The Genesis Quest

The next time I get to teach an origin-of-life course, I will likely use Michael Marshall’s new book, The Genesis Quest, as supplementary reading. I’ve taught the class twice, and our primary activity is to read and discuss the primary literature. Alongside those tough-to-digest articles in all their science-jargon glory, I sprinkle in readings from a book aimed at the wider public. The first time, we read selections from Robert Hazen’s Genesis, and the second time we used David Deamer’s First Life as a guide.

 

Unlike Hazen and Deamer who are both working and practicing scientists, Marshall is a journalist and science writer. This gives his book a very different feel. He gives you a sense of the science in broad strokes, peppering in anecdotes and analogies, rather than trying to give you the “right” scientific details. Also, he focuses on people-stories, as apparent in the subtitle of his book: “The Geniuses and Eccentrics on a Journey to Uncover the Origin of Life on Earth”.

 

If you wanted a combination of journalist and scientist, there’s Bill Messler and Jim Cleaves’ recent book A Brief History of Creation, but I found it less suitable for my class, and I think Marshall hits the appropriate complementary notes. In my most recent class, I sensed that what students found more fascinating than the science was any anecdotal droppings I would make about the scientists and the field in more general terms, including the many controversies and personalities involved. I’ve met many of the “geniuses” profiled by Marshall in his book, although I don’t know most of them personally as I’m an outsider who hasn’t worked in the origins-of-life field for very long. I don’t attend many conferences and panels, and my contact with famous-named scientists was usually brief and focused on the science.

 

I enjoyed Marshall’s arrangement of the material. He begins the story with individuals involved in the controversies surrounding vitalism and spontaneous generation before quickly moving on to Oparin, Haldane, Urey, and Miller – the last name being the famous Stanley Miller whose 1953 experiment marks the kick-off frenzy into prebiotic chemistry research. 1953 was also the year Watson & Crick published their famous paper on the double helix of DNA. Marshall picks up on this story and does a nice job describing the key tenets (and problems) of the RNA World, the dominant theory in the field, and of course all the personalities behind it.

 

The most interesting eccentric genius profiled is the late Graham Cairns-Smith. I’ve never met him, but I devoted one class period to discussing his Clay World theories. The students found it interesting but abstract; they also think it implausible compared to the RNA World which they find the most compelling. I don’t reveal to the students what I think and try to play the role of impartial interlocutor in our discussions. But I didn’t know much about the person Cairns-Smith before reading Marshall’s masterful narrative gleaned from interviews with those who knew him. It’s a very, very interesting story – I won’t provide any spoilers, but that for me was reason enough to read Marshall’s book. It’s Chapter 5 (“Crystal Clear”) for those who are already familiar with the field, but I recommend reading Marshall’s book in sequence because his narrative sets up his individual stories superbly.

 

Marshall lays out the three main camps in origins-of-life research depending on what you thought came first: genes-first, metabolism-first, compartments-first. Each of these has its subfields along with many variations. There are many interesting personalities behind these ideas, and the proponents of their respective theories have strong arguments – but so do their detractors. Marshall also traces the work in the most recent decade that have blurred the boundaries between the three camps. By and large, most of us in the field now think that things were messier and that elements of the different theories come into play in an ecological cooperative sense. There is evolutionary competition, of course, but the heated arguments of previous decades have died down. Since this past decade was when I joined the field, I didn’t have any entrenched horse to back.

 

That being said, I’m personally drawn towards some of the ideas of outsiders in the field. One such is Gunter Wachterhauser, a patent lawyer, trained in organic chemistry, who quietly on his own worked for many years to build one is now known as the Iron-Sulfur World where pyrite (FeS₂) is a key player. Marshall provides several back-story anecdotes that I hadn’t heard which I found very interesting. I met Wachterhauser once at a conference a few years back where he listened to one of my talks and said it was “interesting”. He seemed a little frail, and my impression was that of a genial elderly gentleman. His papers had given me the impression of a firebrand.

