I like Mike

Well, I'm showing my hand and betting on Mike Huckabee. I have been very impressed with his answers in debates, and his responses to attacks. I must say I also liked his Christmas ad. :-) I think he has a really neat combination of tried-and-true Republican and Democrat values, taking the best from both worlds rather than being pidgeon-holed into both the good and the not-so-good of either party. I also like his take on the question of whether people of faith (especially pastors like him) have any business being in politics.

I like Mike.

Thank you, C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis has become a significant influence for me rather quickly. This has happened in perhaps a rather unusual way, since it started with his books on literary criticism rather than, say, the Chronicles of Narnia or Mere Christianity (for whatever odd reason, I find Mere Christianity really hard to read - I've been sitting at half-way through for the longest time...). Most recently I've been reading his collection of essays "On Stories". In one of the early essays he talks about the difference between his style of reading and that of a former pupil of his. Whereas the pupil enjoyed suspense and danger for their own sake, Lewis enjoyed them in so far as they were extraordinary. It was not enough for a person to be faced with death by freezing - they had to be faced with death by freezing *on the moon*. It was not enough for an enemy French ship to be sighted on the horizon - it had to be a *pirate* ship.

This last comment led me to re-read Treasure Island, which I hadn't read since...1992? (I think we lived on Cypress Lane when I read it.) Treasure Island was the first book that I remember really getting into and really enjoying, so perhaps it was fitting that it was also the first book that I have ever read a second time (not counting pieces like Othello that I read more than once in school). And it was fun. :-) I had forgotten almost everything in the plot, beyond the basic outline (boy gets hold of map, goes to island, faces off with Long John Silver, makes it home safe and sound), but as I read I remembered more and more about what was about to happen. I think the biggest surprise was the fate of Silver. My (also dim) memories of the movie interfered here and led me to expect young Hawkins to help Silver push out to see in a little rowboat. I must say, the book's version is much more satisfying.

I also found some recordings of C. S. Lewis' BBC broadcasts and found that his voice and accent are not at all like I had imagined!

Nicodemus: A Reflection in Post-Modernism

Let me quote a few portions of the story of Nicodemus (John 3:1-21):

• "Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, 'Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.'"
• "Nicodemus said to him, 'How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?' Jesus answered, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.'"
• "Nicodemus said to him, 'How can these things be?'"
• "Jesus answered him, '[...] Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.'"

It seems to me that Nicodemus is a fairly good representative of post-modern man, and Jesus' response to him might be a particularly useful one for us post-moderns to think about. What is going on here? Nicodemus comes to Jesus because he is intrigued by what he sees and hears about Jesus - "no one can do these signs that you do unless..." Unless what? Nicodemus seems almost to be asking a question - "unless God is with him...Right?" If true, the implication is that God truly is with Jesus. But Nicodemus isn't ready to commit to that - he questions, twice, "How can this be?" In this sense he takes something like a typical post-modern position. We can know only what we have experienced, and we can have only this-worldly experiences. (When was the last time you saw someone enter into his mother's womb and be born again?) Nicodemus is also rather post-modern is the sense that he is skeptical - he remains uncommitted. He might well have been thinking, "Here is this intriguing person who does things that no one else can do unless (could it be true?) God is with him. But the facts of the matter are that people are just not born again every day of the week. What can it all mean?" No decision has been made, no conclusion drawn, no mystery revealed. Nicodemus remains in the dark. And notice, too, that Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. I suppose one might draw the following parallel: in post-modern culture it is hard to think about God. As soon as one does so in public, the others around him react by being very uncomfortable, as if to say "you're not allowed to say/think that - you're breaking the rules of the game!". Or, in the words of Professor Henry Higgens, "It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him." So we keep to ourselves. We entertain our thoughts about God and salvation and the after-life in our own private minds, far away from where others can see. In the same way, Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night, and he comes to entertain the possibility that God might be with Jesus. But he is left in the dark, precisely where he started out, because he cannot break free of his post-modern mindset.

On the other hand, there is Jesus' response. Jesus seems to acknowledge the post-modern way of thinking, up to a point. "We speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen". Jesus is claiming to have experience, and hence knowledge, of the kingdom of God. He goes on to affirm that man cannot have such knowledge or experience on his own naturalistic terms - "No one has ascended into heaven". In section 11 of Hume's "Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding", he deals with the problem of "return[ing] from the cause to the effect" – which is to say, we may well infer a particular cause for a particular observation, but we cannot then attribute particular qualities to that cause from which to predict new effects. Jesus in effect agrees with this - man cannot ascend to heaven on the basis of his observations on earth and then return to earth with new understanding. But Jesus came from heaven to earth, bringing revelation with him, and then returned to heaven - precisely the opposite of Hume's problem, and Nicodemus' problem. "If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man." And yet Jesus does tell Nicodemus heavenly things - "God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

And this brings us to another, rather subtle point. Initially, when Nicodemus comes to Jesus, he tells him "We know", namely, "that you are a teacher come from God." It is as if Nicodemus is trying to work from his post-modern roots upward - "We observe that no one else does these things, so therefore we know that you must be from God...Right?" Jesus replies "Unless one is born again he cannot know" - cannot know the kingdom of God. (This is usually translated "no one can see the kingdom", but the root is the same word that Nicodemus uses, the Greek “oida”.) It is as if Jesus is confronting Nicodemus' post-modernism and correcting him - "You say you know something, but I say you know nothing, unless..." Then Nicodemus says "A man can't enter his mother's womb and be born a second time...Right?" Jesus replies, "Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter" - cannot enter the kingdom of God. Again, Jesus is paralleling Nicodemus' words - "You say you cannot enter the womb, but I say you cannot enter the kingdom, unless..." "How can these things be?" "We speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony - you do not apprehend it, you do not grasp it, you do not get it - If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? [...] God gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." Jesus is changing the face of the game while adhering to its rules - "You cannot know what you have not experienced, but I have experienced and know, and I declare it to you - what is left for you to do is believe."

Notice, though, that by insisting on belief, Jesus is not asking for a "blind faith" in which we must close our minds and turn our backs on the facts of our existence. Rather, he acknowledges our post-modern limitations - that we cannot know, that we cannot enter - and provides a way out - "I have known, I have entered... And I declare it to you." "I am the light of the world", "the true light, which enlightens everyone." But "the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not comprehended it", "the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light", "We speak and bear witness, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?" Jesus provides a way out, and invites Nicodemus to take it. He acknowledges Nicodemus’ post-modern limitations, and breaks through them by descending from Heaven itself and declaring the Gospel to Nicodemus – to us. All that is left is to believe, in the same way that we do not doubt what others tell us based on their own experience, even if we have not experienced the same things.

Beware the Infinite Loop!

I just lost several hours of bleary-eyed data organization/collection due to an infinite loop. Grrrrr. Fortunately I got *some* measurements first. I wrote a little script to save the newly organized files, and decided to test it on just a single file first, to make sure the script worked properly. Well, I had the following lines:

>> k = 1;
>> while k < 2,
>> ...
>> endwhile;

See the problem? I left out the line k = k + 1;

So now I get to redo all the work I had just finished. :-( But not right now... I'm bleary-eyed and tired enough that I'm just going to go home (it's just about 8pm, after all).

Thoughts about the Pentateuch

I'm going to dive right into this one without a preamble...

The Pentateuch *might* be a large chiastic structure:

Genesis
.....Exodus
..........Leviticus
.....Numbers
Deuteronomy

In a chiasm, the middle part is the central focus, the first and last parts correspond to each other, and the second and second-to-last parts correspond to each other. So we have Leviticus at the center, and the correspondences between Genesis and Deuteronomy, and between Exodus and Numbers. If this is true, the content in Deuteronomy ought to parallel the content in Genesis, and the content in Numbers ought to parallel the content in Exodus. Now, I'm not fully convinced that this really works, but I've been a little surprised to find that there actually are a number of parallels:

1) Genesis ends with Jacob blessing his sons (in the form of a poem), each one by name; and then Jacob's death is recounted. Deuteronomy ends with Moses blessing the tribes of Israel (in the form of a poem), each one by name; and then Moses' death is recounted.

2) Genesis begins with the creation of Adam and Eve in Eden, and the command to obey God, followed by their rebellion against Him (by eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - making them judges), and their subsequent expulsion from Eden. Deuteronomy begins with the command to enter the Promised Land - the second Eden, which even includes the land around the Euphrates just as the first Eden did - and the command to obey Moses (as the mediator standing in the place of God toward Israel), followed by their rebellion against Moses (and God) by making their own judgment about the feasibility of occupying the Promised Land, and their subsequent expulsion from the Promised Land and the penalty of wandering in the wilderness.

3) The bulk of Genesis is all about the covenant God makes with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The bulk of Deuteronomy is all about the covenant God makes with Moses and the whole people of Israel.

