1: FOREST TELEVISION
1. According to La Barre (1976), an anthropologist known for his
studies of the indigenous uses of the peyote cactus, Castaneda's
first book "is pseudo-profound, sophomoric and deeply vulgar. To one
reader at least, for decades interested in Amerindian hallucinogens,
the book is frustratingly and tiresomely dull, posturing
pseudo-ethnography and, intellectually, kitsch" (p. 42). De Mille
(1980) calls Castaneda's work a "hoax" and a "farce" (pp. 11,22).
2. The projects were carried out despite an independent evaluation
done in 1981 for the United States Agency for International
Development, which showed that all the "uninhabited" areas the
Peruvian government proposed to develop and colonize were actually
occupied by indigenous people who had been there for millennia and
who, in some cases, had already reached their territory's carrying
capacity - see Smith (1982, pp. 39-57).
3. A large majority of Ashaninca men living in the Pichis Valley in
1985 spoke fluent Spanish.
4. Toé is Brugmansia suaveolens. According to Schultes and Hofmann
(1979, pp.128-129), Brugmansia and Datura were long considered to
belong to the same genus, but were finally separated for
morphological and biological reasons. However, their alkaloid
content is similar.
2: ANTHROPOLOGISTS AND SHAMANS
1 In this paragraph, I simplify the possible ingredients of
ayahuasca. Building on the work of Rivier and Lindgren (1972),
McKenna, Towers, and Abbott (1984) show that the Psychotria viridis
bush
(chacntna in Spanish) is almost invariably the source of the
dimethyltryptamine contained in the ayahuasca brew prepared in the
Peruvian Amazon, while in Colombia the Diplopterys cabrorana vine is
used instead. The only constant in the different ayahuasca recipes
is the Banisteriopsis caapi vine, containing three monoamine oxidase
inhibitors, harmine. harmaline, and tetrahydro-harmine, which are
also hallucinogenic at sufficient dose levels. As Luna (1986) points
out, the basic mixture is often used to reveal the properties of all
sorts of other plants; thus, "the number of additives is unlimited,
simply because ayahuasca is a means of exploring properties of new
plants and substances by studying the changes they cause on the
hallucinatory experience, and by examining the content of the
visions" (p. 159). According to McKenna, Luna, and Towers (1986),
ayahuasca admixtures constitute a veritable "non-investigated
pharmacopoeia." It should also be noted that the lianis-teriopsis
caapi vine is commonly known as "ayahuasca," not to be confused with
the brew of the same name of which it is a component. See Schultes
and Hofmann (1979) for further information on these different
plants. Concerning the endogenous production of dimethyltryptamine
in the human brain, see Smythies et al. (1979) and Barker et al.
(1981) - though Rivier (1996 personal communication) warns that current
extraction procedures can lead to chemical transformation and that
the presence of dimethyltryptamine in extracted cerebrospinal liquid
does not prove its endogenous existence; it could simply be the
result of the transformation of endogenous tryptamines, such as
5-hydroxytryptamine (serotonin). According to the archeological
evidence gathered by Naranjo (1986), Amazonian peoples have been
using ayahuasca for at least five thousand years. The quote in the
text is from Schultes (1972, pp. 38-39). Finally, Levi-Strauss
(1950) writes: "Few primitive people have acquired as complete a
knowledge of the physical and chemical properties of their botanical
environment as the South American Indian" (p. 484).
2.
The use of hallucinogens is by no means uniform across the immensity
of the Amazonian Basin. Out of approximately 400 indigenous peoples,
Luna (1986) lists 72 who use ayahuasca and who arc concentrated in
Western Amazonia. In other parts of the Amazon,
dimethyltryptamine-based hallucinogens are also used, but are
extracted from different plants, such as Virola - which is snuffed in
powder form (see Schultes and Hofmann 1979, pp. 164-171). Some
peoples use only tobacco, the hallucinogenic properties of which
have been documented by Wilbert (1987). Finally, in some Amazonian
cultures, shamans work with dreams rather than hallucinations (see
Perrin 1992b, Kracke 1992, and Wright 1992). See Schultes and
Raffauf (1990, p. 9) for the estimate of 80,000 plant species in the
Amazon.
3. Reichel-Dolmatoff (1971, 1975, 1978), Chaumeil (1982, 1983),
Chevalier (1982), Luna (1984,1986), and Gebhart-Sayer (1986) are
exceptions.
4. Darwin (1871, p. 197).
5. The word "primitive" comes from the Latin primitivus, first born.
Regarding the foundation of anthropology on an illusory object of
study, see Kuper(1988).
6. Tylor (1866, p. 86). The word "savage" comes from the Latin
silvati-cus, "of the forest."
7. Malinowski (1922) writes with satisfaction; "Ethnology has
introduced law and order into what seemed chaotic and freakish. It
has transformed for us the sensational, wild and unaccountable world
of 'savages' into a number of well ordered communities, governed by
law, behaving and thinking according to consistent principles" (pp.