 

For those in the field, there’s no new science revealed in Marshall’s book; rather it’s a highlight of the key experiments. Students who have taken my most recent class have read the scientific articles that Marshall alludes to. But what Marshall does, which my students found hard to do, was to see things in perspective. That’s hard to do in a one-semester class when you’re diving into the deep end of the pool, steeped in scientific jargon. Marshall provides the important step-back to take in the larger vista. He does this in a very readable book that, in my opinion, gets most things right – although he throws in the occasional materialist/reductionist quip that I think reveals his ignorance in some areas.

 

The last chapter in The Genesis Quest is appropriately titled “Just Messy Enough” and there’s an epilogue which muses on the meaning of life. Marshall leaves on the right note as to where we are right now in origins-of-life research. It will be very interesting to see how the field has progressed a decade or two from now. But if you want an excellent summary of the last seventy years of active research in easy-to-digest form, I highly recommend The Genesis Quest. I will certainly be telling my students about it.

Science by Allusion

With the new Dune movie to be released later this year, and having thought more about the science in my last reading of Herbert’s novel six years ago, I serendipitously stumbled on a library book. The Science of Dune is a collection of essays edited by Kevin Grazier. It is subtitled “An Unauthorized Exploration into the Real Science Behind Frank Herbert’s Fictional Universe”. Doesn’t sound promising, does it?

 

It turns out that Herbert didn’t delve much into the scientific details in Dune. (He might have slipped more details in later novels, but I haven’t read any of them.) It’s really all about politics, economics, psychology, and anthropology. No surprise; that’s true of much science fiction. Grazier, the editor, even before the book’s publications relates a chatboard message asking: “Is there any science in Dune?” After getting over his initial apoplexy, Grazier has an interesting insight; I’ll quote from the first page of his introduction to the book: “… Frank Herbert, either by design or accident, mostly have hints about the technical underpinnings of the Dune Universe employing… science by allusion. Herbert avoided the pitfall into which many science writers wander: by omitting much in the way of technical details, the work never becomes dated, at least in this respect.”

 

That’s likely part of the reason Dune holds up well today even though it was published back in 1965. In contrast, Star Trek, which premiered that year looks extremely dated – Grazier and his co-authors provide some humorous examples which you can read for yourself in their book. Grazier makes another important point: “When a writer makes a technical gaffe, the increasingly technically literate reader of today is taken out of the novel, is no longer, seeing the depths of the writer’s universe through the eyes of one of its characters, and reverts instead to a person in the twenty-first century holding a book saying, Hang on a minute!”

 

So that we’re not unfair to Star Trek, I do think the job is harder with a visual medium. I haven’t read enough early science fiction to get a sense of how poorly many other authors hold up over time. Asimov’s Foundation series, which I read as a teenager and didn’t understand, meant I didn’t read much sci-fi until recently with my discovery of Rainbows End, which I think is excellent, but the question is how well it will hold up thirty years from now. I don’t remember much of the Dune movie from the ‘80s, and I don’t think I will re-watch it, although I’m very much looking forward to Villeneuve’s reboot. I’m likely to scrutinize it with a scientific eye – I can’t help myself – and it’ll be interesting to see how science by allusion gets interpreted on the screen.

 

Because Herbert provided few details, that gives scientists the opportunity to speculate. That’s what The Science of Dune is all about. The most interesting essays, in my biased opinion, have to do with the spice melange and its role in opening up the mind so that Guild navigators can traverse faster-than-light pathways or so that prophets can see the future. There’s chemistry (of psychoactive stuff) and physics (of time and seeing the future) and biology (of differential effects depending on your species). There’s also ecology – one might argue this is Dune’s most prominent scientific aspect.

 

Other questions considered: How do sandworms move through the desert and what is their life cycle? Do stillsuits really work and what would it take to make one? What are the evolutionary pressures on Arrakis and other planets? Where are all these planets anyway? How does the Reverend Mother’s pain-box work? Can you cheat gravity with suspensor technology? There’s even one essay that goes into detail of how and why sand dunes form, humorously titled “The Dunes of Dune”. An even better title perhaps is “The Real Stars of Dune”; the essay written by Grazier has science-y graphs of spectral class versus luminosity, but the best two lines in the chapter are: “Astronomers are like paparazzi to the stars of our galaxy. They take pictures of stars, always without their consent, and determine who is hot and who is not.”

