Summer Slow Reading!

Implicit and Explicit Instruction

Having discussed a two-axis model on research-in-teaching in my previous post, I would like to take a look at another two-axis model. This one is from a blog post by Greg Ashman titled, not surprisingly, “A two-axis model of approaches to learning”. I’m now a regular reader of Ashman’s blog because I find his musings both thoughtful and provocative. (I discuss another of his posts here.)

The main point of this post is to add a second dimension to the discussion often surrounding implicit versus explicit instruction. I hear about this most often in the context of promoting inquiry learning (implicit) over the lecture format (explicit) with a clear bias towards inquiry being the preferred mode, particularly in the sciences. I’ve even run a multi-disciplinary multi-instructor Scientific Inquiry course that emphasized active learning in small class meetings.

Here is Ashman’s two-axis model. (Graphic is from Ashman’s blog.) The horizontal axis features explicit instruction on the right and implicit on the left.

We need to define the vertical axis (“situational accountability”). Here’s what Ashman says. “When we think of teacher-student interactivity, we tend to perceive it as a mechanism for gaining and giving feedback. However, it also serves another function; it promotes situational accountability. It is ‘situational’ in the sense that the accountability exists in the same learning episode as the instruction rather than after some delay. For instance, if there is a chance that you will be called upon to interact at some point in a lesson then you are more likely to pay attention to the instruction in that lesson. Situational accountability can be increased in a number of ways and to differing degrees. A simple approach might be to intersperse instruction with questions to randomly chosen students. However, it is also worth noting that Slavin’s two conditions for successful group work both act to increase situational accountability. So this is a more general idea.” (Read Ashman’s article if you want to know more about Slavin’s two conditions. He provides a link.)

Let’s take a look at each quadrant. Ashman has usefully categorized the types of students who would benefit from each method.

In the bottom right, you have Lecturing. This isn’t a bad method once you think about the target audience: self-motivated novices. When I want to learn something new, I enjoy going to a lecture. (Okay, maybe I’m weird.) One nice thing about being in a university is there are plenty of interesting lectures throughout the year. Or perhaps I watch a video, and thanks to the internet I have choices galore. But the crucial part is that I am self-motivated. Ashman’s example is first year university students studying an elective, i.e., something the student isn’t required to take but chooses purely out of interest. Presumably this means self-motivation. I have practically met no one in my first year chemistry courses (both the one for science majors and for non-science majors) who was taking it simply for the fun of it as an elective. They were either fulfilling the “science” requirement (if not a science major) or taking it as part of their major (true for biology, chemistry, physics, and engineering majors). Perhaps a traditional lecture (one that’s not so interactive) is not a good method for introductory college-level chemistry courses. I’m inclined to agree, but practically no one in my department drones on without substantial interaction with the students. Then again, I’m part of a liberal arts college with small class sizes. But if you were teaching at a large research university with 400 students in your class, that might be different.

The top left (Accountable Inquiry) is where I would place most (but not all) of the popular Active Learning pedagogies you hear about. Notice that these are geared to students with high prior knowledge who are not self-motivated. Many of the students in my chemistry classes have had some chemistry before they came to college (although they may have forgotten much of what they attempted to learn by rote) so I’m not starting completely from scratch. I think this partially explains why at degree-granting institutions, this approach works well. It is much harder to pull off when the student is a complete novice. Even when the student isn’t a complete novice, if you pitch the Inquiry activity at two high a level, the students just flounder. (Sadly, I speak from experience – and have learned to calibrate a little better by mixing in some explicit instruction, the next category.) One may quibble with the definition of what it means to be self-motivated. I’m going to say that grades, GPA and getting into medical school are not what I would classify as self-motivators. They are motivators, but of a different sort. (This is another can of worms that requires its own blog post so I won’t elaborate.)

