I COMPUTE, THEREFORE I AM. OH YEAH...?

When Rene Descartes penned his celebrated, "I think therefore I am" in the 17th C, it was another tipping point in our understanding of our existence. It helped 20th C existentialists argue that existence precedes essence, or in effect, it is our individual existence on this planet not some supreme being that determines our essence. Loosely translated: "Hey, man, If I can dream it I can do it!"

In the 21st, a legion of neuro-biologists have picked up the baton from there, carrying it to an exciting though arguable conclusion. In their research, many of these scientists have found a galaxy of genes and brain lobes which shape -- if not largely determine -- what we do and who we are. For instance, we have been brilliantly introduced to the workings of our god gene...our flight gene...our love gene...our comfort gene. Just recently researchers at the University of California, Irvine have concluded that (1) there is a bad-driving gene which hampers our brain's ability to communicate what we are learning on the road (2) up to 30% of Americans carry this faulty gene.

Here's where the argument comes in.

As science excavates -- like long hidden Egyptian tombs -- the amazing workings of these genes and lobes, we learn more and more about ourselves. But at what price? The danger here is almost mathematical in nature, for the greater the number of ID-ed genes and lobes, the greater the likelihood we may reasonably conclude we are the sum of our neuro-bioloical parts.

However, that argument must first dethrone an earlier one -- that we are the whole greater than the sum of our parts...! But while this wholeness is comfortably embraced by theologians, poets and artists of all kinds. It is not so easily accepted by the scientific empiricists who seem to say: If you can't see it or smell or test it, it ain't likely there!

Sir Francis Bacon -- a scientific thinker of no small proportions in history -- liked to say: "Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't...and a sense of humor to console him for what he is." Using our best imagination, it is fiercely likely that we will read the results of these gifted researchers with eagerness. Yet at the some time with skepticism that their many individually researched trees can honestly fathom the grand forest that each individual human being is.

The next time you stroll a forest and find a tagged tree, remember the tagger (ranger, ecologist, whatever) surely cannot judge this forest from this tree. You can only do that by standing at the great distance from which the forest-maker first made this forest. Now that, Mr Descartes, is the real question...!