THE EVOLUTION OF THE SENSITIVE SOUL: LEARNING AND THE ORIGINS OF CONSCIOUSNESS – Simona Ginsburg & Eva Jablonka (2019)

As with most of my non-fiction reviews, I’ll first give a general overview & appraisal of the book. After that there’s a lengthy section with quotes and paraphrases of stuff I want to keep on record, and those could be of interest to you too.

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What is the mind?
It is the sound of the breeze
That passes through the pines
In the Indian-ink picture.

– Ikkyū Sōjun, 15th century

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The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness is a mammoth: 482 pages of text, 62 pages of notes, 72 pages of bibliography and an index of 28 pages. It took a decade to write.

Eva Jablonka is a microbiologist & evolutionary theorist with a Ph.D in genetics. She is especially known for her interest in epigenetic inheritance, and she co-authored the landmark Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life with Marion Lamb. That book was published in 2005 by MIT Press – with a revised edition in 2014 – and on the strength of this book I’ve added it to my TBR. Simona Ginsburg is a chemist with a Ph.D. in physiology.

The title is a bit misleading in the sense that the moniker ‘sensitive soul’ might sound New Age-ish, but make no mistake: this is as scientific as non-fiction can get. Jablonka & Ginsburg use the term ‘soul’ as an hommage to Aristotle, and the next two quotes elaborate a bit on that, and at the same time set the stage:

The Aristotelian soul is the dynamic embodied form (organization) that makes an entity teleological in the intrinsic sense – having internal goals that are not externally designed for it but that are dynamically constructed by it.

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From an evolutionary point of view, understanding the transitions that resulted in the three Aristotelian goal-directed systems is enormously challenging. The first problem, understanding the transition to the first living system, to the nutritive (/reproductive) soul, is still not fully solved, although great strides have been made in this domain. Very little is known about the second, understanding the transition to subjective experiencing, the evolutionary origin of the sensitive soul. The third, understanding the transition to rationalizing, symbolizing animals, to the rational (human) soul, is one of the hottest topic in present-day evolutionary-cognitive biology, and progress is being made. All of these goal-directed systems are the products of chemical and biological evolution, and there is an evolutionary continuity between them.

The book has two distinct parts: the first a history of the biological conceptions of ‘consciousness’ and some of its philosophical foundations – from Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin and William James, via Pavlov and Skinner to contemporary neuroscience. The second part looks more closely at major (neuro)biological transitions in the evolution of the mind, and basically sketches the evolution of neural systems and how learning ties into that. It should be stressed that most of the book is about minimal animal consciousness, not about human consciousness.

Instead of trying to summarize the book in more detail, I’ll quote some of the praise I found on the MIT website – and I can say after having read it, none of it is hyperbole. But first let me quote the blurb to give you the general idea:

A new theory about the origins of consciousness that finds learning to be the driving force in the evolutionary transition to basic consciousness. What marked the evolutionary transition from organisms that lacked consciousness to those with consciousness—to minimal subjective experiencing, or, as Aristotle described it, “the sensitive soul”? In this book, Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka propose a new theory about the origin of consciousness that finds learning to be the driving force in the transition to basic consciousness. Using a methodology similar to that used by scientists when they identified the transition from non-life to life, Ginsburg and Jablonka suggest a set of criteria, identify a marker for the transition to minimal consciousness, and explore the far-reaching biological, psychological, and philosophical implications.

After presenting the historical, neurobiological, and philosophical foundations of their analysis, Ginsburg and Jablonka propose that the evolutionary marker of basic or minimal consciousness is a complex form of associative learning, which they term unlimited associative learning (UAL). UAL enables an organism to ascribe motivational value to a novel, compound, non-reflex-inducing stimulus or action, and use it as the basis for future learning. Associative learning, Ginsburg and Jablonka argue, drove the Cambrian explosion and its massive diversification of organisms. Finally, Ginsburg and Jablonka propose symbolic language as a similar type of marker for the evolutionary transition to human rationality—to Aristotle’s “rational soul.”

Here’s Axel Cleeremans, Director of ULB Neuroscience Institute in Brussels, Belgium:

This massive and challenging book is by far the most thorough attempt at exploring consciousness from a biological and evolutionary perspective. Most impressive is the successful integration of philosophical, historical, neuroscientific, and biological considerations in addressing this most vexing question: How and why did consciousness emerge out of biological activity?