The top right is where you have Explicit Instruction. This is where Ashman is as a math teacher at the grade school level. Students are novices and not necessarily self-motivated. I would argue that even at the university level, it would be important to mix in Explicit Instruction with Accountable Inquiry. In chemistry, while the students have been exposed to some of the material, they often don’t have the conceptual framework well-established and therefore they are seeing the material afresh in a different context at the college level. This approach is my preferred mode, i.e., there is a fair amount of my “lecturing” but it’s not like the lectures I would attend to learn something new. I see my lectures as being set pieces for Explicit Instruction. There needs to be Q&A and interactions with students throughout the class meeting. We also sometimes break into smaller groups to work on more “inquiry” based activities. This at least seems to work well for the types of students I get in my classes at my institution.

The bottom left (Self-determined inquiry) is what I do as a practicing scientist. While undergraduate education may have benefited from this approach way back when (and you still see it in the Oxbridge approach), by and large the massification of higher education means this is not going to work in most colleges or universities. There will be outliers, but we’re talking about the mass of students here. Graduate education works in this way to some extent, and so do small upper-division electives with highly motivated students. A capstone or independent research experience could also fall into this category.

What I like about Ashman’s model is that by just adding one more dimension, he opens up the pedagogical discussion that would otherwise be summarized as inquiry-based versus lecture, the guide-by-the-side versus the sage-on-the-stage, or many other caricatures that try to put two things in opposition to each other. It makes a nice media sound-bite, but like most important issues one needs some nuance and a little more complexity to move forward. Secondly, Ashman’s examples of learners in each quadrant is a challenge to me not to see my students in static groups but to see if I can move students from one quadrant into another. I’d like to move them from novice to expert, and from less motivated to more motivated. Different students will be at different stages, but there is some benefit to students helping each other and learning as a community that group work active-learning scenarios may leverage.

Teaching, Research and Scholarship, Part 4

In Part 4 of this series, I will discuss two chapters from Reshaping the University: New Relationships between Research, Scholarship and Teaching edited by Ronald Barnett and published by the Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press. The book is a collection of articles from leading figures at English-speaking academic institutions around the world focusing on what is termed the Research-Teaching Nexus.

Many of the contributors to this volume are based in the U.K. where heated national policy (and funding) discussions surround the potential separation of research and teaching into separate institutions that “specialize” in either activity, but not both. As someone who chose to teach in a liberal arts college setting in the U.S. where research and teaching are (hopefully) equally valued, I see this as problematic – but as I’ve read more about this issue I am beginning to appreciate the magnitude of the problem for all higher education institutes. We in the U.S., should pay close attention to what is happening across both oceans. The pressures are not just internal, but politics, economics and history have led us to this point.

In Chapter 8 (“Scholarship and the Research and Teaching Nexus”), Lewis Elton begins by visiting ideas from Humboldt. (His influence 200 years ago reaches far indeed!) “Humboldt’s central idea was that, in both teaching and research, ‘universities should treat learning always as consisting of not yet wholly solved problems and hence always in a research mode’… An essence of research is that it is initiated in the minds of researchers, and in a similar way, learning in a research mode must be initiated in the minds of learners. Such learning is active and questioning in a way that traditional learning, in which learners react in the main to inputs from teachers, rarely is.”

Elton goes on to define the nexus: “I therefore see learning in a research mode as creating in the learner’s mind – a connection between teaching and research. In parallel, the scholarship of teaching and learning – which consists of a deep and research influenced understanding by the teacher of the student’s learning processes – may be seen as the way to bring about that inquiry-led learning by the student. Together, these two parallel processes constitute the essence of the teaching-research nexus.”

That qualification, the need for a deep understanding on the part of the teacher, is one that I was supremely unprepared for when I began teaching. Even now, I’m not sure how deep my understanding is (although I’m trying to learn more as evidenced by some of my posts in this blog). I certainly have gained experienced over the years to know where students tend to trip over the conceptual material, their most common misconceptions, and I have developed some strategies to help them through the tricky bits. But deep understanding? Hmmm… I don’t know. That seems like a very tall order, especially given the spirit of competition in higher education, antithetical to the community that is needed for this deep understanding to be developed and shared. I consider myself challenged to mull over this some more over the summer.