9-10).
8. LeVi-Strauss (1963a), explaining the notion of "order of orders,"
writes: "Thus anthropology considers the whole social fabric as a
network of different types of orders. The kinship system provides a
way to order individuals according to certain rules; social
organization is another way of ordering individuals and groups;
social stratifications, whether economic or political, provide us
with a third type; and all these orders can themselves be ordered by
showing the kind of relationships which exist among them, how they
interact with one another on both the synchronic and the diachronic
levels" (p. 312). Trinh (1989) writes: "Science is Truth, and what
anthropology seeks first and foremost through its noble defense of
the natives cause (whose cause? you may ask) is its own elevation to
the rank of Science" (p. 57).
9. Anthropological discourse is not understandable by those who are
its object, but anthropologists have generally not considered this a
problem. As Malinowski (1922) writes: "Unfortunately, the native can
neither get outside his tribal atmospheres and see it objectively,
nor if he could, would he have intellectual and linguistic means
sufficient to express it" (p. 454). Likewise, Descola (1996) writes:
"The underlying logic detected by scholarly analysis seldom rises
into the conscious minds of the members of the culture that he is
studying. They are no more capable of formulating it than a young
child is capable of setting out the grammatical rules of a language
that he has, notwithstanding, mastered" (p. 144).
10. LeVi-Strauss (1949a pp. 154-155).
11. Rosaldo (1989 p. 180). Bourdieu (1990) writes: "Undue projection
of the subject onto the object is never more evident than in the
case of the primitivist participation of the bewitched or mystic
anthropologist, which, like populist immersion, also plays on the
objective distance from the object to play the game as a game while
waiting to leave it in order to tell it. This means that participant
observation is, as it were, a contradiction in terms (as anyone who
has tried to do it will have confirmed in practice)" (p. 34). The
published translation of Bourdieu's paragraph is imprecise, and I
have rectified it here; see the French original, Bourdieu (1980 p.
57) in comparison.
12. Bourdieu (1977) was the first to explain the pernicious effects
of the objectivist gaze and the immobilization of time it implies.
See also Bourdieu (1990 p. 26) on the limits of objectivism.
LeVi-Strauss (1963a, p. 378) writes that "the anthropologist is the
astronomer of die social sciences."
13. Tsing (1993) talks of "disciplinary conventions that link
domination and description" (p. 32). See also Lewis (1973) and Said
(1978). Foucault (1961) first pointed out the will to power inherent
in the clinical gaze of the social sciences. For the "unbiased and
supra-cultural language of the observer," see Bourguignon (1970, p.
185).
14. LeVi-Strauss (1991a, p. 2).
15. The word "shaman" comes from the Tungusic word soman,
the original etymology of which may be foreign. Different
authors have proposed a Chinese origin (sha-men = witch), a
Sanskrit origin (sramana - buddhist monk), and a Turkish origin (kam)
- see Eliade
(1964, pp. 495-499). Lot-Falck (1963, p. 9) gives an indigenous
etymology which she presents as "universally recognized nowadays":
the Tungusic root sam-, which signifies the idea of body movement.
She concludes: "All die observers of shamanism have therefore been
justifiably struck by this gestural activity which gives its name to
shamanism" (p. 18). However, Lot-Falck goes on to write ten years
later: "The term 'shaman' was borrowed from die Tungusic saman. the
etymology and origin of which are still doubtful" (1973. p. 3).
Meanwhile Di6szegi (1974, p. 638) proposes the Tungusic
verb "sa-" (= to know) as the origin of the word sarnan, which would
therefore mean "the one who knows." Surprisingly, several authors
base themselves on Lot-Falck's first text to claim that the word
saman is etymologically linked to the idea of movement - see, for
example, Hamayon (1978, p. 55), Rouget (1980, p. 187), and
Chaumeil(1983, p. 10).
16. For summaries and bibliographies concerning the anthropology of
shamanism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries see
Eliade (1964, pp. 23-32), Lewis (1971, pp. 178-184), Delaby (1976),
and Mitriani (1982).
17. Devereux (1956, pp. 28-29).
18. Levi-Strauss (1949b), published in Levi-Strauss (1963a, pp.
197-199).
19. Lewis (1971): 'The shaman is not the slave, but the master of
anomaly and chaos. In rising to the challenge of the powers which
rule his life and by valiantly overcoming them in this crucial
initiatory rite which reimposes order on chaos and despair, man
reasserts his mastery of the universe and affirms his control of
destiny and fate" (pp. 188-189). Browman and Schwarz (1979):
"Anthropologists use the term 'shaman' to refer to persons
encountered in nonliterate cultures who are actively involved in
maintaining and restoring certain types of order" (p. 6). Hamayon
(1982); "On die other hand, what can distinguish the shamanic system
is that it defines itself in terms of disorder, which is to be
avoided, and not in terms of order, which is to be maintained" (p.