4) Exodus kicks off with the increase of the people of Israel, followed by God's command to "let my people go" because "Israel is my firstborn". After many plagues, the Passover occurs in which the firstborn of Egypt are slain. Following this Israel leaves Egypt and is protected by the pillar of cloud and fire. With much fanfare the cross the Red Sea and leave all of Egypt behind them. Then the people complain that they don't have food, so God sends quail and manna. After that Moses' father-in-law Jethro meets them and advises Moses to appoint elders to help him. This is the first half of Exodus. Now consider Numbers. It starts with a numbering of the people, followed by God's command that the firstborn are His. After a few chapters that don't seem to correspond to anything in Exodus, the Passover is celebrated, and then the pillar of cloud and fire protected and guided the people. After much fanfare (with two silver trumpets) Israel leaves Sinai behind. Immediately the people complain about the food (and a description of the manna they've been eating is given which is very similar to that given in Exodus), so God sends quail (with a plague this time). In between the complaining and the quail-plague, God advises Moses to appoint elders to help him.

5) The second half of Exodus is itself a chiasm. First you have the detailing of the Law and how to construct the Tabernacle and everything that goes with it. Then you have the Golden Calf incident in which Israel sins and the Levites kill a bunch of the guilty Israelites. Then you have the reiteration of the Law and the building of the Tabernacle. In Numbers there is a also a chiasm, although much more loosely defined than in Exodus. In Numbers the first part of the chiasm discusses various laws (similar to those in Exodus). Then you have the incident with Balaam and Baal worship at Beth-Peor, and Phineas (a Levite) and the chiefs of Israel kill a bunch of the guilty Israelites. Then there is a further discussion of laws and of how to set up the nation of Israel once it enters the Promised Land (parallel to setting up the Tabernacle).

6) In a broader sense, Exodus is about the travels from Egypt to Sinai and the giving of the Law and setting up the Tabernacle. Numbers is about the travels from Sinai to Canaan and the giving of the Law and setting up the nation of Israel.

7) In the same broad sense, Genesis is about Eden, how it was ours, how it was lost, and how it will be restored (in the future). Deuteronomy is about the Promised Land, how it should have been Israel's, how it was "lost" (they failed to occupy it), and how it will be restored (in the future, in Joshua). Oh, and another interesting point is that just as in Joshua (which means "God saves") the promises are fulfilled, the Promises are fulfilled in Jesus (which means "God saves"). ("Joshua" and "Jesus" are really the same name, but one is the Hebrew form and the other is the Greek form - just like "John" and "Johann" are the same except that one is English and the other is German). After the Promised Land has been occupied, we have (all too human) Judges. After Jesus redeems and renews the heavens and the earth, He will set up judges (in the sense that Paul says "we will judge angels", and in the sense that David says "you have put all things under [man's] feet", and in the sense that God gave dominion to Adam, then to Noah). Unlike the history of imperfect Israel which clamored for a king from among themselves and to replace God as their King, God will continue to be our King in the new heavens and the new earth. (This, by the way, is the ordering in the Jewish Bible - Ruth does not come between Judges and Samuel.) The rest is history - because Jesus has not yet come and because the new heavens and earth have not yet been established, Israel cannot permanently succeed. The results are 1) the history that proves the point in Kings/Chronicles, 2) the prophetic warnings, 3) the unraveling of the entire thing in the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities, and finally 4) the partial redemption of God's people and the rebuilding of the temple. What happens next? 5) Israel, kingless, waits for her King. But "the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple" - this is the promise in the last book of the Old Testament, in Malachi, the last prophet.

Ok, enough for now. But I would like to suggest that perhaps we should call Deuteronomy ("the second law") Deuterogeny ("the second beginning"). And we could change Numbers to Eisodus to mirrow Exodus and the fact that Numbers is about Israel being about to enter the Promised Land. I don't have any clever suggestions for renaming Leviticus, but just wait! ;-) Maybe we could call it "Holiness"? And on one last note, I think it's interesting that Adam and Eve thought God didn't want them to be like Him although they wanted it for themselves, so they ate the forbidden fruit. But in Leviticus God says that we're supposed to be holy just like Him - our problem is that God wanted/wants us to be like Him but we end up being unlike Him, so the effect of the first sin by the first Adam has to be undone by the final atonement by the final Adam (Jesus).

Two Observations Thanks to C. S. Lewis

I know, I know, I still haven't written about my trip to Europe...

I'm reading C. S. Lewis' book The Discarded Image, which is an introduction to Medieval and Renaissance literature. Mostly the book is going about describing the Medieval sense of the organization of the universe and the relations between its parts. Lewis does this because when an author like Chaucer writes

Every kindly thing that is
Hath a kindly stede ther he
May best in hit conserved be;
Unto which place every thing
Through his kindly enclyning
Moveth for to come to.

It cannot be understood apart from the physics of Chaucer's day - that different elements have their proper places in the universe and will tend to move toward those places if ever they find themselves elsewhere - hence, objects made of dirt or wood or stone fall to the earth, air escapes upward, water flows between earth and air, and fire rises highest of all. So when Chaucer says that every natural (kindly) thing has its natural (kindly) place, unto which everything moves by its own natural (kindly) inclination, he is simply putting the physical understanding of his day into poetry. (Thanks to Lewis' other book, Studies in Words, which points out that "kindly" in this time means "natural" rather than "nice"). Chaucer is being very precise, not vaguely metaphorical or allegorical - Chaucer's readers would have understood him to be speaking directly about how things are, whereas we now look for a deeper half-concealed meaning. Lewis' prime concern is to read a text as its intended audience would have read it. Hence the need to understand the context in which that audience lived. Another example that I particularly like is Donne's poem Riding Westward, which I have posted here before, but I will post it again!

Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westward

LET mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,
The intelligence that moves, devotion is,
And as the other Spheares, by being growne
Subject to forraigne motions, lose their owne,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey:
Pleasure or business, so, our Soules admit
For their first mover, and are whirld by it.
Hence is't, that I am carryed towards the West
This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.
There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,
And by that setting endlesse day beget;
But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,
Sinne had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I'almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for mee.
Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;
What a death were it then to see God dye?
It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.
Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
And turne all spheares at once, peirc'd with those holes?
Could I behold that endlesse height which is
Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,
Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne
By God, for his apparell, rag'd, and torne?
If on these things I durst not looke, durst I
Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,
Who was Gods partner here, and furnish'd thus
Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom'd us?
Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,
They'are present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and thou look'st towards mee,
O Saviour, as thou hang'st upon the tree;
I turne my backe to thee, but to receive
Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.
O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee,
Burne off my rusts, and my deformity,
Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace,
That thou may'st know mee, and I'll turne my face.

Why would Donne begin by imagining that man's soul is a sphere? Today one might as well suppose that he is simply simplifying the issue so as to be able to deal with it, like the engineering joke that begins "Suppose a horse is a perfect sphere..." But Donne isn't calling the soul a round ball - he is suggesting that its properties are those of "the spheres", the different levels of the heavens, where you have the successive spheres of the moon, of Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the fixed stars, and the Primum Mobile. The universe is a vast cathedral with several levels of crystal ceilings. At the top is the Zenith, Donne's "endless height", and on the other side of the world, "humbled below us" from our perspective, are the Antipodes, the anti-pedestrians (who walk upside down). Each sphere moves in a love-harmony with its Creator (it is Jesus who turns "all Spheares at once"), and this movement is accomplished by the action of a separate "intelligence" for each sphere. So lines one and two, "Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this, the intelligence that moves, devotion is". Donne is saying that, just as each sphere has its natural motion which is carried out by its own "intelligence" (not in the sense of "smarts"), the human soul also has a natural motion (toward God) which is driven by devotion. But there is a problem. Just as the motions of the other spheres are not completely uniform because they are driven away from their natural places by "forraigne motions", so our souls admit "pleasure or business" "for their first mover, and are whirld by it". For this reason, Donne is "carryed towards the West" "when my Soules forme bends toward the East", toward "a Sunne, by rising set", which is his metaphor for Christ's crucifixion, as he makes clear two of lines later. And one last little comment: "the Sunne winke[s]" because the sun was considered to be the eye of the universe, enlightening all of the universe at all times (except for the parts where the earth's shadow is cast - this is what causes night to be dark). (On the other hand, it is interesting that in another very different poem - The Sun Rising - Donne claims that he could eclipse the sun's beams with a wink of his own!)

But this entry has so far been one long digression! I have two observations to make!

First, at church today we sang the hymn All Creatures of Our God and King, written by Francis of Assisi in the 13th century. 13th century - that's the Middle Ages. So the understanding of the universe that informs Chaucer's poetry (and Donne's, although Donne has many later influences as well, living post-Newton and post-Columbus as he did) also informs Francis' poetry. So:

All creatures of our God and King,
Lift up your voice and with us sing
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Thou burning sun with golden beam,
Thou silver moon with softer gleam:
O praise Him,
O praise Him!
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Alleluia!

Thou rushing wind that art so strong,
Ye clouds that sail in heav'n along,
O praise Him!
Alleluia!
Thou rising morn, in praise rejoice,
Ye lights of evening, find a voice:
O praise Him,
O praise Him!
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Alleluia!