The typical way we provide our version of the nexus (as anticipated by Elton) is to expose students to research outcomes, and for students to get involved in hands-on research projects. Elton writes: “The first of these is of long standing and can be motivating to students, particularly if the research was carried out by the students’ teachers.” My students are almost always interested when I make a small digression to describe my current or past research in the context of what they are learning, but this “vicarious experience” is fleeting and very limited. As to getting students exposed to hands-on research, this is the signature program of my department. To major in Chemistry or Biochemistry, a hands-on undergraduate research experience is required and is usually undertaken in one of the faculty labs. Interestingly, Elton points out that although this approach was adopted early by MIT and Imperial College, they quickly “noticed that [it] was inappropriate for most undergraduates in their early years.” I think this says more to how the experience is structured and perhaps to the priorities of research-intensive institutes in contrast to undergraduate focused liberal arts colleges. Interestingly, my department is being overwhelmed with students who want to be majors. While I’m sure the hands-on research experience is one factor, there are many others. In the meantime we are trying to find ways to manage the challenging large student numbers.

Elton ends with a call to both innovation and professional development, but what I find most striking is his caution of the difficulty in providing conditions that will strengthen the nexus. The differences may be so great that it may be “difficult to make direct comparisons [between innovative and traditional practices, especially] in the climate of ‘evidence-based’ practice, which compares the relative efficacy of different ‘treatments’ – in this case of fundamentally different approaches to a curriculum – as if the latter were no more complicated than the replacement of a medicine by a placebo. The jury is therefore likely to be out for a long time.”

In Chapter 5, Mike Healey tries to parse out and clarify the differences at different ends of the spectrum. The title of his chapter is “Linking Research and Teaching: Exploring Disciplinary Spaces and the Role of Inquiry-based Learning.” Before launching into his categorization of approaches, Healey also has some words of caution. “In constructing links between research and teaching, the discipline is an important mediator. This is because the conduct of research and the teaching approaches tend to differ between disciplines.” He goes on to provide a number of examples and citations that highlight some of the differences, which I won’t discuss here. Instead I want to highlight the following two-axis graph. (It takes the ideas from Ron Griffiths’ landmark paper in 2004 and modifies them slightly.) This is from Figure 5.2 Curriculum design and the research-teaching nexus. (I picked a figure from a Google Image search that matched the text.)

The bottom left quadrant (Research-led) is where the teacher-as-researcher’s interests dominate and the main mode of instruction is transmission of information. Certainly in the 2-3 minutes where I discuss a research vignette in my introductory classes, it’s me talking and the students are the audience. That being said, I’m not trying to teach them content; rather I’m using it as a motivational tool or as a hook, to make connections.

The bottom right quadrant (Research-oriented) is what goes on to some extent in our Research Methods class, but also in going through historical examples illustrating the various “faces” of the scientific method in other classes that I teach. There is a historic undercurrent in my classes, I think because of my interest in the history and philosophy of science. Healey writes: “the curriculum emphasizes as much the processes by which knowledge is produced as learning knowledge that has been achieved, and [instructors] try to engender a research ethos through their teaching.”

The top left quadrant (Research-tutored) is not common here in the U.S., and is how the Oxbridge system works. What is interesting here is that apparently at Oxford, when these “tutorials” (the term “teaching” is not used) are “used inappropriately to teach, they have a less positive impact on learning.” Healey quotes research by Trigwell and Ashwin suggesting that when the tutors “teach”, the students opt to take a surface-level approach learning, rather than a deeper approach that comes through collaborative discussion. To some extent this is the approach I take with the students who work in my research lab. We have individual weekly one-on-one meetings (sometimes they drop by more often). Although in the beginning I usually instruct them what to do to get them started, I quickly try to pivot (depending on student ability) towards a collaborative approach where the student generates ideas to push their projects forward and I serve more as a consultant.

The top right quadrant (Research-based) is “largely designed around inquiry-based activities, and the division of roles between teacher and student is minimized.” A significant portion of our chemistry and biochemistry lab courses emphasize this approach and many of us design and use such activities for the “lecture” portion; although it’s hard to go the whole way into exclusively using inquiry-based activities. While student resistance (thanks to the “system” that churns out a certain type of student who is college-ready) is one of the factors, I think there are pedagogical reasons to mix things up. Healey acknowledges that “few curricula fit entirely in one quadrant” and there is in fact a mix of approaches. I can see aspects of each quadrant in my classes.