30). Hoppal (1987): "Shamans as mediators create order and
reestablish balance within their groups such that their role is
socially embedded in their cultures" (p. 93).
20. In his 1967 article entitled "Shamans and acute schizophrenia,''
Silverman writes that shamans and schizophrenics both exhibit
"grossly non-reality-oriented ideation, abnormal perceptual
experiences, profound emotional upheavals, and bizarre mannerisms"
(p. 22). Since then, the view that shamans are mentally ill has
withered, but has not entirely disappeared. Lot-Falck (1973) writes
that "one can hardly contest that shamans are abnormal beings" (p.
4); Hultkrantz (1978) writes: "Our conclusion is, then, that the
shaman has a hysteroid disposition which, however, does not provoke
any mental disorder" (p. 26); Perrin (1992a) writes: "In other
words, the first shamans would have been 'real hysterics' before the
system they created became entirely accepted as a logical and formal
representation, made up of elements of hysterical nature, but which
are
now semi-independent of their psychological origin" (p. 122).
Finally. Noll (1983) provides a demonstration of the fundamental
differences between shamanism and schizophrenia.
21. Browman and Schwarz (1979, p. 7). See Halifax (1979, pp. 3-4)
for a similar jack-of-all-trades definition of the shaman.
22. Taussig (1987) writes: "But what would happen if instead of this
we allow the old meaning to remain in the disorder, first of the
ritual, and second of the history of the wider society of which it
is part? My experience with Putumayo shamans suggests that this is
what they do, and that the magical power of an image like the
Huitoto lies in its insistently questioning and undermining the
search for order" (p. 390). Brown (1988), in discussing the
"anti-structural world of the Aguaruna shaman," considers the
latters work to involve "struggle, uncertainty, ambivalence and
partial revelation." According to Brown, the function of the
shaman's revelations is to "shift disorder from the human body to
the body politic" (pp. 115,103,102).
23. See Eliade (1964), p. 5 ("specializes in a trance"), pp. 96-97
("secret language"), pp. 126ff. and 487ff. (vines, ropes, ladders),
and p. 9 ("spirits from the sky").
24. See Hamayon (1990. pp. 31-32 - latent mysticism), Delaby and
Hamayon quoted in Chaumeil (1983, p. 16 - detaching symbols from their
context), Hamayon (1978, p. 55 - Eliade's mysticism mutilates and
distorts the facts, obliterating the sociocultural aspect of the
shamanic institution and practice), and Chaumeil (1983, p. 17 the
mystical dead end into which Eliade locks the phenomenon). All these
references are cited by Chaumeil (1983, pp. 16-19). Taussig (1992,
p. 159) calls Eliade's work "a potentially fascistic portrayal of
third world healing."
25. Ceertz (1966, p. 39). Furthermore. Taussig (1989, quoted in
Atkinson 1992, p. 307) writes that "shamanism is ... a made-up,
modern, Western category, an artful reification of disparate
practices, snatches of folklore and overarching folklorizations,
residues of long-established myths intermingled with the politics of
academic departments, curricula, conferences, journal juries and
articles, (and] funding agencies." The first anthropologist to
criticize the concept of shamanism was Van Gennep, who protested, in
1903, against the use of an obscure Siberian word to describe the
beliefs and customs "of the semi-civilized the world over" (p. 52).
26. See Levi-Strauss (1963b).
27. Luna (1986, pp. 62. 66).
3: THE MOTHER OF THE MOTHER OF TOBACCO IS A SNAKE
1. See Swenson and Narby (1985, 1986). Narby (1986), Beauclerk,
Narby, and Townsend (1988), and Narby (1989).
2. Until recently, and for unknown reasons, Spanish speakers have
called the Ashaninca "Campas." The etymology of this word is
doubtful. As Weiss (1969) writes: "The term 'Campa' is not a word in
the Campa language" (p. 44). According to him, the word probably
comes from the Quechua "tampa" ("in disorder, confused") or "ttampa"
("disheveled") (p. 61). However, there is no agreement among
specialists on the word's exact etymology - see Varese (1973, pp.
139-144). Renard-Casevitz (1993) justifies her use of the word
"campa" as follows: "The term campa is not
appreciated as an ethnonym, though it does present a certain convenience 1 use
campa for want of a term with a comparable reach to designate the
totality of the Arawak subsets who share a notable cultural trait:
the prohibition of internal war, among all except the Piro" (pp. 29,
31). In the 1980s, one of the first demands put forth by the
different Ashaninca organizations was that people stop designating
them by a name that they do not use in their own language.
3. See Weiss (1969, pp. 93, 96, 97-100, 201).
4. See Weiss (1969, pp. 107-109,199-226). The quote is on page 222.
5. Weiss (1969, p. 200).
6. For a more detailed account of this experience, see Narby (1990.
pp. 24-27).
4: ENIGMA IN RIO
1. Eight indigenous land-titling projects were carried out
successfully, covering a total of 2,303,617 hectares (23,000 km2 or
5.692,237 acres). Details concerning these projects can be obtained
from "Nouvelle Planete," CH-1042 Assens, Switzerland.
