The Biology of Belief - Bruce H. Lipton [13]
I was prone to thinking of cells as human-like because, after years behind a microscope, I had become humbled by the complexity and power of what at first appear to be anatomically simple, moving blobs in a Petri dish. In school you may have learned the basic components of a cell: the nucleus that contains genetic material, the energy-producing mitochondria, the protective membrane at the outside rim, and the cytoplasm in between. But within these anatomically simple-looking cells is a complex world; these smart cells employ technologies that scientists have yet to fully fathom.
The notion of cells as miniature humans that I was mulling over would be considered heresy by most biologists. Trying to explain the nature of anything not human by relating it to human behavior is called anthropomorphism. “True” scientists consider anthropomorphism to be something of a mortal sin and ostracize scientists who knowingly employ it in their work.
However, I believed that I was breaking out of orthodoxy for a good reason. Biologists try to gain scientific understanding by observing nature and conjuring up a hypothesis of how things work. Then they design experiments to test their ideas. By necessity, deriving the hypothesis and designing the experiments require the scientist to “think” how a cell or another living organism carries out its life. Applying these “human” solutions, i.e. a human view of resolving biology’s mysteries, automatically makes these scientists guilty of anthropomorphizing. No matter how you cut it, biological science is based to some degree on humanizing the subject matter.
Actually, I believe that the unwritten ban on anthropomorphism is an outmoded remnant of the Dark Ages when religious authorities denied any direct relationship existed between humans and any of God’s other creations. While I can see the value of the concept when people try to anthropomorphize a light bulb, a radio, or a pocketknife, I do not see it as a valid criticism when it is applied to living organisms. Human beings are multicellular organisms—we must inherently share basic behavioral patterns with our own cells.
However, I know that it takes a shift in perception to acknowledge that parallel. Historically, our Judeo-Christian beliefs have led us to think that we are the intelligent creatures who were created in a separate and distinct process from all other plants and animals. This view has us looking down our noses at lesser creatures as nonintelligent life forms, especially those organisms on the lower evolutionary rungs of life.
Nothing could be further from the truth. When we observe other humans as individual entities or see ourselves in the mirror as an individual organism, in one sense, we are correct, at least from the perspective of our level of observation. However, if I brought you down to the size of an individual cell so you could see your body from that perspective, it would offer a whole new view of the world. When you looked back at yourself from that perspective you would not see yourself as a single entity. You would see yourself as a bustling community of more than fifty trillion individual cells.
As I toyed with these ideas for my histology class, the picture that kept recurring in my mind was a chart from an encyclopedia I had used as a child. Under the section on humans, there was an illustration with