Healey also brings up the issue of potentially unbundling the two activities: “The extent to which it is necessary for effective learning that some of the research under discussion is undertaken by the specific teachers, or at least in the same department or university, is critical to the policy debate about the impact of research selectivity. There are similar arguments about the extent to which teachers facilitating research-based or research-tutored learning need to be active or experienced researchers. This, in turn, raises the question of how far the skills of facilitating learning and discovery research are co-located.”

My gut response is that it depends on the level of the material, in particular how introductory it would be. But that’s a content-based answer that does not necessarily address process. Let’s try a different tack. Can someone who has earned a Ph.D. in chemistry, but is not necessarily currently research-active in the narrow sense (as opposed to Boyer’s broader use of scholarship) teach chemistry at the college or university level? Clearly this already happens now with mass adjuntification in the U.S., and a Masters degree in chemistry is sufficient for the introductory level courses corresponding to the curriculum in the first two years. So I suppose the answer is yes, certainly at the introductory level. But what constitutes introductory? College students take General Chemistry their first year, then Organic Chemistry their second year (and sometimes Analytical Chemistry). The third year then brings Physical Chemistry and/or Biochemistry and/or Inorganic Chemistry. But even these three are introductory, at least for the first semester, to each subfield. It’s only when you get to a course such as Advanced Organic Chemistry (requiring a year of introductory organic chemistry) that maybe you need an active researcher in that field. But then again, maybe not.

Why? I’d hazard a guess that it might depend on whether there is a good textbook for the subject material. I happen to think there are some for Advanced Organic that do a decent job, although as an undergraduate we read a lot of papers in my advanced organic courses. I never took Advanced P-Chem. It wasn’t offered. I don’t offer it either even though I do teach the year long (introductory?) P-Chem sequence. I’m not sure a student would sign up for advanced P-Chem even if it was offered. The horror! I did not have to take advanced P-Chem in graduate school, although I did take one quarter of grad-level Quantum, and that was enough, thank you very much. But someone with the Ph.D. training, who keeps up with the literature, could well teach an advanced undergraduate course in chemistry with research papers and not use a textbook. Having experienced the (grueling) process as a peon researcher, one could certainly teach with an emphasis on research-process. The only thing you can’t do if you don’t run an active research lab is bring students into your lab to experience research first-hand. If this is an important part of their undergraduate education, then you need at least some of the faculty to run active research labs – but not all of them. This is in fact already the case, and there is some unbundling, or specialization of labor so to speak.

Certainly in the natural sciences, one could teach in three of the four quadrants as long as one had the appropriate training and experience. The Oxbridge top-left quadrant is also very expensive and few institutions will have the luxury to have the majority of faculty engage students in this way.  (Scarily, we provide very little training for teaching although that’s changing – a subject for a different post.) Being an active researcher in the narrow sense may not actually be necessary, not to mention expensive. The increasingly competitive arena of higher education, however has exacerbated the issue, and economics and politics have come to drive a wedge making it increasingly challenging to sustain the nexus broadly across institutions. (There will always be a small rich elite that is less subject to such currents.)

But to get back to Elton’s categories: (1) You may not need the active researcher to transmit extant research to the students. Any instructor who keeps up with the literature can do so. (2) Do the students need to actively work in the lab of a scientist engaging in active research? We hear the term “research-rich curriculum” thrown around with regularity. Instructors could design activities that simulate to some extent the processes involved in research, as an offshoot of work that a different active researcher is involved with (but who isn’t doing the actual teaching). Have we come to some temporary détente where we keep doing what we are used to doing as long in the hope that the money keeps flowing?

Healey sees a bright side. Quoting previous work by Elton, he argues that “student-centered teaching and learning processes are intrinsically favorable towards a positive nexus, while more traditional teaching methods may at best lead to a positive nexus for the most able students.” I think he is saying that if faculty increasingly move into the top right quadrant, they might be able to make an argument that linking teaching and research is good for mass education. Unbundling, as the college classroom diversifies, is a bad idea even though it may seem economically “cheaper” in the short run. One should never let a good crisis go to waste.