2. The Rio Declaration states: "Indigenous people and their
communities ... have a vital role in environmental management and
development because of their knowledge and traditional practices.
States should recognize and duly support their effective
participation in the achievement of sustainable development"
(Principle 22). The Agenda 21 underlines the importance of the
territorial rights of indigenous peoples and of their
self-determination in matters of development (Chapter 26). The
Statement of Forest Principles points
out the importance of respecting the rights and interests of
indigenous peoples and of consulting them on forestry policies
(Points 2d, 5a, 13d). The Convention on Biological Diversity
considers the importance of the knowledge and practices of
indigenous peoples and calls for their equitable remuneration
(Points 8j, 10c, lOd). The Rio conference was a spectacular turning
point for indigenous rights. Just five years beforehand, the
question of these rights remained largely ignored by most
international organizations concerned with development or
environmental matters.
3. For example. The Body Shop and Shaman Pharmaceuticals, whose
vice-president declared: "Shaman [Pharmaceuticals] is committed to
providing direct and immediate reciprocal benefits to indigenous
people and the countries in which they live" (King 1991, p. 21).
4. These figures come from, respectively, Farnsworth (1988, p. 95),
Eisner (1990, p. 198), and Elisabetsky (1991, p. 11).
5. Estimates of the number of "higher" (that is, flowering) plant
species vary from 250,000 to 750,000. Wilson (1990) writes: "How
much biodiversity is there in the world? The answer is remarkable:
No one knows the number of species even to the nearest order of
magnitude. Aided by monographs, encyclopedias, and the generous help
of specialists, I recently estimated the total number of described
species (those given a scientific name) to be 1.4 million, a figure
perhaps accurate to within the nearest 100,000. But most biologists
agree that the actual number is at least 3 million and could easily
be 30 million or more. In a majority of particular groups the actual
amount of diversity is still a matter of guesswork" (p. 4).
6. The Convention on Biological Diversity mentions the importance of
"equitable" remuneration for indigenous knowledge, but fails to
provide a mechanism to this effect. According to the Kari-Oca
Declaration signed by the delegates of the World Conference of
Indigenous Peoples on Territory, Environment and Development (May
1992): "The usurping of traditional medicines and knowledge from
indigenous peoples should be considered a crime against peoples"
(Point 99). Furthermore: "As creators and carriers of civilizations
which have given and continue to share knowledge, experience and
values with humanity, we require that our right to intellectual and
cultural properties be guaranteed and that the mechanism for each
implementation be in favor of our peoples and studied in depth and
implemented. This respect must include the right over genetic resources, gene banks, biotechnology and knowledge of biodiversity
programs" (Point 102). See also Christensen and Narby (1992).
7. Tubocurarine is the best-known active ingredient of Amazonian
curare preparations, but, as Mann (1992) points out, C-toxiferine is
twenty-five times more potent. However, "both drugs have been
largely superseded by other wholly synthetic neuromuscular blocking
agents, such as pancuronium and atracurium. Like tubocurarine these
have a rigid molecular structure with two positively charged
nitrogen atoms held in a similar spatial arrangement to that found
in tubocurarine. This allows them to bind to the same acetycholine
receptor and thus mimic the biological activity of tubocurarine.
because the distance between the two canonic centres (N* to N'
distance) is approximately the same" (pp. 21-23). Concerning the
initial use of curare in medicine, see Blubaugh and IJnegar (1948).
8. See Schultes and Raffauf (1990. pp. 265ff. and 305ff.) for a
relatively exhaustive list of the different plant species used
across the Amazon Basin for the production of curare. As Bisset
(1989) points out, the chemical activity of Amazonian curares is
still poorly understood. Most of these muscle-paraly/ing substances
contain plants of the Strychnos or Chondodendron genus, or a
combination of both, to which a certain number of admixtures are
added, according to the recipes. The exact role of these admixtures
is obscure, even though they seem to contribute to the potentiation
of the main ingredients. Moreover, Manuel O5rdova (in I -mil) 1985)
provides a first-person account of the production of curare destined
for medical use, in which he repeatedly mentions the importance of
avoiding "the pleasantly fragrant vapors" (p. 48) - giving the example
of a German zoologist who died for lack of care (pp. 97-98).
First-person accounts of curare production are rare, as curare
recipes are often jealously guarded secrets.
9. See Reichel-Dolmatoff(197l, pp. 24,37).
10. For examples of texts that illustrate the value of the botanical
knowledge of Amazonian peoples with multiple references to curare,
Pilocarpus jaborandi, and tikiuba, see the special issue of Cultural
Survival Quarterly (Vol. 15. No. 3) devoted to the question of
intellectual property rights of indigenous peoples, and in
particular the articles by Elisabetsky (1991). Kloppenberg (1991)
and King (1991). On the more general question of these rights, see
Pose)' (1990. 1991). See Rouhi (1997) for references to Couroupita
guienensis and Aristolochia. For recent work on the unidentified
plants of the indigenous pharmacopoeia, see Balick, Elisabetsky, and
Laird (1996), in particular the article by Wilbert (1996). as well
as Schultes and von Reis (1995).