Or Jean-Pierre Changeux, honorary professor at the Pasteur Institute in France:

It is the best synthesis I know about consciousness. It includes a fascinating history of the concepts and discoveries about consciousness together with an outstanding presentation of the most recent scientific data, theories and philosophical speculations.

And finally Cyriel Pennartz, from the University of Amsterdam:

Based on the view that consciousness subserves fulfillment of an animal’s needs and goals, Ginsburg and Jablonka take us on an engaging journey from Aristotle to contemporary neuroscience, culminating in the daring but well-informed hypothesis that consciousness coheres with complex forms of learning. This book made me think differently of the Cambrian explosion of life, the roots of animal cognition, and the very origins of human thinking. This accessible and inspiring book offers a wealth of information and deep thought for everyone interested in the rich interface between biology, psychology, and philosophy.

Last year I read Contingency and Convergence: Toward a Cosmic Biology of Body and Mind by Russell Powell, a true intellectual feast. Ginsburg & Jablonka’s book touches on many of the same themes, but frames them differently. Powell’s book is about the nature of evolution, minds, and the possible implications for astrobiology, Ginsburg & Jablonka focus on learning and the evolutionary history of neural systems, including a chapter on jellyfish and the likes that was more informative than Jellyfish by Lisa-Ann Gershwin.

For a wee bit of critique: I would have liked a bit more sections on (the neurology of) mental representation. To me it felt as if Ginsberg & Jablonka don’t fully engage with this part of the consciousness problem, especially as I’ve read Alex Rosenberg’s How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories – a book specifically about that. I would have liked to read the authors’ take on what Rosenberg wrote.

Anyhow, what makes this book a joy to read is its enormous scope, and what makes it truly amazing is its attention to detail on nearly everything it touches: this is no quick pop-science overview of the latest research, no, this is the real deal: interdisciplinary scholarly work of the highest order.

The book is clear and self-contained, and requires no previous knowledge, but at times it is tough reading nonetheless – especially parts of chapter 8 were beyond my level of interest of understanding. This will be different for different kind of readers, but this is obviously an academic book, so your mileage may vary.

Jonathan Birch’s 7-page critical essay on the book in Acta Biotheoretica is well-worth reading, he summarizes it in just two sentences: “Ginsburg and Jablonka’s thesis, in short, is that second-order conditioning involving novel, compound stimuli is a signature of consciousness. This kind of learning cannot happen, they claim, if the stimuli are not consciously experienced.”

If the subject matter interests you, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Together with How Molecular Forces and Rotating Planets Create Life: The Emergence and Evolution of Prokaryotic Cells by Jan Spitzer – coincidentally about the first Aristotelian transition – it is the best book I’ve read all year.

I’ll leave you with a whole lot of quotes and insights I wish to preserve for myself.

 

HOW MOLECULAR FORCES AND ROTATING PLANETS CREATE LIFE: THE EMERGENCE AND EVOLUTION OF PROKARYOTIC CELLS – Jan Spitzer (2021)

I thought I understood a thing or two about biology, and, more specifically, its genetic and general molecular side as well. I’ve read a couple of introductory level university course textbooks, like Biology, Evolution and Human Nature by Goldsmith & Zimmerman (2001), which was already pretty heavy on chemistry for somebody without an academic background in hard sciences, and a few more specific books, like the excellent The Flexible Phenotype by Piersma & Van Gils (2011) and Alex Rosenberg’s brilliant, rigorous Darwinian Reductionism, Or, How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology (2006).

I also thought I had a bit of grasp on origin of life theory, since I read Nick Lane’s excellent The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution and the Origins of Complex Life (2015), a book I can’t say I understood completely, but enough so to enjoy it a lot.

Last year, I was absolutely gobsmacked by Contingency and Convergence: Towards a Cosmic Biology of Body and Mind by Russell Powell, a 2020 publication in the Vienna Series of Theoretical Biology, and so when I checked what else was published in that series, I didn’t hesitate to buy How Molecular Forces and Rotating Planets Create Life: The Emergence and Evolution of Prokaryotic Cells by Jan Spitzer – I was intrigued by the subject matter because of Lane’s book, and if I’d survived that, how hard could it be?

Well, it turns out this was harder, much harder, yet I probably enjoyed it even more. Part of that enjoyment is witnessing other people’s genius, but the main reason I enjoyed it so much was because it provided entirely new and much more detailed insight in the miracle that is our existence.