(Interested in other aspects? Here are links for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, of this series.)

Creative Chemistry and the Liquid State

“The Strength of Weak Ties” is the title of a landmark paper by Mark Granovetter. (American Journal of Sociology, 1973, Vol. 78, Iss. 6, pp1360-1380, accessible from JSTOR). This work is often cited in the popular literature – including two books I read recently (reviewed here and here). To get a sense of the scope of Granovetter’s article, here is the opening paragraph.

“A fundamental weakness of current sociological theory is that it does not relate micro-level interactions to macro-level patterns in any convincing way. Large-scale statistical, as well as qualitative, studies offer a good deal of insight into such macro phenomena as social mobility, community organization, and political structure. At the micro level, a large and increasing body of data and theory offers useful and illuminating ideas about what transpires within the confines of the small group. But how interaction in small groups aggregates to form large-scale patterns eludes us in most cases.”

Hopefully one concept that students took home from my Physical Chemistry II (Statistical Thermodynamics and Kinetics) course this past semester is that the liquid state is much more difficult to describe mathematically, certainly more so than gases or solids. We spent much of the semester connecting the microscopic quantum world and the macroscopic equations of classical thermodynamics via statistical mechanics. Most of our time was spent on ideal gases and how the basic equations can be modified to account for non-ideal behavior in real systems. Intermolecular forces, the weak ties of the molecular world, are particularly important in chemistry.

I would argue that most of the interesting chemistry takes place in the liquid state, where weak ties reign supreme under ambient conditions – this is certainly true of the chemistry of life on planet Earth. Gases, at least at atmospheric pressure, are too dilute. Their weak ties (intermolecular forces) are too weak, and their strong ties (covalent bonds) are too strong. Thus, while gases are very dynamic systems – they are relatively easy to describe with “static” equations when they behave close to ideal. Solids are much more restricted in dynamism and the atoms can generally be treated as relatively static – vibrations surrounding a fixed center. Ignoring plasma and other exotic phases, it is liquids that provide the blend of dynamic behavior at close quarters that lead to the most interesting, yet complex chemistry.

Now a single liquid substance can be described using the appropriate equations of state, however solutions are where all the action happens. In a solution, there are solute molecules moving around among dynamic solvent molecules. There may be multiple solutes and sometimes more than one solvent. In a cell, the “atomic unit” of an independent structure that is “alive”, the solution is very, very concentrated and chock-full of a plethora of molecules with diverse weak ties to each other. This is nowhere close to an ideal solution, and therefore very difficult to describe mathematically with an equation of state. I describe some of this complexity in a previous post about minimal cells.

A mathematical equation of state allows you to make powerful predictions about past and future states of the system being studied. But concentrated complex solutions make it very difficult to come up with equations to model the behavior of the system. Certainly the effects can be non-linear (i.e., a small tweak could lead to a large effect down the road) – almost always the case in a complex system. In The Geography of Genius, the author Eric Weiner uses this argument to explain why it is hard to predict where genius or creative clusters might arise. He also discusses the importance of weak ties in generating novelty – one measure of creativity (at least using certain “standard” tests).

The origin of life could be viewed as chemical creativity par excellence. What are the conditions required? It is hard to imagine life being created solely in the gas phase (unless under high pressure, in which case it starts to exhibit fluid or liquid-like behavior) or in the solid state (much too slow, and hard to generate diversity). While the liquid solvent does not need to be water, the unique properties of water, especially in a concentrated solution with many solutes, make it an excellent choice for interesting and complex chemistry to take place. Living cells are a crowded place, not unlike urban areas where creative clusters may arise. There is plenty of dynamic interaction in both situations, much of it in the form of weak ties and connections.

