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Re: Homunculus
boundlesslife ( 02/17/2004, 05:43:00 )The Homunculus is an illustration of how inventive the human mind can be, about things it cannot explain otherwise, but feels must have an orderly origin that fits with its present framework of belief. In like manner, from the hint by an Italian astronomer that the surface of Mars might have "canals" on it, Percival Lowell was stirred to build a magnificent telescope (for the time) at Flagstaff. His hypotheses on what he saw kindled the imaginations of everyone from H. G. Wells to the young Carl Sagan, to believe that intelligent life might exist on Mars. Eventually, these early fantasies led us to send probes to land on Mars and explore the surface of that distant planet, as Sagan so eloquently describes later in the video series "Cosmos".
The human genome project is, in some ways, like our present surface mapping of Mars. Such mapping can show us the shape of the skin of the planet, and a few things about the materials on its surface, but deep below, in the geology of Mars, yet to be unveiled, we may find clues to how that planet came to have rivers on it nearly a billion years ago, what life forms may have existed there, and perhaps how those life forms were organized around patterns of reproduction that that are totally alien to what we know about life on Earth.
As we trace the relationships of observable traits in our personalities to the alleles of our genes, we may find patterns that conclusively point to distinct differences between humans, so stable, so obviously inherent to them as individuals, that we mistake them for "souls" or even for "patterns from a previous life" (karmic rebirth, in Buddhism).
Along with that, by means of designer genes and reverse transcription, we may find ways to do more than just cure genetically caused illness, both in ourselves and offspring. We may find ways to modify who we "are" in profound ways beyond anything we can currently imagine.
It requires little vision to see that if an electric eel (by means of its genome) can generate strong electric currents to defend itself from predators, we should be able to modify our fingertips to eliminate keyboards on our computers. The really earthshaking discoveries will be those things we cannot imagine at all present, but which will be discovered as we go and shape human civilization over the next several hundred years.
As the future unfolds, many will cling to ancient mythologies. In Tibet, there may still be medicine men who say a million mantras over pills and imagine that they cure stroke and heart disease, as described in the book "In the Presence of My Enemies" by Tsipon Shuguba. Yet the 14th Dalai Lama, as the exiled leader of the Tibetan People (while still a youth), using a telescope and other knowledge and logic, managed to satisfy himself that thousands of years of Buddhist teachings were *wrong* (beliefs that the Moon was internally illuminated, vs. being externally illuminated by the Sun). At that point, he resolved that where Buddhism and science were in conflict, Buddhism would have to change.
Those who presently object to cloning (on religious grounds) will someday be as few as those who still believe that the earth is flat. We will marvel, someday, that leaders of a country that has placed men on the Moon and rovers on Mars could be still under the spell of ancient beliefs in their current day judgments of what is morally meaningful, with regard to biotech and cloning in particular.
Battles will continue to be fought, on such grounds. Let's not forget that only a few centuries ago, people were placed on racks and in "iron maidens", or burned at the stake, for deviating from church doctrine. If there are demons amidst us, they are in the minds of those who so firmly believe that what they have been taught by their faiths is "true", that they would murder a doctor over their mistaken ideas about the nature of and significance of a single living cell.
We are still, in far too many ways, at the mercy of primeval thinking.
This Message is being posted for educational purposes, as well as for comment and criticism, by the visitors to the HumanCloning.org Foundation website (www.HumanCloning.org ).
Disclaimer: Information provided on this web site is for educatonal purposes only. It is not a substitute for, nor can it replace advice from your own physician.
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