And so on. There are two things I want to point out about this hymn, which I noticed this morning as we sang it in church. First: For Francis, the sun is golden and the moon is silver. Ok, that seems natural enough to us as well. But Francis is doing more than just telling us what color they are - he is bringing into his poem an entire worldview that assigns characteristics and personalities and influences to the heavenly bodies. Gold and silver are metals just as much as they are colors, and it is the metals as well as the color, I think, that Francis is referring to - in Medieval thought the sun was associated with gold, so that Spenser writes about Mammon bring his out out to "sun" it, to turn it into gold by the application of the sun's beams (cf. Lewis, p. 106). And the moon was associated with silver. Second: The medievals thought that the whole universe was full of music. The notion that space is a vast emptiness where little matter is and no sound is transmitted is a very modern one. We think it is self-evident, and the ancients who thought otherwise were merely superstitious or something. But think of it from their perspective: all the heavens move in circular motions within their proper spheres. Circular motion is mathematically very closely related to sinusoidal motion. In fact even today we talk about "the unit circle" in much of our mathematics and engineering where they relate to sinusoids. And sinusoids are the building blocks of music. Again, even today we call any period motion (which may be circular) "harmonic". So if the spheres are moving, of course they are moving harmonically, and of course they will produce music! Hence a couplet by Henryson (cf. Lewis, p. 112) to the effect that "every planet in his proper sphere/In moving makand harmony and sound." So for Francis to call on the golden sun and the silver moon to praise God - to call on the wind, the clouds, the rising morn, the lights of evening to "find a voice" - he is being poetical, yes, but he is also being quite straightforward. Why does he call on the stars to sing to God? Because he believes that they *do* sing to God!

And now my second observation. Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan gets more interesting all the time. If anyone tries to tell you that Coleridge was simply describing an opium dream, don't believe them! Yes, that's what Coleridge himself said, but don't believe him either! :-P The entire poem is about Paradise and how, in Coleridge's view, God is not to be praised for His Creation since under the surface there was a built-in sinisterness - "It was a miracle of rare device,/A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!". In the last part of the poem Coleridge speaks of "an Abyssinian maid [...] Singing of Mount Abora." I never really knew what to make of this, except that Milton also puts Abyssinia and Mount Amara in Paradise Lost, from which Coleridge draws extensively for his poem. But apparently (thanks to Lewis for pointing this out), it was commonly thought that the earthly Paradise, where Adam and Eve first lived, was in the mountains of Amara in Abyssinia! (Just as he makes up a new spelling/pronunciation of "Xanadu", Coleridge changes "Amara" to "Abora".) So I thought that was a neat connection to make. :-)

Wondefully and Fearfully Made

I know I'm trying some patiences out there by still not writing about my trip to Europe (I'll get to it sooner rather than later, don't worry), but...

I have been playing with the lower airway model that I made (in MATLAB) as part of my thesis, looking at how the resonances change in frequency as the lengths of the bronchii and trachea are scaled up and down, and how these frequency changes are affected by the scaling of the radii. As it turns out......... There is a relatively narrow range of length scaling factors for which the radius scaling almost doesn't matter. This range of length scaling factors is *exactly* what we find in adults! What this means is that the radii of the airways can vary as much as they like (within physiological bounds) without affecting the frequencies of the resonances. Since the frequencies of the resonances are therefore quite stable across such physiological conditions, they are able to play a reliable and consistent role in defining distinctive features!!!! Or put another way (and phrased too strongly), the fact that adults tend to be between 5 and 6.5 feet tall is precisely what allows speech to be possible!

And with that exciting bit of news, I shall go to bed. :-)

Some Statistics

There is a series of books from Cambridge University Press called "Canto", which I think is very nice. There are 46 titles in this series, by 36 authors. 28 of these authors have one book in the series; 7 have two books in the series, and 1 has 4 books in the series. I think it's interesting that the 1 author with 4 books in the series (a full 8.7%) is none other than C. S. Lewis! These four books are all by Lewis the literature professor, rather than Lewis the fiction writer or Lewis the apologist. They are:

• Studies in Words
• An Experiment in Criticism
• The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature
• Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature

I have read the first two, and am now beginning the third. They are all very interesting reads (so is Lewis' Preface to Paradise Lost, which is not part of the Canto series) and I am enjoying them immensely - especially Studies in Words. :-) He must have been an excellent professor, because these books make me want to read and study all of the literature that he talks about and loves!

Another reason it's interesting to read these books by Lewis is that it adds some extra perspective to his other writings, particularly in apologetics. He spends a lot of time in his apologetic works dealing with the meanings of words in their context, and in this way his apologetic works are in the same category as Studies in Words. He also spends a good deal of time worrying about what NT or patristic writers meant, and how people at the time would have understood them - and this is in the same category as An Experiment in Criticism, but even more so in A Preface to Paradise Lost and The Discarded Image. I find that understanding Lewis' background and perspective helps me understand his arguments as a whole and appreciate his style of apologetics. So that's kind of neat. :-)

But the point of this entry started out to be that Lewis surprises me - I don't really know anything about literary criticism but apparently Lewis was a very good critic and is still highly regarded in that capacity - enough so that Cambridge University Press has dedicated 4 of his books to their Canto series, when everyone else has only 1 or perhaps 2!

Scattered Thoughts

I've been slowly reading through the books of Moses recently. I finished Genesis while I was in Europe, took a detour through the Gospel of John, and am now in Exodus. As when I was reading Genesis, I find that it has been such a long time since I last read Exodus that reading it again now has a sort of freshness to it and although I'm a little surprised at how often I'm surprised at what I'm reading (I've forgotten quite a lot), I'm noticing things this time through that I had never paid attention to before. For instance... I just read chapter 13. The first two verses seemed a little out of place at first - sandwiched between a section on the Passover (chapter 12) and a section reiterating the feast of unleavened bread (13:3-10), the first two verses are "The Lord said to Moses, 'Consecrate to me all the firstborn. Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine.'" Why is this stuck between the eating of unleavened bread with the passover and the reiteration of the requirement to keep the feast of unleavened bread?

And again, in 13:11-16 there is this business about firstborns. But this time there is a reference also to the Passover and the slaying of the firstborns. So there's a thread of unity starting to emerge, from chapters 11 and 12 (Passover) through 13:1-2, and through to 13:16. Now, what's particularly interesting is in 13:12-13 and 13:15. The relevant parts of these verses are as follows: "All the firstborn of your animals that are males shall be the Lord's. Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. Every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem." And "For when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of animals. Therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all the males that first open the womb, but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem."

I think this is what is going on: When God says "the firstborn is mine", He means that the firstborn is to be sacrificed to Him. I suppose this might be similar to the kind of sacrifices that the Canaanites (and other peoples through history) performed - we know that they used to sacrifice their children to their gods. But what is interesting is that in the very next breath God demands redemption by a lamb. It is as if God is saying "Your only-begotten son I demand of you - but you must redeem him by offering a lamb in his place". This is exactly what God demanded of Abraham - "offer him as a burnt offering to Me". And this is exactly what the outcome was when Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac - "Abraham, Abraham! Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him"; and "Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram...And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place, 'The Lord will provide.'" And of course, this is the great theme of salvation - that God has offered His own Son as the lamb to redeem us.

Well, specifically, to redeem Israel. In Exodus 4:22, God tells Moses that he shall say to Pharaoh "Thus saith the Lord, 'Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, Let my son go that he may serve me. If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.'" And this is exactly what happens in the 10th plague - the Passover. The firstborn of all of Egypt was killed because Pharaoh had not let Israel go. And notice also that the firstborn of Israel was spared precisely because of the lamb's blood on the doorposts of the houses (12:22-23).

So Exodus 13:1-2 begins to make sense in its context. You have the Passover in which the firstborn of Egypt is killed because God's firstborn (Israel) is not allowed to serve Him, so God redeems His firstborn with the firstborn of Egypt. The firstborn of Israel are spared because they are redeemed by a lamb (in the Passover). And this is all to be commemorated by the feast of unleavened bread and by the redeeming of all firstborns (well, not firstborn animals, except for donkeys - and I have no idea why donkeys are the exception) with a lamb, just as Isaac was redeemed by the ram, and just as all of Israel/God's people are redeemed by the Lamb of God, who is at the same time the only-begotten Son of the Father who is offered up to Him.

For that matter, Exodus 4:24-26 struck me as a bit out of place. You have God telling Moses to go to Egypt and lead the people out in the preceding verses, and you have God telling Aaron to go meet Moses and work with him to accomplish bringing the people out in the following verses; but in between you get this weird 3 verses about how God tries to kill Moses (whom He has just sent to Egypt to free His people) because Moses' son was not circumcised. But actually I think the placement of this episode at this point is just right. God has just told Moses to demand the release of Israel on the basis of the fact that Israel is His firstborn son. But God had earlier told Abraham that anyone who was not circumcised would be cut off from the covenant people; and there's this whole thing about the firstborn belonging to God. You could say then that Gershom, Moses' son, should by rights have belonged to God but Moses had not acknowledged that by circumcising his son and bringing him into the covenant - Gershom was still Moses' even though God demanded him as a part of the covenant. How could Moses convincingly (or at least with integrity) demand that Pharaoh let Israel go on account that Israel was God's (rather than Pharaoh's) when Moses himself was not giving to God what was His? And if the penalty to Egypt was destruction, it is fitting that the same penalty would be to Moses. Or... If the verse is indicating that the Lord was going to kill Gershom (rather than Moses), that also makes sense, because apart from the covenant there is no lamb to redeem the firstborn and therefore the firstborn must die (be sacrificed to God).