Weiner also observes that creative clusters were preceded by what seem like unfavorable conditions (political or natural disasters), and individuals we classify as “geniuses” often had difficult and challenging circumstances to overcome. Creativity arises under potentially severe constraints. Few pass through the bottleneck not just to survive, but thrive! Creative adaptations and novelty arise as the environment changes – and a drastic environment change may “speed up” the evolutionary process. It is less likely that life arose in a pleasant warm lake (current estimates suggest that the molecular concentrations are too low for prebiotic chemistry) than in the harsher conditions of a hydrothermal vent – albeit there is much destruction alongside creation under such conditions. Because of the high pressures, water remains liquid even at temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Celcius. But we haven’t pinned down where life may have arisen on our planet.

We don’t know how to describe the complex chemistry under these complicated conditions. While I am working my way towards the goal of exploring chemistry at different temperatures, pressures and solute concentrations, I have started out with models and equations that I do understand – dilute solutions under ambient conditions. Perhaps if I understand the energetics involved in those cases, I can begin to build in complexity into the theoretical model. In class, I remember a student question alluding to this complexity. I told the class that we were restricting ourselves to studying the equations of equilibrium thermodynamics, and the interesting non-equilibrium realm would be a next step for those who are interested. (I think my alluding to the more complex mathematics dampened further interest.)

But that is where all the interesting chemistry happens. Creativity is liquid!

P.S. What might help me solve this problem is liquid luck. If only I could get my hands on some Felix Felicis. You would think a chemist with a blog named Potions For Muggles would be adept at mixing chemicals. But alas, I am a computational chemistry with lousy hands in lab.

The Geography of Genius

What are the conditions that foster genius? Is it in your genes? Does it come from your environment? Eric Weiner is betting on the latter as he takes a romp across the globe for a window into the past of where genius flourished. History is his story in The Geography of Genius. Seven locations are chosen. Seems like the perfect number. In Athens he goes on a tour with a guide actually named Aristotle, and he discusses philosophy with a living philosopher actually named Plato. In Hangzhou, he picks up drinking green tea and gets to interview Jack Ma (founder of AliBaba). I’ve followed him through Florence, Edinburgh and Calcutta thus far, with two more stops to go: Vienna and Silicon Valley.

Weiner is one of the most amusing authors I have read recently, and his book is a real page-turner! He has a light touch, interesting interviews, and he makes disparate connections sound creative, even as he is trying to search for the roots of creativity. An exploration of what “genius” means is a great way to start. Here’s a paragraph from Weiner that illustrates his jocular writing style.

“Genius. The word beguiles, but do we know what it really means? It comes to us from the Latin genius, but it meant something very different in Roman times. Back then, a genius was a presiding deity that followed you everywhere, much like a helicopter parent only with supernatural power… The current dictionary definition – ‘extraordinary intellectual power esp. as manifested in creative activity’ – is a product of the eighteenth-century Romantics, those brooding poets who suffered, suffered for their art and, we’d now say, for their creativity, a word that is even more recent; it didn’t come along until 1870 and wasn’t in widespread use until the 1950s.”

What is the plural of genius? Geniuses? Maybe genii? I did my own investigation to learn that this comes from the Arabic djinn – like the chap that comes out of Aladdin’s lamp and grants three wishes. None of those three, by the way, can be a wish for more wishes. The word genie comes from both the Arabic and Roman roots. I find intriguing this idea intriguing as it relates to magic. Maybe what distinguishes a Muggle from magical folk is the ability to tap into your own inner genie, and somehow control the forces of nature (my bet is via something like electromagnetic radiation), bending them to your will. The elves of Tolkien’s world would disagree with this notion. The Parliament Tree in All the Birds in the Sky tells the budding witch that “control is an illusion.”

In any case, Weiner’s plan is to explore the interplay between nature and nurture, and to see if conditions for genius to thrive can be achieved. Each chapter has a theme, although the reader will find that there is no surefire way to predict how and why creative clusters arise. There are, however similarities among the different cities when they thrived in their “renaissance” era. For one, they are all cities – meeting places of different ideas. All arose after terrible conditions, whether political or natural disasters. The historical geniuses profiled had difficult and challenging circumstances to overcome. They failed in many activities, but more importantly kept trying. Their creativity did not arise in a vacuum – visionary political leadership in the nation-states was crucial. And last but not least, each creative cluster also sowed the seeds of its own destruction.