 

The Science of Dune is a humorous little book with ideas that could win Ignoble prizes. There’s some science but lots of speculation too. I’m not sure the science of Dune holds up, after reading it, but the allusion – or maybe illusion – is what will make it a classic for years to come. I hope Villeneuve doesn’t mess up the movie – I’ve already seen large worms show up in the Battle of the Five Armies movie, which I re-watched last winter. No such worms are in Tolkien’s actual Hobbit book. Herbert’s influence can be felt even there. The Science of Dune covers not just the original novel, but the sequels and the Duniverse as a whole. And while I still have no interest in the sequels, the very first prequel has piqued my interest. I’d like to know why humans decided “thinking machines” couldn’t be trusted since I’m presently watching Person of Interest. Funny how these ideas come around.

Brain Food

This week I’ve been reading two books related to brains. Brain food, perhaps? The first title is obvious: Great Myths of the Brain by Christian Jarrett. It’s a scoped collection of 41 myths, some you’ve heard many times, and others are more obscure. I suppose I find thinking about neuro-thingies interesting. Was that circular reasoning? Hmm. Anyhoo, today I’ll briefly discuss Myth #29 (“Brain Training Will Make You Smart”) and Myth #30 (“Brain Food Will Make You Even Smarter”) before we get to the second book with its less obvious title.

 

If you’re packing 41 myths into a 300+ page book, you can’t go into too much detail. But Jarrett does a very nice job in encapsulating the key research for and against each myth. There’s always an element of truth in myths. These may be profound, or they may be trivial – mostly the latter in the case of the present book, which is the point of trying to debunk such myths.

 

I generally ignore brain-training commercials. I don’t think there’s a ten-step program that will unlock your brain’s potential in any of the faddish ways being promoted. I’m certainly not going to pay good money for it. Um, except that we subscribe to the online New York Times because my wife and I enjoy the daily crossword puzzle and we’ve recently added Spelling Bee to our routine. I’ve always loved puzzles, and yes there’s a small part of me that hopes my continuing to be challenged by them daily will stave off mental deterioration as I age, but it’s mainly the pleasure of solving puzzles.

 

There is research supporting the idea that training can lead to improvement, in general. That goes for anything in life. I haven’t been watching Olympics (too cheapskate to buy a subscription and we don’t own a TV) but I do think training can improve whatever skill you’re practicing. But brain training fads claim “far transfer”, that their simple exercises extend far beyond their remit. The evidence is slim. Very slim. And the misinformation is compounded by companies (Jarrett names some names) that blur the boundaries between near and far transfer; some of what they’re doing helps in a narrow way but it’s mixed in with faddish nonsense. Jarrett also provides two vignettes – one on such programs aimed at the elderly, and the other for young kids (aimed at their parents) to supposedly give the kids a head-start in life.

 

Let’s move on to brain food. My mother has told me repeatedly that fish is brain food. Every morning (until I left home) I had a spoon of Scott’s Emulsion Cod Liver Oil – original flavor in a glass bottle. Most kids hate the stuff. I actually found it tasty and happily ate my tablespoon a day. Nowadays it comes mostly in sickly sweet orange flavor in a plastic bottle. You can’t find it easily in the U.S. so I stopped eating after moving overseas. But my mother still gets a bottle of original flavor (now hard to find) when I fly home periodically for a two-week visit. Somehow, I went on to earn my PhD at Caltech in chemistry. Was it the fishy stuff?

 

Jarrett takes this head on (in “A Fishy Tale”), and once again there isn’t good evidence supporting the link between omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and amping up your brain power. Fatty fish is good for a balanced diet, but it doesn’t make you smarter, ads notwithstanding. Then there are vitamin pills. Blah, blah, blah. But I did not know about “neuro” drinks (Jarrett names names). Oddly my students make no mention of these when apparently a Kardashian swears by them. Maybe my students don’t want to let me know they’re consumers. (In my time, the tonic of choice for exam-cramming was “essence of chicken”.)  And while I’ve heard about the supposed wonders of chocolate, I had not heard of the glucose-willpower fad. (I enjoy dark chocolate on occasion but I’m not into sugary stuff taste-wise.) Interestingly, there are experiments that “glucose in the mouth triggers reward-related activity in the brain, thus prompting participants to interpret the [experimental] task as more rewarding, which boosts their motivation”. And yes, they ran the experiment by asking students to gargle rather than drink glucose-sweetened lemonade versus artificial sweeteners (or none). But let’s move on.