Well, those are some thoughts about Exodus 13. Now it's time for bed.

Back in Boston!

I'm back from Europe now! Stay tuned for updates and pictures from the trip!

Off to Europe!

I suppose I'll have to put stories and pictures up here when I get back. ;-)

Trust and Obey

There's a very nice hymn with this title. For the sake of completeness, I give it here:

Trust and Obey

When we walk with the Lord
In the light of His Word,
What a glory He sheds on our way!
While we do His good will
He abides with us still,
And with all who will trust and obey.

[Chorus]
Trust and obey -
For there's no other way
To be happy in Jesus
But to trust and obey.

Not a shadow can rise,
Not a cloud in the skies,
But His smile quickly drives it away;
Not a doubt nor a fear,
Not a sigh nor a tear,
Can abide while we trust and obey.

Not a burden we bear,
Not a sorrow we share,
But our toil He doth richly repay;
Not a grief nor a loss,
Not a frown nor a cross,
But is blest if we trust and obey.

But we never can prove
The delights of His love
Until all on the altar we lay,
For the favor He shows
And the joy He bestows
Are for them who will trust and obey.

Then in fellowship sweet
We will sit at His feet,
Or we'll walk by His side in the way;
What He says we will do,
Where He sends we will go -
Never fear, only trust and obey.

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Now, I've always taken "trust and obey" to be two things that simply go together and naturally follow one after the other, like "live and learn". I think this is what the hymn has in mind. But recently I've been thinking about a different view of "trust and obey" - not contrary to the first view, but in addition to it. Trusting and obeying can sometimes feel like opposites. For instance, imagine that you're a scientist and a Christian. As a scientist, it's your job to push the boundaries of human knowledge. You can't know ahead of time where this quest will take you, and sometimes it can be a bit scary. Especially in our age of aggressively a-theistic science, one might fear that this quest could end up leading one away from God. But then you remember that God is the Creator of all things, even the things you are studying, and that no amount of boundary-pushing or questing will lead you beyond the boundaries of God's jurisdiction. You can trust that. You can rest in God's faithfulness, in His trustworthiness. You can push the boundaries with abandon and the worst that you'll do is show how much bigger God is than you had previously thought!

But on the flip side, you want to be faithful yourself; you want to obey, to bring "every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ." You don't want to pursue an idea into heresy. As long as you're pursuing the Truth, you're pursuing Jesus, but often it's hard to know in advance what it is about a new idea that is True and what is not. So you have to make a decision: Either you forfeit the pursuit, playing it safe, taking the conservative route; Or you plunge ahead, taking the risk. In the first case, your understanding of God's majesty and greatness suffers by virtue of not being expanded, but at least you know you're safe. In the second case, you stand to gain in admiration and praise for God, but you also stand to wander into heresy - you're not safe. It's like putting your money in a bank account vs. the stock market. But losing at this game is worse than running into a bear market. But again, you ought to be able to trust that Jesus is faithful to keep you on the straight and narrow, to keep you obedient ("trust and obey" come back together at this point, like "live and learn").

This may be enough to encourage you to step out (we say "in faith" but we could equally well say "in trust") into the unknown, but it doesn't always mean that you take the step without any kind of trepidation. In the meantime, you pray that Jesus will correct you if you start wandering from the path. It is therefore with some trepidation, but also with hope in the promises of Christ, that I submit the following bit of thinking...

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Jesus performed miracles and signs. These days we think that miracles are specifically contra-natural events that can only be explained by appeal to the supernatural. The (Greek) word used in the Gospels is "dynamis", from which we get the English words "dynamic", "dynamite". "Dynamics" is the branch of physics that deals with forces, and we might well say that "force" is a synonymn for "power" or "ability", which is really what the Greek word meant. "Dynamite" is something that has great explosive "power", or an "ability" to blast holes in mountains. But we don't think that dynamite acts by anything but entirely natural means, and likewise we consider dynamics to follow from certain Laws of Nature. I don't know what 1st century Greek speakers would have thought about the word "dynamis", but I wonder if they thought of it differently than we do today under the translation of "miracle" - if they thought of it in a way that involved the natural, perhaps as a natural means by which a supernatural Being might act in the world. Although I don't know whether this is the case, let's assume that it is, for the sake of argument.

Some of Jesus' miracles involved healing people. One of these miracles that has puzzled a lot of people, including me, is the healing of the blind man by making clay made with spittle and applying it to the blind man's eyes. The question has always been "What's up with the clay and especially the spittle? Why didn't Jesus just say 'Be healed!'?" I was struck recently when I discovered (recently) that there was a story of the Roman emperor Vespasian healing a blind man in a similar manner. A little further digging and I learned that there was a widespread belief in the ancient world that human saliva had some pretty impressive healing powers. (It seems that the idea went like this: Human saliva is poisonous to snakes, and by extension to other loathsome creatures, including demons. Spitting at someone with a disease might therefore act both to help cure the person by killing the disease with saliva, and to keep the disease from spreading to yourself. It was generally best to apply the saliva to the affected part of the body.) All of a sudden this miracle makes sense - Jesus was using the methods corresponding to the medical beliefs of the time to perform this healing of the blind man. But at the same time, this makes the miracle seem somehow less miraculous - at least, if we say that a miracle is contra-natural rather than para-natural (I know, I know, I'm mixing Latin and Greek roots...).

I'll have to think more about this, and study more, but I wonder if a similar thing could be said for Jesus' other (healing) miracles - namely, that He made use of the understanding of the day to display His power ("dynamis"/"miracle") and to prove His authority (by "signs"/"semeioi", which is also frequently translated as "miracles").

This leads me to think two things. First, it kind of makes sense that Jesus would condescend to the imperfect understanding of the day. After all, His parables are all about things that were common and every-day in that part of the world and at that time. And let's consider what we might have thought if Jesus had come performing His miracles in 2007AD rather than 30AD, and if He had healed a person sick with the flu by, say, mixing flour with water and rubbing the solution on the person's forehead. First of all, we'd think He was crazy or a quack, and furthermore if the person was actually healed we'd say that Jesus got lucky in that He happened to apply the flour water just when the person was about to recovery on their own (or because of the medication they were on). Even if flour-water applied to the forehead were a cure for the flu and we just haven't figured it out yet, our current understanding of how the body works and how the flu works just does not allow for this possibility to enter our minds. Perhaps this is rather post-modern of me, but it makes sense that if Jesus wanted to communicate something to us, He would use our language.

Now, what does this line of thinking imply? For one, I think it implies that the sometimes tricky issue of thinking about medicine vs. faith is not so tricky anymore. You might think that taking medicine to help you recover from a cold is like turning your back on God because you are putting your faith (your trust) in medicine instead of Him. But if a miracle is something that God does by means of nature (rather than in opposition to nature), then it makes sense that you will take your medicine and trust God - taking your medicine is no kind of disobedience.

One might object that since doctors then and now have used their understanding of the natural world to heal people, then if we say Jesus did the same thing, how can we claim that Jesus' miracles in any way validated His claim to be the Son of God? After all, we don't want to say that every doctor is the Son or Daughter of God (in the way that we mean it when we talk about Jesus). I don't think this is a big problem, really - after all, the point would be that Jesus was demonstrating His power; and He did that in many other ways, performing "signs and wonders" of various sorts, most importantly dying and being resurrected on the 3rd day. You can't dismiss these things simply because Jesus spoke the language of the day and used the understanding of the day to communicate His message, His Gospel.

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Well, I suppose this is enough for now. It's way past my bedtime...

fyi

The confirmation for the Chomsky-Kant connection comes from Chomsky's book Cartesian Linguistics.

Language as an organ, hence part of biology

I have just confirmed a sneaking suspicion that I've been developing in the last week: When Chomsky talks about language as an "organ", or when he talks about linguistics as a branch of "biology", he is making implicit reference to 18th century biology, reflected in Kant's view of biology and organisms. When Chomsky says that language is "generative", he means it in the same way that Kant means it when he says that organisms are self-generating. This puts things in a bit different perspective. What does Kant mean when he says organisms are "generative"? Among other things, he means that they construct themselves, in a way. The organism is built up from its parts, but the parts are goal-directed by the organism to build the organism. (See my last entry for a brief discussion of this with regard to a completely different topic.) In what way is language "generative", on Chomsky's view? Language constructs itself. Linguistic structures are built up of certain parts (say, X-bar structure, for those of you who know what that means), but they those parts are goal-directed by the larger linguistic structure to build the larger linguistic structure. Moreover, the parts (X-bar structure) are themselves (small) linguistic structures; this parallels Kant's claim that organisms build their own parts.