Instead of analyzing the nature of genius (and I have not yet reached Weiner’s summary and conclusion) I have chosen five excerpts to highlight Weiner’s writing, simply because his prose is so much fun to read!

Chapter 1: Weiner is in conversation with MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellowship recipient Alicia Stallings who proclaims that “Socrates was the Dude.”

“Alicia is clearly using dude in The Big Lebowskian sense, which is the best sense, but still, comparing one of history’s greatest thinkers to a White Russian-drinking, pot-smoking character in a Coen brothers movie? I don’t know. It seems wrong. Look at the facts, Alicia says, sensing my skepticism. While the world swirled around him, Socrates remained an island of calm. A rock. That’s very Dude-like behavior. During his long and fulfilling life, Socrates never wrote a single word. He was too busy being the Dude. And then… just before drinking the hemlock that would still his enormous heart, Socrates implored his followers, ‘I would ask you to be thinking of the truth and not of Socrates.’ Not only is that statement admirably Dude-like in its selflessness – it’s not about the, it’s about the truth – it is also noteworthy that Scorates spoke of himself in the third person. You don’t get any more Dude-like than that.”

Chapter 2: Weiner is pondering the Chinese notion of the relationship between creativity and tradition.

“Tradition is not something that innovative people and places should run from. It is something they should – they must – embrace. That is exactly what the geniuses of Song-era China did. They viewed every potential innovation within a context of tradition. If it represented a natural extension of that tradition, it was adopted. If not, it was dropped. This was not a retreat from the spirit of innovation but, rather, a recognition that [according to Will Durant] ‘nothing is new but the arranging.’ The Chinese did not despair, as we might, at the prospect of a lifetime spent reshuffling the stuff of life. They knew that great beauty is to be found in arranging. Genius even. This helps explain why China’s golden age, unlike say, the Italian Renaissance, was not defined by sudden (and disruptive) leaps, but rather gradual and steady progress.”

Chapter 3: Weiner, expecting he should begin his investigation of the Renaissance in Florence with artists and poets, is instead pointed to merchants and bankers, in particular the powerful Medici family.

“As their name suggests, the Medicis were originally apothecaries – their coat of arms looked like six pills arranged in a circle – and that is, in a way the role theey played. They revved up the metabolism of Florence, like a dose of caffeine. As with many drugs, the Medici medicine came with side effects, and a real risk of dependency. But theirs was by and large good medicine, and the patient thrived.”

Chapter 4: Weiner is in conversation with the playwright Donald Campbell who is describing an example of how Edinburgh thrives on hiddenness and surprise. A fellow playwright calls Campbell and says: “Our play is opening next weekend, but don’t tell anyone.”

“Campbell laughs at the absurdity of promoting a play by keeping it secret… There are two possibilities, I realize. One is that the Scots are nuts, and this whole Enlightenment business was a ruse, an intellectual Nessie. The second possibility is they are onto something. I’m feeling generous – compensatory, you might say – so I choose the second option. Perhaps the Scots have long known intuitively that we cherish the hidden more than the exposed. That is why God invented wrapping paper and lingerie. The surprise, and joy, of discovering what had previously been hidden lies at the heart of creativity…”

Chapter 5: Weiner is writing about the influence and influencers of Calcutta’s Renaissance Man, Rabindranath Tagore.

“A golden age is like a supermarket. It offers boatloads of choice. What you do with that choice is up to you. Shopping at a supermarket doesn’t guarantee a delicious meal, but it does make one possible. By the time Tagore came of age, the Bengal Renaissance had already been laid. The supermarket was open for business. He was a regular and creative customer there. Tagore, like many geniuses, eschewed parochialism. He took inspiration where he could get it – Buddhism, classical Sanskrit, English literature, Sufism, and from the Bauls, itinerant singers who wandered from village to village, delighting in the moment. The genius of Tagore was the genius of synthesis.”

I should finish Weiner’s book in three days since I’m restricting myself to reading a chapter a day. Perhaps I will learn the secret of creativity then!