 

The second book I’m reading is First Steps by paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva, a foot specialist. (There’s a good reason why researchers in his profession specialize; read his book to find out!) It starts off with familiar fossil figures such as Lucy and T. rex, but also covers the Laetoli footprints and some of the less well-known hominims. There’s also discussion on the biomechanics of walking, echoing Daniel Lieberman’s book, Exercised. There’s a nice blend of anecdotal story-telling and detailed research information, packaged in easy-to-read chapters. But since we’re talking about the brain – what does bipedalism have to do with it? After all, First Steps is subtitled “How Upright Walking Makes Us Human”. And brains are a large part of what makes us human.

 

Research on various species of Australopithecus show that bipedalism comes early, before the significant growth in brain size. Yet, the tantalizing connections and puzzles remain. DeSilva outlines Darwin’s (1871) suggestion that brain size increase “was the consequence of a suite of changes in early members of our lineage – bipedalism, tool use, and canine reduction. But the timing doesn’t appear to work. The earliest bipeds had brains that were no larger than a modern chimpanzee’s. Other researchers have proposed that walking on two legs required a large brain to balance and coordinate such a sophisticated musculoskeletal machine. Tell that to a chicken, whose brain is the size of an almond.” (DeSilva is an engaging writer!)

 

Our brains are energy-guzzling machines, grabbing ten times more energy as a proportion of body weight. Interestingly, human walking is rather energy-efficient, at least compared to chimpanzees. DeSilva speculates that walking more and tree-climbing less allowed energy to be funneled to growing the brain. Perhaps this led to cooperation or developing tools in the quest to find food (energy!). A positive feedback loop led to more food, more energy, and more brain. Richard Wrangham’s thesis in Catching Fire on the importance of cooking fits in well with this storyline. It’s a fun and interesting read (my vague recollection from over a decade ago), but not to be confused with a Hunger Games novel, if you’re presently looking for it at the library.

 

In a later chapter titled “Why Walking Helps Us Think”, there are interesting anecdotes from Darwin to Dickens about how walking can spark creative juices while solving thorny problems to boot. (Although wearing boots might weaken certain foot muscles; DeSilva is a foot expert after all.) There are some experiments exploring these links, and they are interesting, although I think still speculative. It helps if you take a walk in the woods like Thoreau, but not so much in an urban area with vehicular traffic and construction. I still remember the first time (about fifteen years ago) when a student in office hours hit a brick wall in understanding and nothing was getting through. I asked the student to take a walk around our beautiful campus and come back in 10-15 minutes. (This was before they all owned distracting cellphones) Somehow it worked. Why? I don’t know

 

Given that I’ve been playing Origins: How We Became Human because of Covid, it was interesting to read DeSilva’s speculation on the origin of human language where it relates to changes in bone, muscle, ligament, and cavity structures. Hand signals may have been early on, and bipeds have freer arms, hands, and fingers, for a wide range of activities and gestures. Somehow this leads to symbols and abstract thought. The Origins game explores this through Julian Jaynes’ theory of consciousness. I’ve borrowed the book from my local library but haven’t had the time to read it yet with all these other interesting books! First Steps also has a chapter on homo floresiensis (a.k.a. Hobbits) appropriately titled “Migration to Middle Earth”. I’ve also explored this in an Origins session report.

 

There you have it – quick highlights from two books related that provide food for thought. Or Brain Food. I’m looking forward to Jarrett’s Myth #31: “Google Will Make You Stupid, Mad, or Both.” In it, there’s a quote from psychologist Daniel Simon who writes (in relation to video games) that “there’s no reason to think that gaming will help your real world cognition any more than would just going for a walk.”

Excel Too Good

I’ve told you about Tim Harford’s new book, The Data Detective. His blog continues to be interesting, and his post on “The Tyranny of Spreadsheets” sparked a few thoughts. I recommend reading his post in full. It’s interesting and witty. The tale begins with 16,000 “missing” Covid cases, and the culprit was Microsoft Excel – or at least older file versions. You’ll learn about how spreadsheet computer programs got started, how they make our lives easier, and how they’re not the best suited thing for, say, genetics researchers.

