| Home | Biology RevisitedWhen I studied high school biology more than 50 years ago things were much simpler. We learned that animals had cells and plants got energy from the sun with the green pigment chlorophyll. My memory may be failing me but I don't recall learning that both plant and animal cells were filled with a veritable zoo of microscopic organelles. Kids today learn that all of these organelles are interacting with each other, and are autonomously busy doing specific tasks. My old biology book did mention the cell wall, but not that it regulates what enters and leaves the cell. This cell wall was apparently what had hidden from the light microscopes most of what was going on inside the cell. This was before the KrebŐs cycle and even Franklin had discovered the Double helix of DNA. Besides all this didnŐt seem that important anyway. A histologist named Camillo Golgi was the 1906 co-winner of the Nobel Prize for his work on the structure of the nervous system. What was going on inside the cell was important to Golgi. Golgi had invented a method for staining a part of the cell to differentiate it from the surrounding material. In fact this method is still used today. GolgiŐs staining method was so good he claimed to see some sort of an apparatus inside the cell. For many years Golgi's Discovery was ignored and was presumed to be a smudge on his microscope slide or something. The picture Golgi sketched was remarkably similar to those from todayŐs electron microscope. Today this organism is simply called the Golgi. It looks like a messy stack of hotcakes and syrup but is just as fascinating and important as my favorites the mitochondria and microtubules. The Golgi Apparatus takes various materials into itself and may make minor adjustments such as adding sugar if needed. It looks for flaws in the materials it takes in, cleans off unneeded extra debris, wraps the materials up, labels them for packing and tells the vesicles where to go with the packages. The Golgi Apparatus has been described as the post office of the cell. There are at least another dozen equally important things in the cell, which are necessary for life. How do the various parts of the cell know how and when to do all these things the cell needs? How do all the cells in a multi-cellular being communicate with each other and coordinate the activities of the different molecules so that they all work together? How? The materialist's explanation is silly when faced with these incredibly complex units of life. You probably guessed by now I am going to suggest the Panpsychist explanation: They all are sentient parts of an interrelated interconnected whole and some sort of Mind is directing everything! |