11. See Luna (1986, p. 57).
12. Schultes and Raffauf (1992, p. 58). Davis (1996) writes: " ..
Richard Evans Schultes, the greatest ethnobotanist of all, a man
whose expeditions. .. placed him in the pantheon along with Charles
Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, Henry Bates, and his own hero, the
indefatigable English botanist and explorer Richard Spruce" (p. 11).
Davis's book is a treat, beautifully written and well researched.
13. Slade and Bentall (1988) write: "Indeed, taking the ordinary
language words 'real* and 'imaginary' to describe public and private
events respectively, it is true by definition that the act of
hallucination involves mistaking the 'imaginary' for the 'real'" (p.
205). Hare (1973) writes: "Let us instead define a hallucination as
a subjective sensory experience which is of morbid origin and
interpreted in a morbid way" (p. 474). Webster's Third New
International Dictionary defines hallucination as follows:
"perception of objects with no reality; experience of sensations
with no external cause usually arising from disorder of the nervous
system;... a completely unfounded or mistaken impression or notion;
Delusion."
14. According to Renck (1989), who reviewed the scientific
literature on the matter, and who bases himself on Tavolga's work,
there are six levels of communication: vegetative (the color of the
flower, the texture of the fur), tonic (the smell of the flower, the
heat of the body), phasic (the chameleon changes skin color, the dog
pricks up its ears), descriptive (the dog growls), symbolic (some
monkeys can communicate with abstract signs), and linguistic ("The
only known example is the language articulated by man," p. 4).
5: DEFOCALIZING
1. The Young Gods, and Steve Reich.
2. See Crick (1994, pp. 24.159) on the visual system, and more
broadly Penrose (1994) and Horgan (1994) on the current limits of
knowledge about consciousness.
3. Among the exceptions, Hofmann (1983, pp. 28-29) writes: "As yet
we do not know the biochemical mechanisms through which LSD
exerts its psychic effects"; Grinspoon and Bakalar (1979, p. 240)
write on the main effects of hallucinogens: "The only reasonably
sure conclusion we can draw is that their psychedelic effects are in
some way related to the neurotransmitter 5-hydroxytryptamine, also
called serotonin. Not much more than that is known"; and Iversen and
Iversen (1981) write: "We remain remarkably ignorant of the
scientific basis for the action of any of these drugs." See the
bibliographies in Hoffer and Osmond (1967) and in Slade and Bentall
(1988) for an overview of the numerous studies on hallucinations and
hallucinogens during the 1950s and 1960s.
4. Schultes and Hofmann (1979, p. 173).
5. Psilocybin, which is found in over a hundred mushroom species, is
a close variant of dimethyltryptamine, as Schultes and Hofmann
(1980) write: "Degradation studies showed psilocybin to be a
4-phosphoryloxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine. Hydrolysis of psilocybin
gives equi-molecular amounts of phosphoric acid and psilocin, which
is 4-hydroxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine" (p. 74). LSD is 100 times more
active than dimethyltryptamine. See Hofmann (1983, p. 115) for the
comparison between LSD and psilocybin, and Strass-man et al. (1994)
for an estimate of the basic dose of dimethyltryptamine.
6. Grinspoon and Bakalar (1979) write: "Used to describe the
estheticized perception or fascination effect, enhanced sense of
meaningfulness in familiar objects, vivid closed-eye imagery,
visions in subjective space, or visual and kinesthetic distortions
induced by drugs like LSD, 'hallucination' is far too crude. If
hallucinations are defined by failure to test reality rather than
merely as bizarre and vivid sense impressions, these drugs are
rarely hallucinogenic" (pp. 6-7). However, these authors consider
that the term "pseudo-hallucinogenic" is awkward, even if it
describes precisely the effects of substances such as LSD and MDMA
("Ecstasy"). Slade (1976) writes: "The experience of true
hallucination under mescalin and LSD-25 intoxication is probably
fairly infrequent" (p. 9). For a discussion of the concept of
"pseudo-hallucination," see Kraupl Taylor (1981). Regarding the
evolution of the relationship between science and hallucinogens, see
Lee and Shlain (1985). Finally it should be noted that the synthetic
compound known as "Ecstasy" differs from the other substances
mentioned here in that it appears to be neurotoxic and to destroy
the brains serotonin-producing cells (see McKenna and Peroutka
1990).
7. Besides the 72 ayahuasca-using peoples of Western Amazonia, there
are those who sniff dimethyltryptainine-containing powders of
vegetal origin, or who lick diniethyltryptamine-containing pastes.
