I wrote some postings last year about this time presenting a
paper ("Biology, Bioelectricity and the Nervous System") which,
in placing the seam between chemistry and biology in historical
context, argued that tradition-bound concepts about that seam
prevented biochemistry from fully apprehending the subtlety of the
seam between chemistry and particle physics, between chemistry
and electrochemistry. It was the point of the paper that tradition-
bound concepts were tied to a world in which the only forces of
physics affecting biological considerations were those involving the
first fundamental force of nature, the world of Newtonian
gravitational mechanics. It was in this tradition, which had been
left behind by the theoretial physicists with their optics and
electromagnetism, that an explanation was sought for the readings
gained by people like Cole, Eccles, Hodgkin, and Huxley in their study
of cell membranes and nervous functioning. This was during the
time of what Hille calls the 'Heroic age of biophysics'.
It was another point of this paper that the explanation
developed by these earlier experimenters for detected voltages and
electrical activity found within the body and the cell depended upon
the late nineteenth work of Walter Nernst which concerned itself
with thermodynamics and differences in stored order between two
separate concentrations of a particular ion. As such Nernst's work
dealt with a definition of entropy, and did not, as even Hille admits,
presume a movement of electrical charge that might be susceptible
to Ohm's law. At the time of Nernst's own work Clerk Maxwell was
refining mathematically the speculations of Faraday with regard to
lines of force. This work was to lay the foundations for the
subsequent understanding of light as a form of electromagnetism,
and in the next century to the understanding of the organization of
the periodic table of the elements. More importantly it articulated a
new view of the world, one which included the classical Newtonian
world, but which extended it to the second fundamental force of
nature, electromagnetism.
It was a further point of the paper that the schemes of the
early, heroic biophysicists tried to explain bioelectricity in terms
of ion currents, using Nernst and Goldman's diffusion theory as a
base. And as a result the Nobel prize was awarded in 1963 to a
model of nerve impulse propagation that was thoroughly
contaminated with inappropriate, pseudo-scientific metaphors of
proton electricity and ion currents, and that spoke of nerve impulses
as battery discharges precipitated by the movement of ions. The
paper makes the point that since that time clinical neurology has
become a backwater of ineptitude and impotence with the
neurologist doing even less than a priest might for the patient in
most cases.
I had many requests for this paper, but criticism came from
those who read the postings only. Those requesting the paper were
disappointingly silent. I had to post some embarrassingly inept
work with the equations of electricity to elicit any response, and
this response was usually from the old garde, those who, upon
reaching retirement or near-retirement, had witnessed and taken
part in the perpetuation of a neuroscience largely without clinical
consequence. These senescent guardians of orthodoxy (or
sycophantic, gullible graduate students in several cases) usually
passed judgement upon the proffered hypothesis on the basis of the
posting, i.e., without reading the paper. The paper is not anywhere
near as openly contemptuous of modern neurology as this posting is,
and should be read as a scientific/historical/philosophical paper.
I pointed out in the paper how Ernst Mayr, in his 1982 THE
GROWTH OF BIOLOGICAL THOUGHT, stated that a model of the
functional organization of the nervous system was a bottleneck in
biological thought. Similar statements appeared in Lewis Thomas's
1991 THE FRAGILE SPECIES ["The phenomenon of embryological
development and differentiation is generally regarded as one of the
two most profound unsolved problems in human biology - the other
being the operation of the brain."]; and in Francis Crick's 1994 THE
ASTONISHING HYPOTHESIS ["Unfortunately, there is a difficulty in
locating the activity that produces these so-called event-related
potentials (potential = voltage) {action potentials}" , and "When
these signals arrive at the brain stem they have to be transformed
into a different set of signals to control the muscles of the eye.
Exactly how this is done has yet to be discovered."]
The paper dealt with the history of thinking going back to the
17th century with regard to the nature of nervous functioning and
how this thinking was perpetuated in the instrumentalist schemes
of the researchers in the 1940's. This thinking congealed with the
institutionalization of the ionic channel school of Eccles, Hodgkin
and Huxley. It is now accepted so routinely that even Oxford's Roger
Penrose, in his 1994 SHADOWS OF THE MIND, says that the
functioning of neurons can be well understood in terms of classical,
Netonian mechanics; and that quantum considerations only rear
their ugly heads at the cytoskeletal, microtubule level. He avers
this despite having insisted earlier in his book that where chemistry
is involved quantum mechanics is involved.
It is the point of the paper that the functioning of neurons can
only be understood in quantum mechanical terms, and that what is
involved is electrochemistry. Only with the understanding of
electrochemistry and the effect of charge polarity upon
neurotransmitters is a functional model of the nervous system
possible, especially in the sense that the nervous system involves
the processing of information. Traditional, classical explanations of
neuronal functioning are extremely weak with regard to the
definition of, flow of, and processing of biological information.
That these Nobel prize winning explanations are
without much clinical consequence is not just a coincidence,
but an indication of flaws in traditional thinking. The paper is
written in such a way as to present the significance of this
electrochemical explanation not only for clinical treatment, but for
understanding the nature of vertebrate speciation and nervous
system complexity. And in this the paper advances an objection to
the evolutionary, genetic gradualism championed by Mayr.
In any case, the paper presents one version of what Hille calls
the 'epiphenomenalist' view of neuronal functioning, the view
displaced by that of the ionic channel school, with the unwitting
endorsement of the Nobel Prize committee. This view does not at all
conflict with the readings gained by the meticulous recorder of the
ionic channel school with his measuring instruments. This view just
interprets their significance according to a different model, an
electrochemical one.
I floated this paper about a year ago, and I noticed that the one
sticking point characteristic of all defenders of the ionic school
was the insistence on the definition of electricity, and how this
definition justified the belief that there was such a thing as proton
electricity. I have taken pains to address this belief in the more
recent version of the paper, and have appealed to the notion of
'meaning invariance' as discussed by Dr. Paul Feyerabend. I welcome
criticism and comment from all those who trouble to read the paper.
What I hope to do is present an explanation for nervous system
functioning that is both novel and with consequence for the
understanding and treatment of chronic and degenerative systemic
disorders, and for the treatment of nervous afflictions, especially
those following CNS trauma. Please send requests for and critcism
of the paper by E-mail (it's 55 pages). The paper is available in
binhex and standard form like that found in E-mail messages.
Please respond to grokelly at Delphi.com.
Criticisms of others who have only read this posting and
merely appended to it, however humorous they might be, will be
considered gratuitous and ignored. Only personal E-mail messages
will be responded to.
Dr. Galvano