 

I use Excel in my research. Data gets parked there and then algebraic manipulations are used to turn some numbers into other numbers. I encourage my students to use Excel and take advantage of entering in formulae for calculations, so they don’t make mistakes by hand. It also allows handy and quick analysis by some simple manipulations. Fill Down or Fill Right are wonderful inventions!

 

But I don’t solely use Excel. Particularly for larger data sets that require more advanced data manipulation. (To be clear, I use the word “manipulation” in a neutral sense and not to indicate I’m trying to fudge or twist the data.) It helps that I can write code. Most of my students can’t (since they’re mostly undergraduates majoring in chemistry or biochemistry), but a few can and I’ve recently encouraged my students to take the Intro to Computing class offered at my university when they made the switch from C to Python, and revamped the curriculum to emphasize computational thinking.

 

Data can be fumbled. And automated functions in a data processing program can mislead you and severely compound errors if you’re not careful. My students sometimes learn this the hard way, and it’s a good lesson in the importance of thinking carefully about how you’re setting up those data manipulations. I’ve had my own Excel fumbles. It helps that I’ve built up an intuition over the years so a sixth sense tingles when a number looks suspicious and I double or triple check. Too bad it only works for the narrow methodology of my expertise. Being a mediocre coder also reminds me to be extra careful. I write in little tests to check both the integrity of the data and my code. This means that sometimes things take a little longer at the initial stages, but once I’m confident everything’s working fine, the analyses proceed quickly.

 

Reading Harford’s post was an excellent reminder not to let my guard down. Also, I need to make sure I use the newer Excel file formats, since I have several old templates which are still circulating in my folders. Excel's strength - computation - the automation of mathematics, is also its greatest weakness. It is too clever by half.

MarketWorld

What is MarketWorld? It’s the new cage we’ve become beholden to these days, where the rich become richer, the poor become more disenfranchised, and globalization fueled by free-market capitalism turns into a tyrannical system that widens the gap. Blame is laid everywhere, proposed solutions are myriad, but an underlying problem is that the fox is now in charge of the hen-house.

 

This is the story painted by Anand Giridharadas in his book Winners Take All, subtitled “The Elite Charade of Changing the World”. Anecdotal stories teased from interviews describe (mostly) young enthusiastic do-gooders born into, or who find their way, into the intoxicating world of riches and power, who don’t see themselves as perpetuating the system. Rather, they use the language of doing good (while doing well for themselves), standing up for social justice, helping the poor and less privileged. But this “elite” problem-solving lens is heavily blinkered by being ensconced in the high echelons of the system.

 

What is the Matrix? In the words of the legendary Morpheus: “The Matrix is a system… The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.” But in our real-world, it’s the 1% who are fighting to protect the system; the 99% haven’t had much success because… well, they’d like to be like the 1%. I mean, who wouldn’t? Giridharadas has lived in that 1% and he’s trying to give you the red pill.

 

Should we trust him? It’s hard to say. While he lifts the veil on trends such as being on the elite speaking circuit, getting book deals, and having a mass following of wannabes, it’s not clear Giridharadas has left that world. True, he may no longer be employed by one of the big-name consulting companies promising world-class expertise to solve your problems for a hefty fee. The few times I’ve experienced being in a “workshop” or a “listening in” or a “presentation” organized by such entities brought in to institutions I’ve worked for, it honestly feels like amateur hour. Giridharadas description of the so-called secret sauce confirms my suspicions. I’ll simply say: atomic reductionism, missing the forest for the trees, with an aim at so-called Taylorist optimizing efficiencies. Enough said.

 

Several parts of the book resonate with me. I see my students, young and enthusiastic, looking to change the world, but also getting overwhelmed by the ratrace and the tyranny of merit. No one’s trying to opt out. We all want to live comfortable lives. I’m not sure I can credibly advise students to forgo their pursuits, when I’m personally not willing to give up my present lifestyle. At my age, I also no longer have anything to prove. Not that I’m terribly successful, but I’m comfortable in my own little world, which may be a self-damning statement. It’s hard to leave the system for a colder, bleaker, world. Although then you might truly be free, or so says Morpheus.