Now this raises a potentially very interesting cunundrum. Chomsky spends a lot of time saying that linguistic competence is innate. In order for it to be innate, it had to get there by means of evolution. But Chomsky and Fodor, among others, spend lots of time saying that language is not adaptive, and it can be called non-adaptive specifically because it is organic (in the sense above, namely, self-generating). So it had to be by means of a freak mutation or else as a freak side-effect of some other mutations that were adaptive. But insofar as the analogy between language and organisms is appropriate, the very possibility of the evolution of organisms from nothing becomes nill. You see, it's important that language is said to be innate and non-adaptive. These are things that make it possible for language to be organic - if language wasn't innate and non-adaptive, it wouldn't be organic. But if organisms are organic (a tautology), then they must share these properties of innateness and non-adaptivity. Or, to use more a more concise and understandable phraseology, organisms must be contingent. If Chomsky is right about language.

So, on the one hand, this leads Chomsky to a contradiction, whether he's right or wrong about language. On the other hand, if he's right about language, it raises some thorny issues for evolutionary theory.

...I think. I've made rather strong claims in this entry, stronger than I usually make when I see the possibilities for a lot of holes in my argument. I'll have to sit on these ideas for a while and see whether I can find such holes and then whether I can patch them up. In the meantime... It does make for some interesting thinking...

Two Kinds of Biology

I'm leading a discussion of a paper on Monday that I find rather difficult, so I'm going to write down some thoughts about it here. It's called "Organisms as natural purposes: the contemporary evolutionary perspective", by D. M. Walsh in the 37th volume of Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. This paper actually meshes well with some other reading I've been doing, including Dawkins' book (which I've already commented on a few times) and a book by Kirchner and Gerhardt called The Plausibility of Life. The argument goes like this: Kant described a paradox of sorts when he said that mechanical law is the only natural explanation; but organisms are natural purposes and thus inexplicable by mechanical law. I trust that the first half of the paradox is familiar territory. The second half takes a bit of explaining, and I find that I have trouble understanding it - perhaps because it is inherently more difficult to graph, or perhaps because it is largely ignored or even denied in modern science (that's not my claim, it's Walsh's, although I think I agree with him). Think of it like this: Mechanical laws are like lines of code in a computer program. Each line tells the computer to carry out a certain operation (say, add some number n + 1). By the time the program is done running, the output is the number 213. Now this computer is built in such a way that if a number other than 213 +/- 5 is ever output by any program, the program will crash, the computer will freeze, and you will never get the data off of its hard drive. If the number is 213 +/- 5, the computer will duplicate itself (never mind how). During duplication, the program may inadvertently get changed - say, one of its n + 1 lines gets deleted. If the program outputs a number more than 3 away from 213, the computer has a 95% chance of responding by adding or subtracting an n + 1 line, as appropriate, to bring the output closer to 213. Over time, the computer population will be very stable, because the computers are able to "fix" themselves, even though the program in each computer might be slightly different (one might output 213, another 212, another 214, etc.; one might reach 212 by adding 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + ..., whereas one might arrive at it by 1 + 1 + 1 + ... + 1 - 1 + 1, etc.). This variation can then be "naturally selected" if, say, computational efficiency is the desired trait; or if showy complexity is the desired trait. Sound like evolution? But there's a problem... The program not only is modified by the computer (by adding or subtracting n + 1 lines), but simply will not run without the computer! In order for the program to do anything - even for the program to exist - the computer must first be there to write and save and interpret and execute the program. This is what it means for a computer to be a natural purpose.

Now, let's turn to biological evolution. You have organisms which are like computers; you have genes which are like programs. All the other relations between computers and programs correspond to relations between organisms and genes. But the notion of a natural purpose is not much in vogue in the sciences. The general conviction is that nature is reductionistic, that the whole can be described in terms of the parts and that the parts are self-evident. This is Dawkins' view of evolution by natural selection. But there is apparently a rising tide of organisms-as-natural-purposes, coming from the developmental biology world. This is the position that Kirchner and Gerhardt take. Put in rather different terms, the generally accepted picture of evolution fits in the "mechanical laws" category; and the "natural purposes" category might be thought of as occupied by Intelligent Design. Hmmm... We come to this dichotomy again. Of course, I think that most people dealing with organisms as natural purposes are not thinking in terms of ID - rather, they are trying to put the natural purposiveness of organisms into a broader naturalistic picture. I'm not convinced that this is possible, but in the meantime there's some interesting stuff coming out of that group.

But what about Intelligent Design? In other entries I have come out rather negative toward ID. But I wonder... Would a modified form of ID be on stronger ground if it related itself directly to these kinds of issues?

Well, I'm not finished re-reading this paper, and my comments here take me about as far as I can go right now. I find it useful to write out my thoughts - it helps me to organize them in my own mind. And I think this entry is no exception to that rule. Phew! :-)

Dawkins on Morality

I've just finished reading the chapter in Dawkins' book that discusses where morality comes from, whether one needs to believe in God in order to be moral, and whether people who believe in God really are more moral than people who don't. It seems to me that he misses the point. I mean, sure, those are interesting questions to discuss, but the question lurking in the background which he does not address and which subsequently damages his argument is: what is morality, anyway? His claim is that morality is a by-product of evolution, for reasons that he spells out but I won't repeat here. He also claims that we evolved a sense of morality without the interference of God, whom he claims (probably) doesn't exist. Ok. In the same breath he attaches a huge amount of value to morality, to being good to others. That's fine, but this underscores the fact that he's not actually answering the question. If his story is right, then the reason he attaches value to morality must be because we evolved in such a way that we place value on morality. But if that's true, then where does God fit into the picture? He might say this is exactly his point. But I think that the Christian argument goes more like this. Suppose: I'm moral because I evolved that way; I would still be moral even without God; religious people might actually be less moral than atheists, because they are moral out of fear of retribution or hope of reward, whereas atheists are moral out of the goodness of their hearts. But this implies a value judgment that being moral is good; but where does that value judgment come from? From evolution. So if we had evolved to value rape, we would call Christians immoral if they didn't go around raping. But if morality is a by-product of evolution and we know that now, and we have the power to alter the course of our evolution, then if a group of people wanted to value rape, they could call it the next phase of their evolution. After all, more rapes would result in more pregnancies which would result in more replication of the rapists DNA, and DNA replication is the whole point of evolution (more or less Dawkins' own words). So what's wrong with it (if there isn't a God)? It is simply begging the question to respond that it's wrong because it's evil, or because moral philosophers have set down a principle that one should not hurt another human being. But this seems to be Dawkins' answer to the Christians who claim that without God there can be no morality. He's addressing a completely different question from what the Christians are asking, but doesn't realize it. (The question he's addressing is whether Christians are more moral than atheists.)

Dinner at Bamboo

I finally went to dinner at Bamboo after a long hiatus. It was funny, when I was seated the waitress came over to give me a menu and said "long time no see"! It's kind of fun to eat somewhere enough that you know them and they know you. It was a good dinner, too. I tried the pad see ew this time. If you don't like soy sauce, though, you might want to avoid it. :-)

Philosophy

I've been reading a bit of philosophy recently - namely, Hume's Treatise Concerning Human Understanding, and A. J. Ayer's Language, Truth, and Logic. It's an interesting combination to read, especially since I'm still only halfway through Dawkins' book. Dawkins spends some time referring to Hume, and Ayer does, too. Meanwhile, some of the things Ayer writes about are so clearly antecedent to Chomky's way of doing linguistics, it's quite fascinating! It's times like these when I wish I was a little more of a linguist than I am; but it's also times like these when I'm glad to be a linguist. :-) It seems that one thing Chomsky can be credited for is the proof (if that's the right word) that philosophy in every language looks the same. Put another way, critical thinking is not under the jurisdiction of one or a handful of languages, but is open to all languages. Furthermore, this blows Sapir-Whorf right out of the water. (The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, named for Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Whorf, put simply, states that one's language affects the way one thinks. One of the paradigm examples (now rejected after further analysis) is the Hopi, who were thought to be unable to conceive of time because their language had no past or future verb tenses.) Aside from linguistics, I wonder what a Christian philosophy on a par with these guys would look like, especially in the biomedical world. Hmmmm........

Didn't know singers could do this sort of thing

I recently got a recording of Vivaldi's opera Bajazet, which is really quite good. It's a bit different structurally from later opera like Mozart or Beethoven, which makes it interesting. And there are some arias where the singers are doing stuff with their voices that I didn't know could be done! And I had no idea that anyone ever wrote music like that! If you're familiar with Vivaldi's violin concertos, you'll remember that there are lots of places where the violin part alternates between a high and a low string in 16th-note fashion. Well, in Bajazet the singers do the equivalent, alternating between high and low notes really quickly. Amazing...

Some Mid-Way Thoughts on Dawkins' Book

I am now about halfway through Dawkins' book The God Delusion, at the point where he summarizes the main conclusion of the book (this first half of the book argues why it is good to be atheist; the second half of the book argues why it is good to be militantly so, i.e. actively trying to end the game of religion rather than simply not participating in it). In his words (this is a relatively extended quote):

This chapter has contained the central argument of my book, and so, at the risk of sounding repetitive, I shall summarize it as a series of six numbered points.