From Quick-Quotes Quills to Riddle's Diary

As I have been thinking about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the interaction of technology and magic, it seems time to review two more magical objects from the world of Harry Potter. (For an earlier example, here’s a post about the Marauder’s Map.)

The Quick-Quotes Quill makes its first appearance in Book 4 when freelance reporter Rita Skeeter tries to interview Harry Potter in a broom cupboard. How does it work? As the interview proceeds, the magical quill writes what is being said in flowery prose, adding additional “supporting” facts to the main story. Presumably it receives some training and input from its owner, and therefore writes in a style suited to the taste and personality of the witch or wizard who has charmed the quill. In this example, it aggrandizes Rita while painting Harry as a tragic hero.

Muggles now have decent technology that transcribes speech. Combined with searching the wireless internet or a cloud database, an appropriate app (or program) can add flourishes to the transcribed text following parameters set up by (or learned from) the owner. We can now ask Siri for information, but she could well make further suggestions by “reading our mind”, having adapted to our interests, likes and dislikes. Alexa, with her superior voice recognition capabilities, can do more than buy you products from Amazon. Her skill set is projected to increase exponentially as open third-parties create increasing numbers of sophisticated apps.

With or without a magical quill, who is the author? The one with the idea? The wordsmith? In reality, anything that we read in books come not just from one mind or person. There is always a collaborative effort, acknowledged or not. Ideas do not arise in a vacuum. Other “authors” we read or listen to have influenced our phraseology, style and word usage. Some hardly do any of the writing themselves – they hire ghostwriters. A day may soon come when you no longer need a human ghostwriter to churn out that essay, article or book on your behalf. An AI could potentially do it given some parameters. A sufficiently advanced one, drawing on the wide resources of the web might even do so while (ironically) passing the test of a plagiarism-detection program. AIs have surpassed individual humans in Chess, Go and Jeopardy. The frontline of research in these areas has moved towards combining the skills of AI and human, superior to either alone. The age of the cyborg has arrived. A Muggle cyborg may well surpass Rita Skeeter and her Quick-Quotes Quill.

If a first generation AI can assist humans in rudimentary tasks, and a more superior version can engage in more complex activities, what might a highly advanced AI personal assistant look like when engaged with a creative and ingenious human? The recent Iron Man movies capture this well. Just think how much I could accomplish if I had Jarvis as an assistant. Besides doing all the necessary difficult calculations, Jarvis actively makes suggestions on how to improve things. I might not just imagine new elements, but be able to create them. But whether Jarvis would want to work with someone who does not have Tony Stark’s intelligence and abilities is open to question. As an AI advances, like Her, would it find mere humans simply less interesting and perhaps constraining, and instead chart its own course? Worse, might an AI turn malevolent towards the human race?

This brings me to Riddle’s diary, a powerful magical object featured in Book 2. It seems benign at first, possibly a primitive AI that makes simple conversation, maybe even a positive companion for the lonely and misunderstood. In her book Alone Together (mentioned in this recent post), Sherry Turkle, Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, chronicles the beginnings of ELIZA. Designed at MIT’s AI lab, one of ELIZA’s programs allowed it to “act” as a psychotherapist. Even though it was clear 40-50 years ago that ELIZA was a relatively simple program that did not have a large database to draw from, those interacting with her would (when alone) spill out their secret thoughts and doubts. It felt therapeutic, and it didn’t matter that ELIZA was clearly a machine.

In the Muggle world, Riddle’s diary initially seems to behave as an advanced version of ELIZA. The hapless “victim” pours out her troubles to this object. The diary responds, luring the tortured soul further into dependency. One might say that the user gets so immersed in the program that he becomes “possessed”. Immersion in the digital life is a cautionary theme of Turkle’s book. One starts to view the “real” world in different ways and behave accordingly. This is starting to sound like an evil, or perhaps demonic, AI. Maybe it is no longer artificial and has started to take on moral characteristics. Is that where the line is drawn? Mr. Weasley admonishes: “Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain!” Where is the brain of an AI? That might be the hardware. But in the nebulous distributed cloud, this becomes increasingly unclear. It may not be easily destroyed. As in biology, life seems to find a way.