Biohistory journal, Autumn, 2006

Biohistory journal, Autumn, 2006: Index > The combination of scholarship and daily life

50th roundtable discussion On the future of the Biohistory Journal The combination of scholarship and daily life

Motoya Katsuki, Toru Nishigaki, and Keiko Nakamura

Considering the next step while keeping our attention on nature and civilization Nakamura:   On the occasion of our 50th issue, I would like the two of you, who understand the Biohistory Journal so well, to consider two issues about our future: first, the magazine as scholarship, and second, our involvement with society. These are also starting points for considering nature and civilization. I have the sense that the next interesting concept will emerge from embryology and information studies. Katsuki:   That people are alive is due to two huge information devices. One of them is the immutable genome. The other, which can be changed, is the information in the brain. The awareness of deciphering the original conditions of constraint for life written on the genome is important. Hastily moving to control that information without deciphering it… Nishigaki:   The upper limit for the optimum size of a group of people is a biological condition of constraint. That would be an interesting starting point for thinking about societal conditions of constraint. Groups of hunter-gatherers, settlements of people in the first stages of agriculture and herding, and today, a military squadron, are about that size. Communities of the imagination, such as the state, first become possible with the appearance of media, such as newspapers and radio.

Machines of convenience, machines of continuity Katsuki:   For some time, there has been a question that is difficult to answer properly: To what extent are living creatures machines? Observing the activities of animals leads to the inexorable idea that they are multi-purpose machines adroitly combining a multitude of programs. How is the consciousness of living creatures incorporated in these machines? Nishigaki:   In contrast to allopoietic machines built by other people, such as timepieces and automobiles, people and other organisms have an autopoietic existence that is self-created. A clear distinction should be made between the two. The objective of basic information studies is to study the layered autopoietic system that is the basis of organisms in civilized society. Nakamura:   In contrast to the objective of convenience for the machines that support contemporary society, the essence of living creatures is continuity. That’s because during a 3.8 billion-year period, there has been no change in the mechanism that is the basis of the genome, and it has continued without even one interruption. There is a link with autopoiesis, isn’t there?

Biological desire and social desire Katsuki:   The conditions of constraint that I’m talking about are programs whose core is the genome, which all organisms have. Living creatures do not have a single, absolute course programmed into them. Rather, it is thought their course has different aspects, these courses are relative, and there are multiple choices prepared through the process of evolution. Nakamura:   Human beings have destroyed the ecosystem. For them, wouldn’t the overlapping of a few relative choices have serious consequences? Nishigaki:   Desire is originally analog. It is sufficient for humans to be somewhat satisfied. However, the discovery of writing, an external system of symbols, upset the equilibrium. Writing is digital, in that it can be expressed numerically. It is frightening that digitizing desire erases the limits. Nakamura:   Digital is the key. I’ve thought that our first big step, apart from the genome information, was in having language. Perhaps the externalization of written information was the launch of contemporary civilization.

Scholarship in which thinking is performed with a self-referential independence Nishigaki:   I think it’s possible to have a new social organization and work style that applies the autopoietic way of thinking. That would be a system constructed self-referentially with the mediation of information. It would continuously apprehend human beings as moving from life to society. Nakamura:   Scholarship is not possible unless specialists can observe themselves from a perspective outside their own field, not from within it. Fostering people of that sort is one of the things the Biohistory Journal thinks is important. Researchers are autopoietic by nature. Katsuki:   Molecular biologists deal with many problems involving biological mechanisms, and their specialty is solving problems. With autopoietic research, it is difficult to first find the problem. Nakamura:   Now is the time for discovering and thinking about the problems, isn’t it? Those are the sort of people we want.

Not scientific communication, but daily life Nishigaki:   The people who conduct research without a grounding in daily life will never think of anything new. Nakamura:   That’s right. Today, scientific communication is the rage, but it’s just conveying information. It doesn’t verify scholarship itself. The JT Biohistory Research Hall does not merely communicate; we think. Accomplishing that objective means we act believing our daily lives and scholarship must be part of the same whole. Katsuki:   That’s exactly what thinking is all about. Nowadays, everyone is just talking to themselves, and it’s really just annoying sometimes.

A society of organisms has come into view Katsuki:   Metagenomics is an interesting subject now. Nakamura:    That’s thinking about symbiosis from the perspective of the genome. Even if the vast numbers of microorganisms that create the ecosystem in the water and soil do not multiply, we know the genome, and so can get a picture of the whole. Nishigaki:   It’s a world of interconnectedness. From that, we should be able to see what living is about, which is the essence. The world of organisms is very interesting when viewed from the perspective of interconnectedness, from microorganisms to people. From this point, I’d like to think deeply about me--in other words, the existence of myself. Katsuki:   We’ve clearly seen that species cannot live unless there is another large society—the eco-system of the interrelationship of genomes. But I have the impression that the Biohistory Journal knew about this from the beginning, too. Maybe the Biohistory Journal should stay just as it is.

After the dialogue / Toru Nishigaki   Many people just willfully assume that they don’t have a connection to life sciences, saying that they’re poor at experiments, or that their academic discipline is the arts. When I was in junior high school and high school, I liked to study the sciences, but I was poor at biology. For me now, however, my knowledge about life is the most important of all as the basis for information studies.   When I consider again that the different concepts appearing in Ms. Nakamura’s book, “Self-Creating Life”, take information as their starting point, there are a countless number of places in which it overlaps with my book, “Basic Information Studies”. I don’t know whether the words philosophy or thought are proper here, but my basic foundation is that we should reappraise the world in which humans operate based on a self-awareness of the phenomenon of life that sometimes appears in the evolutionary process. This roundtable discussion allowed me to get a real sense once again that the other participants share my ideas. I’d like to create a foundation for living from the Biohistory Journal and Basic Information Studies. Toru Nishigaki Professor, University of Tokyo Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies   Nishigaki was born in Tokyo in 1948, and graduated from the University of Tokyo with a degree in engineering. After working in R&D for computer software at Hitachi, he served as a professor at Meiji University before being named to his present position. His fields of concentration are information engineering and the theory of the information society. He has written many books, including Digital Narcissus and Basic Information Studies. He is also a novelist, and his works include The Maria in 1492 and An American Primer.

After the dialogue / Motoya Katsuki   I said this several times during the dialogue, but living creatures are in a certain sense free, as long as they live based on the genome’s conditions of constraint. Biologists do nothing more than expend a great deal of effort to objectively confirm what living creatures do unconsciously. Because human beings are also living creatures that know their own conditions of constraint, this is connected to the wisdom to direct oneself away from an original instinct of moving like a machine. That might well be the most important aspect of human dignity. But we’re neglecting that today. Biology conducts research with that awareness, and is committed to social values. The JT Biohistory Research Hall does not preach that sermon; rather, its idea is to transmit that information in an enjoyable way as entertainment. I look forward to their continued activities in the future. Motoya Katsuki Director of the National Institute for Basic Biology   Born in 1943 in Fukuoka Prefecture, Katsuki received a master’s degree in science from the University of Tokyo. He withdrew from the Faculty of Sciences at Kyushu University after receiving the credits for a doctor’s degree. After serving as a professor at the Center for Experimental Medicine at The Institute of Medical Science in the University of Tokyo, he was named to his present position in 2001. His fields of specialty are molecular biology and developmental engineering. He has contributed to the establishment of developmental engineering in Japan through such accomplishments as setting up research systems for silkworms and mice.

Dialogue

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