These pastes and powders are made from different plants (Virola,
Anadenan-thera, Iryanthera, etc.) depending on the region. Sniffing
dimethyltryptamine powders also seems to have been a custom among
the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, until they were physically
eliminated during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
8. As I noted in Chapter 2, the exact chemical composition of
ayahuasca remains a mystery. It should be pointed out that, contrary
to die recent scientific studies which indicate that
dimethyltryptamine is die brew's main active ingredient,
ayahuasqueros consider that Banisteriopsis caapi (containing the
beta-carbolines) is the main ingredient, and that Psychotria viridis
(containing the dimethyltryptamine) is only the additive - see Mabit
(1988) and Mabit et al. (1992). Regarding scientific research on the
effects of dimemyltryptaniine. the studies by Szara (1956, 1957,
1970), Sai-Halasz et al. (1958), and Kaplan et al. (1974) all
consider this substance as a "psychotomimetic" or a "psychotogen,"
an imitator or a generator of psychosis. The study by Strassinan et
al. (1994) is the only one that I found with a neutral approach.
However, all of these studies agree on one point: Dimethyltryptamine
produces true hal lucinations. in which the visions replace normal
reality convincingly. As Strassman et al. (1994) write: "Reality
testing was affected inasmuch as subjects were often unaware of the
experimental setting, so absorbing were the phenomena" (p. 101).
Finally it is worth noting that there are several interesting
non-scientific studies, provided by people who have used this
substance, published in Stafford (1977, pp. 283-304), as well as die
writings of Terence McKenna (1991).
9. Slade and Bentall (1988) attribute the vertiginous speed of
certain visual hallucinations to "the known time-distorting effects
of hallucinogens" (p. 154) - hut I find this explanation to be
insufficient in the light of my personal experience; under the
influence of ayahuasca I saw images fly past at unimaginable speed
without feeling a chronological acceleration in any other domain of
my internal reality. Siegel and Jarvik (1975) sum up the usual
scientific theory on the internal and cerebral origin of
hallucinatory images: "The notion of hallucinations consisting of
complex memory imagery is neither a radical nor a new idea. It is
not radical because it appeals to an intuitive sense of what is
reasonable to infer When one hallucinates
something that is not there, the stimuli being perceived (i.e., the
image) must come from some source. It is not reasonable for normal
man to infer that such stimuli, when auditory, are 'voices talking
to me," 'radio waves from another planet,' or clairvoyant
communications with a deceased loved one. Nor is it always
reasonable to infer that the stimuli, when visual, are real (e.g.,
'that little green man is really there") or self-contained in a
recently administered drug (e.g., 'God is in LSD'). Rather, it is
more reasonable to infer that such phenomena originate in stored
information in the brain, that is, memories" (p. 146).
10. In the nineteenth century, botanist Richard Spruce and
geographer Manuel Villavicencio both described their personal
ayahuasca experiences - see Reichel-Dolmatoff (1975, Chapter 2) for
extracts of their reports. Currently, there is a range of positions
within anthropology concerning the investigators personal use of
hallucinogens. Taussig (1987), who uses the Colombian term \jag4 for
ayahuasca, writes: There is no 'average' yage" experience; that's
its whole point. Somewhere you have to take the bit between your
teeth and depict yogi nights in terms of your own experience" (p.
406). At the other end of the spectrum, Chaumeil (1983) writes:
"Moreover, I was never truly initiated into shamanic practices,
which certainly gave me an external vision of the phenomenon, but
which also guaranteed, on the other hand, a certain 'objectivity'"
(p. 9). Strangely, even though I feel a greater affinity for
Taussig's perspective - his book stimulated my thinking on how to
broach the subject of Amazonian hallucinogens - I found Chaumeil's
book more useful for clarifying questions of techniques and content.
This seems to indicate that it is possible to be a good film critic
without ever seeing a movie with ones own eyes, but by interviewing
film buffs with patience and method - as Chaumeil did with Yagua
shamans.
11- Harner (1968, pp. 28-29).
12. Buchillet(1982,p.261).
13. All quotes are from Harner (1980, pp. 1-10).
14. Reichel-Dolmatoff(1981,p.8l).
15. Ibid. (p. 87).
16. Ibid. (p. 78).
17. See Chaumeil (1983, pp. 148-149) for the two quotes. The
"celestial serpent" appears in the drawing entitled "Schema 1" on
the unnumbered page between pages 160 and 161.
6: SEEING CORRESPONDENCES
1. Most authors report that ayahuasca is taken in complete darkness,
which guarantees tranquility to a certain extent and enhances the
visions - see Kensinger (1973, p. 10), Weiss (1973, p. 43), Chaumeil
(1983, p. 99), Luna (1986, p. 147), and Baer (1992, p. 87).
According to Gebhart-Sayer (1986), Shipibo-Conibo shamans wait for
their neighbors' hearth fires and lamps to go out before drinking
ayahuasca "given that light damages their eyes during the visions"
(p. 193). However, Reichel-Dolmatoff (1972, p. 100) reports that the
Tukano drink ayahuasca in the light of a red torch; Luna (1986, p.