Before I get to a more detailed discussion of the book, please consider the following drawing – a typical representation of a bacterial cell I found somewhere on the public domain.

This is the way most people are taught about cells. We tend to think we *understand* cells this way – at least, if we study some more of these drawings – including ones that zoom in a bit – and the accompanying chapters on cell biology carefully.

Now consider this fragment from Jan Spitzer’s book, and, for starters, compare the way the cytoplasm is represented in the generic textbook drawing with what Spitzer writes about it.

From a purely chemical point of view, a bacterial cell is exceedingly complicated. The cytoplasm contains in round numbers ~2,500,000 protein molecules of ~1,000 different kinds, ~200,000 transfer RNAs of ~50 kinds, ~1,500 short-lived messenger RNAs of ~400 kinds. (…) The number of ribosomes can vary between 2,000 for a slow-growing population and 70,000 in a fast-growing population. These biomacromolecules are hydrated by a relatively concentrated (~4%) electrolyte – a multicomponent buffered solution of simple ions, particularly potassium ions and phosphate, and other low-molecular weight metabolites from biochemical pathways (…). All this chemistry of long DNA double helices (partly condensed or coacervated by cationic proteins and amines), RNAs, and their protein complexes, all in their correct three-dimensional conformations, and all exhibiting their molecular motions – from bond rotations to large conformational motions and rotational and translational Brownian diffusion, taking place on timescales of many orders of magnitude, from femtosecond infrared motions to physiological motions at milliseconds, seconds, and hours – all this molecular motion is crowded and enclosed within the hydrophobic cell envelope. The cell envelope contains a lipid bilayer membrane, studded with a large number of integral hydrophobic proteins that sense the physicochemical state of both the external nutrient environment and the internal cytoplasmic side of the membrane and adjust the molecular and ionic traffic across the membrane accordingly. (…) The overall chemical system is in cyclic disequilibrium, where cells approximately double in size and then divide on the physiological timescale of seconds to hours.

Additionally, in all this, also the positions of all those different molecules matter, as there is no “bulk aqueous reservoir where chemical potentials (concentrations) are independent of position”, and so the cell system is “thus vectorial”, with aqueous nano-channels and nano-pools of dissolved ions and molecules.

It is yet another example of the huge gap that exists between what people – even highly educated people – think they know, and how the world actually is. It makes books like Spitzer’s humbling and full of wonder – even if that wonder is abstract, dry, and highly complex. Do we truly appreciate the wonder of life enough?

There’s one important caveat: however detailed that quote might seem, it only scratches the surface too. Or, to quote Spitzer again: “Today the molecular crowdedness of a living cell is an uncontroversial and well-appreciated fact, but its overall spatiotemporal complexity remains poorly understood.”

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Just to be clear: I’m not the target audience for Spitzer’s book. Certain parts – when he got into the nuts and bolts of detailed chemical stuff – were way too advanced for me. I’d say about 1/3rd of the text was too technical for my current brain. But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t understand Spitzer’s general message – it only meant that I could not contradict him on the technicalities. The fact that the main text is only 170 pages, but about 1/3rd of the full volume is academic credentials (20 pages of notes, 26 pages of references, a 5 page index) is indicative of its intellectual rigorousness.

I think one of the reasons that makes this book successful is that Spitzer approached it as a hobby. He has had no academic career in biology, but he is a physical chemist (PhD) and a chemical engineer (MS) with expertise in thermodynamics and aqueous colloids, who worked as a industrial R&D manager, on synthetic latexes and emulsion polymerization processes. The fact that he is retired and has no skin in the game allowed him to write freely and thoroughly. More information on Jan Spitzer and his ideas can be found here.

In the remainder of this text, I will try to summarize Spitzer’s main points, and conclude with a list of quotes & fragments of knowledge that struck me and that I wish to keep record of. Most of those should also be worthwhile to readers with an advanced interest in science, but you might need a dictionary depending on your prior knowledge – I know I needed one. As a coda, there’s a shortened version of a reading list Spitzer himself provides in his introduction.

For a review by someone with an academic background in these matters, I refer you to the Small Things Considered blog. It has a good, fairly detailed outline of the book. It is the only review of the book I found online, so I hope I contribute a bit to Spitzer’s dissemination with my own review – especially for those that are looking for more information about it without easy access to academic libraries.