 

The most interesting part of the book is Chapter 6, “Generosity and Justice”. One thing I don’t know much about is elite philanthropy. Given two recent high-profile divorces in elite-world (Gates and Bezos) that involve different ways of giving money to good causes, I found Giridharadas’ tracing of philanthropic history enlightening. The star of this story is Carnegie, as in robber-baron Andrew Carnegie. Using well-chosen quotes from Carnegie, I’ll now quote Giridharadas as he summarizes the “… principles that one day would govern MarketWorld giving: the idea that after-the-fact benevolence justifies anything-goes capitalism; that callousness and injustice in the cutthroat souk are excused by later philanthropy; that giving should not only help the underdogs but also, and more important, serve to keep them out of the top dogs’ hair – and, above all, that generosity is a substitute for and a means of avoiding the necessity of a more just and equitable system and a fairer distribution.”

 

Why this generosity? At heart, it’s not so much about justice as preventing terrorism to bring down the system. Bread and circuses. MarketWorld has been with us for a long time. I don’t know how we’ll get out of it.

Trilogy of Life

I mentioned the “trilogy of life” proposed by Capra and Luisi three blog posts ago. Today I follow up with their three “perspectives” of life – before adding a fourth. (For the interested reader, this is 14.3 in their Systems View of Life book.)

 

The first perspective is structure. We can think of it as the physical “stuff” of matter – the atoms, ions, and molecules that make up living systems. The second perspective, organization, has to do with specific arrangements of structures. The authors put it this way: “The structure of a system is the physical embodiment of its pattern of organization.” Organization, then, is an “abstract mapping of relationships” between the physical structures. Organization is associated with function. They use the components of a bicycle (frame, pedals, wheels, chain, etc) – but not what they’re physically made of – as an analogy for the organization of what makes up a bicycle. In contrast, the structure of the bicycle can be made of different materials with different shapes and sizes. So bicycles might look very different structurally, but we can still identify them all as bicycles functionally.

 

What is the connection between structure and organization? In the bicycle, it’s the blueprints of the designer. Blueprints need not be “physical”, designs can live abstractly in the mind of a designer. In living cells, the fundamental unit of biological (as opposed to artificial) life, the connection is process – the third perspective. The authors call it “the activity involved in the continual embodiment of the system’s pattern of organization.” (We’ve now seen the idea of embodiment come up twice. We’ll get back to it.)

 

So what is a living system? The authors integrate these three interdependent perspectives: “[The] pattern of organization is that of a self-generating (autopoietic) network… the material structure of a living system is a dissipative structure – that is, an open system operating far from equilibrium… living systems are cognitive systems in which the process of cognition is closely linked to the pattern of autopoiesis.” You might be surprised to see the word “cognition”. While this may conjure notions of human cognition, the authors use the term much more broadly. Process, the third perspective, may involve chemical reactions, or the emergence of higher order organization in a cybernetic system.

 

As a chemist, it’s easy for me to think about structure, the first perspective. Function is a little trickier and I suppose my conception of this is mainly Aristotelian. In my jumbled mind, it’s part organization and part process, depending on the system “level” that you’re analyzing. While there may be no privileged level of causation, I find myself as a chemist constantly going back to molecular-level structure. Maybe because that’s what I find the most comfortable and what I think I know most about (I might be wrong). Capra and Luisi address this head-on. Here’s what they have to say.

 

“To give equal importance to each of these perspectives is difficult for most scientists because of the persistent influence of our Cartesian heritage. The natural sciences are supposed to deal with material phenomena, but only the structure perspective is concerned with the study of matter. The other two deal with relationships, qualities, patterns, and processes, all of which are nonmaterial. Of course, no scientist would deny the existence of patterns and processes, but most scientists tend to think of a pattern of organization as an idea abstracted from matter, rather than a generative force. To focus on material structures and the forces between them, and to view the patterns of organization resulting from these forces as secondary phenomena have been very effective in physics and chemistry, but when we come to living systems this approach is no longer adequate. The essential characteristic that distinguishes living from nonliving systems… is not a property of matter… it is as specific pattern of relationships among chemical processes. Although these processes produce material components, the network pattern itself is non-material.”

