Dare to Be 100: From the Prosaic to the Profound

A falling apple or an overflowed tub or a leg injury are minuscule moments in the grand sequence of our universe. They appear inconsequential, but each of these happenings contains great truth, the laws of existence.

Although the story of the apple hitting Newton on the head leading to his inspired derivative insight is probably apocryphal it is likely that as he pondered the fall of apples at his Mother’s farm he wondered whether the same process was at work in space, whether planetary motion was an example of the same force that led to the fall of the apple. This eventually led to his formulation of the principle of the gravitational force, the units involved are known as Newtons.

Similarly, Archimedes ran naked through the streets screaming “Eureka” as he recognized that as he had just overflowed the water in the tub by immersing himself he had discovered the essence of buoyancy, the volume of displaced water was equal to the volume of the submerged body.

Likewise the recently described Metabolic Field is the product of a homey observation, namely the frailty of the muscles enclosed by a plaster cast after a ski injury. (1) “Use it or lose it” was the colloquial translation. This profound insight far transcends its casual trite usage.

The newly elaborated concept of the Metabolic Field finds its origin in Schrodinger’s famous three lectures at Trinity College in Dublin in 1944. He brilliantly perceived that the essence of life consists of the harvesting of solar energy and its transmission through myriad intermediary synthetic and degradative steps until life emerges. Schrodinger broke the logjam by his intellectual grasp of the essence of life by invoking the Second Law. The Second Law is unique as it mandates direction, and it temporarily allows respite from chaos. Prigogine termed the intermediary steps “dissipative structures.” We, and all of the living world, are “dissipative structures.” He and Stengers in their magisterial book “Order out of Chaos” wrote “on the dry bones of the nature of atoms and distribution of energy in the universe are assembled the blood and flesh of life.” Biology ultimately is a translation of the physics of the universe in seemingly trite miniature steps that eventually lead to profound interpretations.

By proposing the metaphor of the Metabolic Field an explanatory platform for the infinitely complex is created. “Why did my leg become precociously old after being casted?” The inclusion of uncertainty within the formulation adds further weight to the idea.

Thereby, a fallen apple predicts gravity, an overflowed tub predicts buoyancy, and a casted leg predicts the Metabolic Field. These fundamental physical laws of life give voice to the recognition that out of the mundane emerge the eternal. Out of the prosaic emerge the profound.

Reference:
Bortz, W. Metabolic Field (Schrodinger); An Explanatory Platform for Biology 2015 Medical Hypotheses on line http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2015.09.014