As a theorist of scientific literature Daisy H asks a key question of biologists “what is life”. Her critical essay ‘the second body’ looks at how we as humans are connected to the ecosystem, and explores the difficulty of trying to define a boarder where our bodies end, and other beings begin. Asking an evolutionary microbiologist we explore the bacteria that live inside of us, that line our stomach, the cells we jettison and renew continuously, and the DNA we leave behind as it has become obsolete.
In an ever changing science such as biology, where the principals of thought have changed recently, and are expected to change again, there’s increasing consistency of thinking about the planetary system, rather than unique agents.
Daisy writes about how humans are animals, and points to the writers of the human species as being morally charged into trying to demonstrate how we are somehow other, when biologically and systemically we are an equal part of the fabric of the planet, and as animal as any nesting bird.
Daisy explores how Shakespeare draws on this feral nature by demonstrating the madness of Lear as a return to an animal state.
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In terms of us being intrinsically linked I to a network of existence, should this mean that any algorithm that surrounds us, any AI, conscious or unconscious actor be considered as natural as the microbial forms that connect each of us. I am strained to try and shake the scepticism I have for these complex synthetic systems, and not just because of their agency. And their programmed design to prey on our data.
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What is highlighted in the essay is a modern thought that one of the Bard’s great achievements is the depiction of our inner lives. Something that as quick as it takes me to read the words I’ve completely absorbed the argument and want to agree wholeheartedly.
Back to the opening scene of Lear we as magically shown how the grand plan to parcel up the kingdom to his three daughters begins to unravel, with Cordelia refusing to play along with her farther’s game. Lear begins to improvise. Taken off guard he turns to the fabled gods of Jupiter and the constellations. His mind as King becomes connected on a spiritual plane with the planets and stars, and somehow in all of this we can see the inner mind (conscious and unconscious) of the king. What is totally genius about the writing at this point is that a number of complexities are revealed in the character that creates something exceptionally human in Lear.
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Stay with me.
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In Adam Curtis’ new documentary ‘can’t get you out of my head’ we learn of Vicki, an epilepsy suffered whom has undergone an experimental
Behavioural psychologists who have dedicated their lives to identifying the malleability of human desire. Whose work has been used as the foundation to manipulate us into voting certain ways, or pushing society into chasms of paranoia ans suspicion. These very people are beginning to believe that while our subconscious mind can be tapped into and influenced, there is actually another chamber of the brain that we are not even conscious of, that continues to influence of decision making.
This chamber that has revealed itself in patients whose brains have been severed from left to right, experience activity in their right arm that suggests there’s another actor present. And this, posits the neurologists, is a new image level of independence that even the algorithms of google can’t access.
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