[Albeit the more developed view and writing style from when I wrote it, I would keep this blog unchanged]
When I was in my undergrad, the point that I clearly remember, just as we vividly imprint some of our memories very solidly compared to others, was about me sitting in a seminar hall of my institute, attending my class on immunology, and pondering with one of the crucial questions that were nothing less than a turning point of my life. All of a sudden, the lecture started to become quite awkward. This time it was not my professor who was at fault; on the contrary, the person who used to take our immunology class was knowledgeable, and her pedagogy was spot on. But there was something else in that lecture that clearly disturbed me.
I did not know at that time how to raise my voice and ask my professor why we ignored the very fundamental notion of the field, either deliberately or due to some epiphenomenon. I have done a thought experiment on this question, which will help you understand what this “something else” is.
Let’s say a species equally intelligent (cogito) as us comes suddenly to our planet and is very ignorant about our episteme (current knowledge). The first thing he does is to go to the library and open any kind of biology textbook for some due reason. He reads every passage, and the things he doesn’t understand–he reads it for a second time, and the third, until he makes sure to be on equal footing with the current understanding of biology. Now, having read about cells and their division and the products coming from the cell, which does a specific function, and so on, will he be able to conclude that the cell is a living thing?
This thought experiment is not at all trivial as it could look prima facie. This species might say a cell is a living thing if he studies cellular theory, which Schleiden and Schwann proposed, or if he studies prokaryotes that are made up of only a single cell. But one thing is with surety that should he call a cell a living thing is solely predicated on his preconception of life’s basic properties. If he thinks differently, let’s say quantum mechanically, he will not see life as we see it, nor will he consider a single cell a living thing. For he perceives life entirely differently, thereby never allowing him to reach the general consensus that a cell is a living thing.
Granted, the disparity of conception can lead to different ways of understanding life. But continuing to add to the thought experiment, let’s say there is no such incongruity between his and our sense perception about life in general. And now he reads the biology textbook without knowing what basic properties any life has. In other words, he is now told to read the biology textbook as it is without any notion of what life is. Having read all the mechanistic pathways, and cellular functions like killing bacteria, conducting electric signals, and so on, will he revert to the fundamental understanding that a single cell is a living thing?
The thought experiment I propounded here depicted my position as this species when I listened to one of the lectures on immunology back then. The explanation about the immune system and the cell components was in such a manner that I would not have thought during that period that the immunological cells are, too, living things. Instead, the lecture speaks to me as if life is some machine, having some determined cellular programming and function.
Since I faced the problem of returning to the basic notion of biology from the current episteme and the way we explain biology, I am calling this issue the problem of reversion.
The solution to the problem of reversion lies in the critical reexamination of our basic concepts of biology, to come down from the top of a tall building, from where vistas and panoramas are visible, and inspect a window-less basement. Additionally, there could be multiple tunnels in this dampened basement that can lead us to completely different buildings and some new exciting truths.
In this way, with just minor disturbances due to the provocative lecture, I now conceive my path to this basement where every whirlwind of ideas originates–philosophy–in order to come up with the solution for the problem of reversion in biology.