145) reports that one of his informants had occasionally
participated in sessions occurring on moonlit evenings and Whitten
(1976, p. 155) describes a session which took place "around a very
low-burning fire."
2. Regarding the presence of bananas and fish in the ayahuasqueros'
diet, see Metraux (1967, p. 84), Lamb (1971, p. 24),
Reichel-Dolmatoff (1975, p. 82), Whitten (1976, p. 147), Chaumeil
(1983, p. 101), Luna (1984, p. 145), and Descola (1996, p. 339). The
only mention I found of the connection between this diet and
neurotransmitters was in a talk by Terence McKenna (1988, Cassette
5, Side B). On the concentration of serotonin in fish and bananas,
see Hoffer and Osmond (1967, p. 503). In the short term, substances
such as dimethyltryptamine displace serotonin by bonding to its
receptors; this causes the synaptic levels of serotonin to rise and
only hinders the brain's overall production of serotonin in the long
term, after repeated use; it is precisely under these circumstances
that ayahuasqueros eat bananas and fish. According to Pierce and
Per-outka (1989): "Biochemical studies have demonstrated the
indole-alkylamines [such as dimethyltryptamine and LSD] suppress
5-HT (serotonin) metabolism and decrease levels of
5-hydroxyin-doleacetic acid and increase synaptosomal levels of
5-HT" (p.J20). Descola (1996) writes regarding the diet of
apprentice ayahuasqueros among the Achuar: "The resulting diet is
dauntingly dull, its basis being plantains (from which the pips must
be removed) and boiled palm hearts, sometimes accompanied by small
fish" (p. 339). He explains these "dietary prohibitions," or
"taboos," as follows: "However irrational they may seem, taboos may
be regarded as an effect produced by classificatory thinking.
Because they draw attention to a system of concrete properties
signified by a limited collection of natural species - properties that make the point that no
person is exactly like any other in that the flesh of these species
is proscribed for him or her personally either temporarily or
permanently - taboos testify to a desire to confer order upon the
chaos of the social and natural world, purely on the basis of the
categories of physical experience" (p. 340).
3. Suren Erkman, personal communication, 1994.
4. The quote is from Townsley (1993, pp. 452, 456). Ayahuasqueros
generally consider the mothers, or animate essences, of plants to be
the sources of their knowledge. Chaumeil (1983) writes regarding
Yagua shamanism: "Every initiation begins with the ingestion of
decoctions made from hallucinogenic plants, or plants considered as
such, which allow the novice to apprehend the invisible world and to
'see,' renuria, the essence of beings and things, and above all the
mothers of the plants who are the true holders of knowledge. The
importance of hallucinogens in the process of gaining access to
knowledge is clearly attested here; they are the main way. It is
during such sessions that the novice will contact the mothers who,
much more than the instructor shaman, will transmit the knowledge to
him" (original italics, p. 312). Regarding these mothers, Chaumeil
writes: "Everything that is animated, siskatia. 'which lives," has
an essence, hamwo, or mother on which the shaman can act. On the
contrary, all that is lacking one is ne siskatia, 'inanimate,'
'lifeless'" (p. 74). Luna (1984) writes regarding the vegetalistas
of the city of Iquitos: "All four informants insist that the spirits
of the plants taught them what they know" {p. 142). According to
Reichel-Dolmatoff (1978), the Tukano acquire their artistic
knowledge from the hallucinatory sphere. Cebhart-Sayer (1986, 1987)
reports the same thing among the Shipibo-Conibo. Regarding the
spirits, mothers, and animate essences more generally, see also
Dobkin de Rios (1973), Chevalier (1982), Baer (1992), and Illius
(1992).
5. Meiraux (1946) writes at the beginning of his article entitled
"Twin heroes in South American mythology": "A pair of brothers,
generally twins, are among the most important protagonists of South
American folklore. They appear as culture heroes, tricksters and
transformers. The Creator or Culture Hero himself is rarely a
solitary character. In many cases he has a partner who is often a
powerful rival, but who may be a shadowy and insignificant
personage.... Whenever the partner of the Culture Hero is
represented as an opponent or as a mischievous or prankish
character, the mythical pair is indistinguishable from the Twin
Heroes" (p. 114). Garza (1990) writes regarding Nahua and Maya
shamanism: "We see the governing ungual, in the plastic arts of the
classical period, emerging from the mouth of enormous serpents,
which are magnificent, in other words plumed, and which symbolize
water and the sacred vital energy" (p. 109).
6. Lévi-Strauss(1991b,p.295).
7. See Eliade (1964. pp. 129, 275, 326, 430,487-490). M6traux (1967)
writes regarding the consecration ceremony of the young shaman among
the Araucanians: "One prepares, first of all, the sacred ladder or
rewe, which is the symbol of the profession" (p. 191).