1. One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect, over the centuries, has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.

2. The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself. [It is natural to apply the analogy of a watch~watchmaker and posit the existence of a universe-maker such as God.]

3. The temptation is a false one, because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. [...]

4. The most ingenious and powerful [mechanism for deriving complex objects from simple objects] so far discovered is Darwinian evolution by natural selection. [...] We can now safely say that the illusion of design in living creatures is just that - an illusion.

5. We don't yet have an equivalent [mechanism] for physics. Some kind of multiverse theory could in principle do for physics the same explanatory work as Darwinism does for biology. [...]

6. We should not give up hope of [such a mechanism] arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology. But even in the absence of [such a mechanism in physics] to match the biological one, the relatively weak [versions of such a mechanism, for instance the multiverse theory] are, when abetted by the anthropic principle, self-evidently better than the self-defeating skyhook hypothesis of an intelligent designer.

If the argument of this chapter is accepted, the factual premise of religion - the God Hypothesis - is untenable. God almost certainly does not exist.

What Dawkins means by a "skyhook" is something he takes from Daniel Dennet's book (which I have not yet read) Darwin's Dangerous Idea. It is meant as a "deus ex machina" hanging precariously out of thin air, to be contrasted with "cranes" (which I have replaced with "mechanisms" in the large quote above), which have their feet planted firmly on the ground. I'd like to express a few thoughts about this succession of points and their presumably inevitable conclusion.

First of all, I see nothing wrong with Dawkins' points (1) and (2), and although I don't think I know enough physics to really weigh in on the debate (I'm not convinced that Dawkins does, either), I can accept (5) for the sake of argument. I also agree with (4) and (6) as far as the first sentence (out of two) of each goes. I completely disagree with his point (3).

The second sentence of (4) is stated in the form of a conclusion based on the first sentence. However, I think this juxtaposition makes for a non sequitor. I suppose that it is possible that design in the case of the universe should be conceived on a much broader and grander scale than that of living beings - a scale over which Darwinian evolution does not operate. Dawkins anticipates this by discussion the constants of the universe and the multiple multiverse theories on the table, and arrives at (6). Again, the second sentence of (6) is stated in the form of a conclusion based on the first sentence. However, it is again a non sequitor. How so, you ask? Well, it comes back to skyhooks.

Turn back 3 pages - same chapter, as Dawkins is wrapping up his main presentation of the argument for (6). He writes the following:

Time and again, my theologian friends returned to the point that there had to be a reason why there is something rather than nothing [this is Leibniz's famous question]. There must have been a first cause of everything, and we might as well give it the name God. Yes, I said, but it must have been simple and therefore, whatever else we call it, God is not an appropriate name (unless we very explicitly divest it of all the baggage that the word 'God' carries in the minds of most religious believers). The first cause that we seek must have been the simple basis for a self-bootstrapping crane which eventually raised the world as we know it into its present complex existence.

This is where Dawkins' argument begins to unravel. First, the appeal to a "self-bootstrapping crane" seems to be nothing more than a skyhook. Second, Dawkins' acquiescence that there must have been a first cause seems to run afoul of his earlier criticism of Aquinas' "proofs" of the existence of God. Granted, Dawkins protects himself in that chapter by pointing out that even if "God" is the thing we call the first cause, it does not necessarily follow that the qualities of this first cause are those attributed to God. But that is beside the point that I am making right now - the point is that Dawkins' notion of a first cause contradicts his earlier criticism of Aquinas. Indeed, his only really novel argument against "the God Hypothesis" is based on the notion that at the end of the almost-infinite regress of questions such as "What made X? What made the thing that made X? What made the thing that made the thing that made X? &c." must be an incredibly simple thing (since simple things can become complicated things, at least in some domains). How is this an argument against "the God Hypothesis?" God is not a simple thing. Since the beginning of all things must have been simple, it could not have been God. Therefore, God does not exist. Q.E.D.

But this brings us round to Dawkins' point (3). First, I don't think that the question "who designed the designer" comes up if we posit God as the designer. This seems to be a point where Dawkins either fails to understand the Christian notion of God, or loses all imagination, or both. But more on that later. Second, Dawkins himself cannot escape his own criticism, since he posits a simple "self-bootstrapping crane," of which the question is immediately raised (assuming we allow such a device, which we don't) what made this simple crane? Infinite regress.

Back to the self-bootstrapping crane. The only thing that allows Darwinian evolution to be a plausible crane is that it has ground underneath it on which to operate. One thing that Dawkins does not mention, and even seems to forget (he must be aware of it), is that natural selection (Dawkins' catch-all for making complex things out of simple things) operates on variation. Where the variation comes from is a different question. There's another recent book about this called The Plausibility of Life by Marc Kirshner and John Gerhart. Whether or not they succeed in explaining the origin of variations is beside the point (although based on the first couple of chapters I don't think they will, even though they do appear to be barking up a very interesting tree). But this is not what I want to talk about. The point for now is that a similar grounds for the self-bootstrapping crane is by definition non-existant.

But now let me ask, if Dawkins can imagine a very simple something without feeling a need to explain the existence of that something, why does he feel that people who think God created everything face a huge obligation to explain the existence of God? If anything can simply exist, why does it have to be an extremely simple thing? What does it matter how simple or complex the simply existing thing is? (This is accepting for the sake of argument Dawkins' notion of "complex", which I'm not sure I fully understand, nor am I convinced that it is appropriate to the Christian conception of God.)

Let's recap:

1) I haven't spent any time defining the notion of a "broader, grander scale" than the one evolution acts on, but I have asserted that the first and second sentences of (4) constitute a non sequitor.

2) Dawkins' point (3) is self-defeating at least and perhaps also irrelevant.

3) Point (6) is a non sequitor that leaves Dawkins with a skyhook, defeating his own most appealed-to criticism of Christianity.

Now how about a thought-experiment? This may help to clarify what I mean by a "broader, grander scale".

Suppose we find out that there is life out there on other planets. What will the anatomy and physiology of that life look like? What if it turns out to be more or less exactly what we have here on Earth? If we were committed to naturalism, that is if we were committed to a universe without God, how would we explain this? Since I only thought of this question today, I haven't had enough time to really think much about it. So I will leave you, Dear Reader, with the question.

When is a Lake a Mountain?

R. and I were talking yesterday about how, to us, Crater Lake is a mountain as much as it is a lake. :-} We were talking about our computer desktop picture theme - all stuff from around Central Oregon. Since I was in college, my computers have been South Sister (that's a mountain), Broken Top (that's another mountain), Mt. Hood, and Crater Lake. R.'s computer is now Crater Lake, and her old laptop was Suttle Lake (that's the right spelling). Ok, so we first began by observing that all of our computers are Central Oregon mountains. Then she pointed out that her laptop was the exception, it being a lake. It took us a while to figure out that Crater Lake is also a lake! If you want to talk about tall mountains in southern Oregon, you can talk about Mt. McLaughlin, Mt. Scott, Crater Lake, Mt. Thielson... Yep, Crater Lake is one of them. Actually it's Mt. Mazama, but that's neither here nor there. The simply amusing fact of the matter is that Crater Lake is as much a mountain as it is a lake. :-}

Words, on Good Friday

'Twas words that gave the heav'ns their light,
On Earth dispelled her darkened void;
The truth enlightened, unalloyed
With lies, fall'n speech's darker blight;
Commanded moon to rule the night
As sun the day, until the time
When majesty of God sublime
Shall be for us the only Light.
But in the fullness of the times
The Word that pierc'd the darkness through,
As He was pierced for our crimes,
All charges 'gainst ourselves withdrew.
Yet seven gentle words He spoke,
While with rude speech His heart we broke.

Ideas for Vibrating Cell Culture Surfaces at High Frequency

Since the vocal folds vibrate at frequencies upwards of 100 Hz, and since we know that cell and tissue mechanical properties depend on the frequency at which stresses are applied and relaxed, it makes sense to ask just how those properties look at high frequencies (most systems test frequencies much closer to 1 Hz). XT in my lab has a system where he can stretch cells on a flexible membrane at low frequency, and we are trying to figure out a way to modify the apparatus to work at higher frequencies. I have an idea...and I've just put a bid on a set of tuning forks on eBay (don't anybody out-bid me in the next 19 hours!!). There are three tuning forks and a mallet in this set. Two of the tuning forks are attached to wood resonating boxes, and seem to be the same size, hence probably the same frequency (they are listed as "used" and the owner doesn't seem to have checked what the frequencies are). The third tuning fork *might* also be of the same frequency. Anyway..... I wonder if we can't rig up a system where we can hit one of the tuning forks and bring it close the other one to induce sympathetic vibrations. The sympathetic tuning fork could be somehow connected to the system where the cells are growing (maybe simply placing it on the microscope stage next to the system would work?) and cause the membrane to vibrate. Now, we might have to get the membrane's resonant frequency close to that of the tuning fork, but perhaps we could do that by stretching it a certain amount. At the moment I have *no* idea what the resting resonant frequency of the membrane is. I may have to get a different set of tuning forks with different frequencies. But anyway, I'll enjoy having this set (if nobody out-bids me!!) even if it doesn't work for this experiment. We'll see. First things first: Win the auction, *then* play around to see what we can make work. :-)

Experiments Coming My Way (Hopefully)

Today I learned how to make gels of different stiffnesses that cells can be cultured on. I hope to put this technique to work for me within the next couple of weeks and see what effects on cell mechanics these different stiffnesses have. Today was a good day - finally am figuring out what experiments I want to do and why I want to do them. Now I just need to coax my cells into growing a bit better...