 

All that being said, the nonmaterial second and third perspectives are embodied. In a living system, you can’t cleanly separate from the first perspective. I’ve been grappling with this idea for a while, especially since my reading diet often includes neuroscience and cognitive processes related to learning. What does it mean that cognition is embodied? Can it be disembodied? Can it be translocated to a different type of embodiment? As a computational chemist, there’s a clear distinction between how I think about hardware and software. I suppose one could conceive forms of artificial life that maintain such a distinction.

 

Even as I’ve been pondering this wrinkle, the authors throw in a fourth perspective. They call it meaning – their “shorthand notation for the inner world of reflective consciousness”. I don’t quite grasp their meaning here (pun intended), but it has something to do with extending living systems to include social relations. The remainder of the book chapter goes into social theory. I think I understand what they’re saying, at least at the surface level, but I suspect that my non-expertise in this area means I’m missing a whole lot. [LINK] Hard to say. They do have one picture illustrating the “interconnectedness” of these four perspectives as the corners of a tetrahedron. This made me think of tetrahedrally-shaped methane with carbon in the center. Carbon, central to life, is perhaps not just a carrier?

Reverse Final

My college is planning for a fully in-person semester with students vaccinated before they arrive on campus. There’s always the possibility that a student will still catch Covid and be required to isolate, assuming that’s the protocol (as it was this past year when a residence hall was set aside for this purpose). I’m planning to have in-class midterms and final exams, interspersed with some take-home annotated self-tests that have worked well, even pre-Covid.

 

Now, if a student has to miss a midterm, there have been various workarounds. If the student can schedule a time in my office to take it before I return the entire the graded exams for the whole class (a turnaround of two days), that’s fine. If not, I’ve sometimes given an oral exam, or sometimes lumped in the midterm grade into that student’s final exam. Rarely if ever has a student missed a final exam. If a major illness occurs, the student takes an Incomplete and schedules a time early the following semester to take the exam (written or oral).

 

But what if a student tests positive while being asymptomatic, required to isolate, and therefore can’t take the exam in person? I suppose I could Zoom with the student(s) while we’re all in the Final and send them a pdf; they would write down their answers, take pictures, and send it back in the allotted time. This worked reasonably well last semester when all students were in the same situation of all-remote classes; but I’m wary of doing this when most of the students will be taking the final in-person. (This wouldn’t just be for Covid or illness but for some other good reason the student might have.) I’d certainly want to discourage students looking for a way to take the final online rather than in-person.

 

Here’s my idea: Instead of taking the final exam, the student has to write a final exam. It should cover the most important things, and ask reasonable questions that could be solved in a reasonable amount of time. This forces the students to really think about what is important throughout the entire semester (which is also true for the students taking the exam). I would grade it based on how well it might match what I deemed important and what I expected students to be able to demonstrate on the final. Few students would want this option, so that should dissuade those looking for an excuse. It’s clearly harder than taking the final exam.

 

I don’t want to penalize a student who through no fault of their own, gets into a situation where they’re unable to take the final. And it’s the last day of finals. Or they are very ill. Or for some other specific reason. (They’re not common, but I have encountered them in my career, so I have some idea of the situations students could experience but I won’t elaborate here.) The Incomplete route is still a viable possibility here.

 

While I’m not planning on revealing such reverse finals as an option, I still plan to have students submit mock exam questions in P-Chem. I will be tweaking the instructions and expectations so they will be (hopefully) more useful this coming semester. I’ve never had a student miss a P-Chem final, but in G-Chem I have had the occasional student miss it for one reason or another. Also, the P-Chem final tends to be on the first day of finals week, so someone who misses it (usually if they get sick) can usually schedule to take it later in the week. G-Chem finals are spread across the week because we teach so many sections. This coming semester I will have one on the last afternoon of finals week. I imagine a student or two might try to argue for taking it remotely and I want to dissuade those arguments. The reverse final will be in my back-pocket if I need to pull it out, but I hope I won’t have to. In any case, I should write up the potential instructions/guidelines before such an event arises.