Do I recommend it? I loved it, but if you’re not academically trained in these matters ymmv, so much is clear – if you’re adventurous, like a serious challenge, and want to keep your mind limber, go for it, I’d say. It’s also crystal clear that this is mandatory reading for anybody with a serious academic interest in the matter.

WHAT IS REAL? THE UNFINISHED QUEST FOR THE MEANING OF QUANTUM PHYSICS – Adam Becker (2018)

Let me start with the blurb to give you some context:

“The untold story of the heretical thinkers who dared to question the nature of our quantum universe
Every physicist agrees quantum mechanics is among humanity’s finest scientific achievements. But ask what it means, and the result will be a brawl. For a century, most physicists have followed Niels Bohr’s Copenhagen interpretation and dismissed questions about the reality underlying quantum physics as meaningless. A mishmash of solipsism and poor reasoning, Copenhagen endured, as Bohr’s students vigorously protected his legacy, and the physics community favored practical experiments over philosophical arguments. As a result, questioning the status quo long meant professional ruin. And yet, from the 1920s to today, physicists like John Bell, David Bohm, and Hugh Everett persisted in seeking the true meaning of quantum mechanics. What Is Real? is the gripping story of this battle of ideas and of the courageous scientists who dared to stand up for truth.”

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While What is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics is marketed as a popular science book, it should be mandatory reading for professional physicists, as it is a critical history of their field first and foremost, trying to explain why a problematic theory like the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics has endured for so long.

It works both as a solid overview of the science and possible interpretations of quantum theory, and as a sociological history of the workings of the field – both from a European and American perspective. There is much to learn here: about quantum science, about science as a practice, and about philosophy of science as well.

THE ETHNIC PHENOMENON – Pierre L. Van den Berghe (1981)

This is a tricky book to review, as it has such a thorny subject: race and ethnicity. It’s also a fairly old text, first published in 1981. Social sciences certainly gained more data since, yet dismissing this book as outdated would be a huge fallacy.

On top of its subject & age, Pierre L. Van den Berghe takes a sociobiological approach – possibly prompting fears of social Darwinism and the likes. That fear is unwarranted, as The Ethnic Phenomenon is a clear and loud refutation of any attempt at instigating hierarchies or other forms of power based on race and ethnicity.

To make it even more messy, Van den Berghe admittedly writes in a Marxist tradition, but not without offering critique on orthodox Marxism. More importantly – this needs to be stressed – Marxist thought is not the core of this book at all, and is hardly used to support his main arguments – if at all.

Still, The Ethnic Phenomenon is – given the nature of the overall subject – clearly a political book too, and it could not have been otherwise. It speaks for Van den Berghe that he is upfront about his ideological framework. His arguments & reasoning is always clearly spelled out to the reader, who can judge the merit of his thinking case by case. It would be outright stupid to dismiss the entire book just because it is writing by a leftist social scientist – I can imagine people of any political leaning agreeing to lots of what he says, as he generally makes a strong, nuanced case.

Just to get it out of the way: Van den Berghe is unambiguous about the fact that ‘race’ as a workable biological category, or a category to use for social attributions, simply does not exist. Nevertheless, there “is no denying the reality of genetic differences in frequencies (not absolutes) of alleles between human groups.” If you get worked up because of facts like that, this book is not for you.

Before I get to the actual discussion of its 301 pages, let me first say this: The Ethnic Phenomenon is a truly first-rate piece of scholarship, setting the paradigm for the thinking about this topic. It is thorough, honest and courageous, attempting to bring some clarity in a highly emotional debate. This is not an ethics treatise, but a scientific study, including 24 pages of bibliography and a 10-page index.

At the same time, the book wants “to exorcise ethnicity by trying to understand it”. This is an important book, a landmark, absolutely mandatory for everybody that seriously studies the history and the contemporary effects of colonialism, racism, nationalism and ethnicity.

First I’ll try to give the gist of Van den Berghe’s thinking. Afterwards I’ll zoom in on some tidbits I found interesting, and I’ll end with a few critical notes.

FAVORITE NON-FICTION BOOKS

My reading of non-fiction books has plummeted the last 2 years. Today, I tend to only read articles. Nevertheless, I think the listed titles will continue to have an appeal in the foreseeable future. This list excludes philosophy books, as those will get a favorite list of its own someday. 

Books are listed by publication year, youngest first – but check below for younger additions I made to this list after it was first published. Click on the covers to go to the Goodreads page for the books.

Here is an index of all my other non-fiction reviews, mostly books not included in this list.