Whizzing Through Data

Today I spent several hours using my new program to run through a bunch of sound files and correct old measurements and make new ones. It has taken me several months to collect the first wave of data manually, but today I breezed through more than a third of it! My pitch estimator definitely needs some work, and the resulting pitch and harmonic data that I recorded (after throwing out a lot of it) is going to be rather noisy. We'll see if I can do a whole lot with it.

Call Me The Great LPC Warrior

That's right. I dueled with the mighty LPC spectrum for two days before finally vanquishing the beast! The end result was that I figured out how to create an LPC spectrum from a speech waveform. I feel like a DSP expert now! :-D Well, sort of. I've also been playing around with some pitch estimators and have had only moderate success. But it's good enough and the end product is a piece of MATLAB software that will step through a number of files (about 850) and estimate some parameters which I can then tweak and accept, or reject as the case may be. The measurements will be saved and I will have a lot more new data to play with and to put into my Oroqen paper. And I feel a lot better about this paper when I think about being able to include these new data.

On the downside, it's now after 3am. I seem to be oblivious to time and food and sleep when I'm in the middle of a programming project. Fortunately that's not my chief occupation. :-}

New Reading Torrent Coming My Way

I think a friend of mine is going to bring me Dawkin's book The God Delusion tomorrow to read. I will want to read it rather carefully but quickly (rather than stretching it out over a long time). It should inaugurate a reading program that will likely include Breaking the Spell and God: The Failed Hypothesis, and perhaps also Moral Minds, Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, and Letter to a Christian Nation. Lots of reading - it never ends. :-} In the meantime, I spent my free time today enjoying a couple more chapters in a biography about Mercater. :-)

Now a few thoughts which I'm not sure if I've written down somewhere sometime before, and I find that sometimes writing down underdeveloped thoughts helps stimulate their development. So...

People want to find evidence of God's existence, usually by means of scientific investigation. If God could be described mathematically (which is really what people mean when they say they want to find evidence of His existence and presence, I think), then why wouldn't He be just another "law of nature"? And if He isn't another law of nature then why do we expect that He should be objectivizable to scientific study? People claim that if He exists there should be certain evidences that we can find, that we should be able to test empirical claims about His presence and that those tests should be replicable (the modern scientific method - I am not going to say anything in this entry about my opinion about the woeful state of working philosophy of science these days (that sentence had way too many prepositions - my apologies to the reader)). But is this kind of evidence available for people who lived 500 years ago in downtown London? Do we therefore reject the notion that so many of them existed?

Then there's the question about the problem of evil. The usual argument goes like this:

Premise 1) God is all-powerful.
Premise 2) God is all-loving.
Observation 1) Evil exists.
Conclusion 1) Since God does not stop evil from existing, He is either not all-powerful or not all-loving or both. Therefore the God of the Bible does not exist.

But what if evil did not exist? What if every time a person thought or did something evil, he was struck down? Well, again I see no reason why we scientists wouldn't chalk it up to a natural law - we could still reject God's existence on the basis of the predictability of His response to evil. Then we might complain that if God exists and is behind this predictable response to evil, He should prove it by witholding His response to evil - and then if He did we would all either accuse Him of being not all-powerful and/or not all-loving, or we would posit something like dark matter to account for the single exception to the otherwise perfectly good natural law. If more exceptions were made in order to get it out of our heads that there was a law of nature, then we would not be able to posit something like dark matter but instead we would have to posit much more indirect theories such as religion memes or primeval Oedipus complexes, or we would say that God is not all-powerful and/or not all-loving. And this is exactly what we have today. So in any event you just can't be satisfied: If evil did not exist, we would still have to deal with the problem of evil, but the question would be "why doesn't it exist". Perhaps it is actually useful to suppose that evil exists so that God could destroy it (which is one of the ideas I've heard about a lot in the last several years), so that in the future when it is completely taken away we will be able to answer the question "why doesn't evil exist?" The answer will be "because God destroyed it".

At any rate, I think the notion that we can rely on science to answer any and all question objectively once and for all is way overrated. Science can do a lot of cool things, but it also has limitations - some of them are only historical (i.e. we can't do something now, but in 100 years we will be able to), and I am not interested at this point in discussing what limitations are absolute. But something that seems to be very much overlooked (but this is changing) is history, and besides this the whole class of investigations into events that occur exactly once, and are therefore not replicable and not controlled. It seems that the whole world has "physics envy".

Ok, that's enough for now. Maybe I'll discuss "the scientific method" sometime. I think it would be interesting.

Nothing to blog about...

It's been a while so I figure I should write something. I just finished reading C. S. Lewis' Preface to Paradise Lost. It is quite good! Makes me want to read PL again. And it makes me want to read Dante, too. I keep running into comments about Dante or quotes from Dante, and with each new comment or quote I wish I had time to just sit down and read Dante! Well, I'm sure I will soon enough. In the meantime, I'm reading a book about evolution, and reading papers about pulmonary fibrosis. And I got a little book the other day by N. T. Wright called For All The Saints? which I started reading today after finishing Lewis' book. I should probably turn back to this book about the flu that I started reading (and enjoying very much) a while ago but haven't touched for quite a while... That's the book that is currently feeling a little like the bottleneck in my reading program. Well, we'll see. In other news, I'm making good progress in my analysis of Oroqen vowels. I went up to Dartmouth last weekend, rented a car for it and drove up in the middle of the big NE snowstorm/blizzard. A little nerve-wracking but all in all not terrible driving conditions. I was impressed at how everyone on the road seemed to know exactly how to handle the situation, unlike in Central Oregon. I guess the difference might be that in Central Oregon we get a lot of people not from Central Oregon and therefore not used to driving in Winter conditions, whereas in New England it doesn't matter what part of the state or region you're from, you all know how to drive safely in blizzards. As as long as you drove in the tracks of the cars in front of you, the pavement stayed relatively bare and not very slippery. Still, it took about 6 hours, which was a long haul. I'm going back this weekend and it looks like it will be sunny and 50+ degrees! The goal for the next two days is to finish making acoustic measurements so that the goal for the weekend can be accomplished: To get some serious writing done.

Good Times in Biology-Land

In the last week I feel like I have taken some pretty big steps toward becoming something of a biologist.

Finally!!!! It's only taken six months, you know....

Actually, the steps themselves haven't been too big, but my mindset/attitude toward how biological research is done has undergone some pretty neat developments. Here is a list of "firsts" in the past 5 days:

1) First time getting frozen cells out of a liquid nitrogen case.
2) First time transporting them across town in dry ice.
3) First time thawing them out, culturing them, and refreezing some.
4) First time having fresh cow/pig larygnes delivered to me.
6) First time dissecting cow vocal folds.
7) First time cutting sections of cow vocal folds in a cryostat (well, actually I just watched).
8) First time staining cell nuclei.

I think there are a few more, but that's what comes to mind right away.

Did a pretty big experiment today (10 hours) and got some data. Haven't analyzed it yet, but at least now I know that certain parts of the experiment work and certain parts could be improved. I think what I need to do next is figure out how to do 1) flourescence microscopy and 2) Western blotting. I might also need to learn how to make gels of different stiffnesses. Then there will be a LOAD of very interesting and very easy experiments to run. This is getting exciting!

Fun Phonetics Quote

"When you release the nasal consonant, Boom! - that front cavity is there. Except "boom" is not the right word." - Ken Stevens, 2/22/07, on the absence of a salient burst in nasal stop releases.

The Rise of Neo-Aristotelianism?

My mom recently wrote an entry about "Spiritual Formation", and it got me thinking. It was Aristotle who thought that everything has a form which leads it to behave in certain ways in certain circumstances. The natural bent of that form could be thwarted or modified by certain accidences attendant upon it, such as its combination with some object of a different form (e.g. air might be mixed with water, keeping it from going upward to where all air is supposed to be; when the water is heated, the air escapes - of course we now know that this is just a difference between the liquid and gaseous states of the same water). By undergoing Spiritual Formation we are attempting to mold ourselves into a new form that we did not have before. This is why I put the "Neo-" in front of "Aristotelianism". I don't think Aristotle believed that an object's form could change. If it could, that would be a sort of transmutation (and now we're getting alchemical). And indeed, even Donne, who as far as I can tell was a good Aristotelian, seemed to think that our form was fixed - at least according to the poem that I love to put on my blogs:

Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westward

LET mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,
The intelligence that moves, devotion is,
And as the other Spheares, by being growne
Subject to forraigne motions, lose their owne,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey:
Pleasure or business, so, our Soules admit
For their first mover, and are whirld by it.
Hence is't, that I am carryed towards the West
This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.
There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,
And by that setting endlesse day beget;
But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,
Sinne had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I'almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for mee.
Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;
What a death were it then to see God dye?
It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.
Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
And turne all spheares at once, peirc'd with those holes?
Could I behold that endlesse height which is
Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,
Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne
By God, for his apparell, rag'd, and torne?
If on these things I durst not looke, durst I
Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,
Who was Gods partner here, and furnish'd thus
Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom'd us?
Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,
They'are present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and thou look'st towards mee,
O Saviour, as thou hang'st upon the tree;
I turne my backe to thee, but to receive
Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.
O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee,
Burne off my rusts, and my deformity,
Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace,
That thou may'st know mee, and I'll turne my face.

Regarding the question whether our form is fixed or not, I think both sides have something to offer - but how to bring them together, I don't quite know. On the one hand, we would like to say that we are all made in the image of God and that is something fixed and will never change. On the other hand, we would like to say that we are re-formed and made into a new creation in Christ. But I don't want to talk more about this at this time. Moving on...

It's interesting that the idea of a worldview, which as far as I can see is an idea that is on the rise - partly as a result of post-modernism, and partly as a reaction against it - also suggests the notion of an Aristotelian form. Our worldview is like the essense of our form, the thing that determines how we will behave, or how we will respond to certain situations, the thing that determines the way we think about things, the conclusions we draw, etc. Of course, in the post-modern world the nice thing about worldview is that it acts as a touchstone for our belief that who we are is a function of who we (or our parents, or the broader culture) have been. [Side note: I just realized that this is similar developments in Linguistics - namely, that what a language is is a function not only of natural laws of phonetics, etc., but also of what the language has been.] But again, we are Neo-Aristotelians in that we think that worldview can be changed, re-formed.

This might also be related to the debates over stem cell research. In an earlier entry (on Xanga) I think I raised the question whether it would be a helpful thing to consider an Aristotelian perspective - namely that an embryo has a certain form which it will naturally move toward becoming, i.e. a full-fledged human being. This way of thinking could potentially shed some light on the questions, especially since most the debate seems to be revolving around more Platonic questions - What is an embryo? Is it a life? Is it a ball of chemicals? When does one suddenly transform into the other? The Aristotelian concept of becoming as opposed to being is, I think, rather intriguing. And again, both have some Biblical merit - Jesus became better than the angels, but on the other hand Jesus is the second person of the Trinity. But there might be a problem here. Perhaps Aristotelianism is already breaking into the stem cell debates. One of the arguments in favor of doing stem cell research (on stem cells derived from embryos) is that the harvested embryo (harvested for whatever reason) is already no longer capable of becoming a person since it is not in an environment conducive to that development. The increasing awareness that an object is not defined solely without regard to its environment (perhaps this is remotely similar to Donne's assertion that "no man is an island") raises the question whether an embryo's form is constant between one environment and another, or if it changes.

And that raises another interesting question - whether the same emphasis on the dependency of an object on its environment might apply to the question about Spiritual Formation. In the absence of God, do we automatically have a different form than we have in the presence of God? For now I'll say that this sounds rather appealing to me, but I'll have to spend some more time thinking about it.

In the meantime... Is Neo-Aristotelianism on the rise? What does it mean?

Answering "The God Question", part 2

Last night I went to the second evening event of the Veritas Forum at Harvard. The topic at hand was "Dawkins and the Divine: Is God a Virus of the Mind?" Dawkins was not there (if I remember my "he saids, she saids" correctly, Dawkins follows S.J. Gould's advice not to engage in public discussions/debates about religion with religious people because deigning to do so simply legitimizes religion), but the discussion centered around Dawkins' new book The God Delusion. So unlike my last entry, this "God Question" really is about whether or not God exists and what He's like. Both sides had good things to say, and in the end I guess what was most strongly reinforced to me was the neccesity of falling back on Jesus as the foundation of our faith. What many atheists or agnostics seem to think these days is that among Christians faith is not something that goes above and beyond reason but that it contradicts reason. I think this probably has roots in 19th century American Christianity, but since I know virtually nothing about that, I will say nothing more about it. The point is that this is how faith is viewed today. And I think that the Church as a whole is responding - responding well, too - to this perception by talking more about how faith actually leans on reason an awful lot. We believe certain things about God - why? Because X, Y, and Z - we have reasons. I think the ultimate reason is the historicity of the ministry, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. If those things actually happened, then everything else begins to fall into place. If those things did not happen, then like Paul, we have to say that Christians are the sorriest of people, and we should eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

All in all, a very good discussion last night.

Answering "The God Question"

In this case, The God Question has nothing to do with whether or not God exists or what He's like. It's a question that has been posed by my boss and others in the scientific world, and goes something like this: Suppose you are wondering what the answer is to some question. Now suppose that God comes down and tells you the answer so that you don't have to spend any time or money figuring it out. Now you've got the answer. So what?

That "So what?" is The God Question. And I've been trying to come up with an answer to that question with regard to the study of certain populations of cells in the vocal folds. As I wrote in my last entry, the interaction between epithelial and mesenchymal cells in the regulation of fibrosis seems to do the trick! But of course now I need to get much more detailed so that I know exactly why such and such an experiment moves us toward answering those questions about how things work. I think I will begin by looking into the literature on how mechanical environment affects fibroblasts. For instance, it would be good to know how vocal fold fibroblasts change in stiffness when their substrate changes stiffness, or how they change in stiffness when they are vibrated at high frequencies. It would also be good to know how fibroblast stiffness relates to the secretion of certain pro- and anti-apoptotic signaling molecules (are these cytokines?) into the ECM. Perhaps there is a feedback mechanism in vocal fold fibrosis in which increased ECM tension causes increased fibroblast stiffness, which causes increased anti-apoptotic signaling and ECM deposition, which causes increased ECM tension, which ... ???

Woohoo!! I'm becoming a biologist! (sort of)

A Place to Hang My Hat (both literal and figurative)

I finally have a place to hang my hat! Well, actually we've had this coat/hat stand in the corner of my office for a couple of weeks now, and it's been so nice to have it! I can hang my coat up and my hat & scarf, instead of always putting the coat and scarf on the back of my chair and my hat on my desk or bookshelf. I still put my backpack on the bookshelf, but...


And I think I have finally found a place to hang my hat - figuratively speaking - with regard to my research as a post-doc. I've been struggling for a long time to find/define a project that made sense to me, where I could see what the big picture was, and where I could see some semblance of a connection to speech production. And the hat-rack/theme is: Fibrosis! I'm reading a bunch of papers on pulmonary fibrosis, and it's fascinating stuff. The reason this is particularly fascinating is because I've figured out that I can relate pulmonary fibrosis to vocal fold scarring/fibrosis. Pulmonary fibrosis has been studied a lot, but vocal fold fibrosis mechanisms at the cellular and molecular level have hardly been touched! So there's plenty of work to be done. But there's just enough known that I can read the pulmonary literature and be thinking of specific questions to ask about vocal folds - do they fibrose in similar ways to the lung? Are there similar mechanisms involved? So I can define a large set of experiments to study the mechanisms of vocal fold fibrosis, which is nice because it relates in some very clear ways to speech production - but in doing so I will also be able to relate vocal fold fibrosis to pulmonary fibrosis, which will keep me grounded in the world of respiratory physiology. This is very nice since I am in a respiratory physiology group, and I've been trying to come up with some way to relate my interest in vocal folds to the lung. Another nice thing about this project is that it involves a lot of molecular biology, and the biophysics have not really been touched upon, even in pulmonary fibrosis. So there is definitely room to relate fibrosis to biophysics. Furthermore, studying the biophysical properties of vocal fold epithelial cells and their contribution to vocal fold fibrosis will be useful for pulmonary fibrosis since it is difficult to study the biophysics of alveolar epithelial cells because they are ciliated (I think - maybe that's just bronchial/tracheal epithelial cells?).

Some example questions: Is there evidence of pro-apoptotic signaling in the epithelium of fibrotic vocal folds? Does the stiffness of the ECM affect the migratory and mitotic capabilities of epithelial cells? Do epithelial cells in fibrotic vocal folds have different stiffnesses than in normal vocal folds, and do these different stiffnesses translate to different stresses propagated through the ECM to the fibroblasts and myofibroblasts? How do different stresses on fibroblasts and myofibroblasts affect their function, the laying down of ECM, and the signals they send back to the epithelial cells wrt mitosis, migration, and other functions?

On the side, I have these questions: How do the mechanical properties of the ECM affect the generation of the mucosal wave? Is the stiffness and elasticity of the elastin and collagen in the longitudinal direction really relevant to this, or could it be the density of ECM fibers along the superficial-deep tissue axis, or the stiffness and elasticity of the anchor proteins that bind the epithelium to the ECM or other proteins running along the same (superficial-deep) axis?