8. As I wrote in Chapter 2. anthropologists have accused Eliade of
"detaching symbols from their contexts," among other things. I must
admit that I, too. had several prejudices regarding his work. The
first time I read his book on shamanism and noted the repeated
references to ladders, 1 thought Eliade simply had a folkloric
obsession for the "ritual" objects of exotic cultures. 1 had other
reasons for considering his book not to be very useful for the
research I was conducting. Eliade considers "narcotic intoxication"
to be a "decadence in shamanic technique" (1964, p. 401). This
opinion has often been quoted over the last decades to depreciate
Amazonian shamanism and its use of plant hallucinogens (which arc
certain!) not "narcotic"). It is important to remember, however,
that Eliade originally wrote his book on shamanism in 1951, before
the scientific community became aware of the effects of
hallucinogens. According to Furst (1994, p. 23), Eliade changed his
mind toward the end of his life. The quote regarding the "Rainbow
Snake" is from Eliade (1972, p. 118). Regarding crystals, he writes:
"It is Ungud [the Rainbow Snake] who gives the medicine man his
magic powers, symbolized by the kimbas, which are quartz crystals"
(p. 87).
9. Campbell (1964, p. 11).
10. Campbell (1968, p. 154).
11. Chevalier and Gheerbrant (1982, pp. 867-868).
12. The quotes are from Campbell (1964, pp. 17, 9, 22). Campbell
writes regarding the twin beings in the Garden of Eden: 'They had
been one at first, as Adam: then split in two, as Adam and Eve"
(p-29). However, "the legend of the rib is clearly a patriarchal
inversion" (p. 30), as the male begets the female, which is the
opposite of previous myths and of biological reality. Meanwhile, the
damnation of the serpent is particularly ambiguous; Yahwch accuses
it of having
shown Eve the tree that allows one to tell the difference between
good and evil; how can one apply the Ten Commandments without an
understanding of this difference? According to Campbell, these
patriarchal inversions "address a pictorial message to the heart
that exactly reverses the verbal message addressed to the brain; and
this nervous discord inhabits both Christianity and Islam as well as
Judaism, since they too share in the legacy of the Old Testament"
(p. 17).
13. See Campbell (1964, p. 22) and Chevalier and Gheerbrant (1982,
p. 872).
14. Reichel-Dolmatoff (1975, p. 165). He adds: "Now, the phenomenon
of macroscopia. the illusion of perceiving objects much larger than
they are, is frequent in hallucinations induced by narcotic snuff'
(p. 49). This phenomenon is frequently mentioned in the hallucinogen
literature. It also calls to mind Alices Adventures in Wonderland,
when Alice becomes extremely small after eating a piece of mushroom
on which a caterpillar is smoking a hookah. Meanwhile, De-scola
(1996) writes regarding his personal experience with ayahuasca:
"Curiously enough, these unanchored visions do not obscure the still
landscape that frames them. It is rather as though I were looking at
them through the lens of a microscope operating as a window of
variable dimensions set in the middle of my usual and unchanged
field of vision" (pp. 207-208).
15. Gebhart-Sayer (1986) writes concerning the visual music
perceived by Shipibo-Conibo shamans: "This spirit [of ayahuasca]
projects luminous geometric figures in front of the shamans eyes:
visions of rhythmic undulation, of perfumed and luminous
ornamentation, or the rapid skimming over of the pages of a book
with many motifs. The motifs appear everywhere one looks: in star
formations, in a person's teeth, in the movements of his tuft of
grass. As soon as the floating network touches his lips and crown,
the shaman can emit melodies that correspond to the luminous vision.
'My song is the result of the motifs image," says the shaman to
describe the phenomenon, a direct transformation of the visual into
die acoustic. 'I am not the one creating the song. It passes through
me as if I were a radio.' The songs are heard, seen, felt and sung
simultaneously by all those involved" (p. 196). The notion that
ayahuasqueros learn their songs directly from the spirits is
generalized. According to Townsley (1993), Yaminahua shamans "are
adamant that the songs are not ultimately created or owned by them
at all, but by the yoshi themselves, who 'show' or 'give' their songs, with their attendant
powers, to those shamans good enough to 'receive* them. Thus, for
instance, in their portrayal of the process of initiation, it is the
yoshi who teach and bestow powers on the initiate; other shamans
only facilitate the process and prepare the initiate, 'clean him
out' so as to receive these spirit powers" (p. 458). Likewise,
according to Luna (1984): 'The spirits, who are sometimes called
doctorcitos (little doctors) or abuelos (grandfathers), present
themselves during the visions and during the dreams. They show how
to diagnose the illness, what plants to use and how, the proper use
of tobacco smoke, how to suck out the illness or restore the spirit
to a patient, how the shamans defend themselves, what to eat. and.
most important, they teach them icaros, magic songs or shamanic
melodies which are die main tools of shamanic practices" (p. 142).
Chaumeil (1993) talks of the extremely high-pitched sounds emitted
by the spirits who communicate with Yagua shamans, more particularly
of "strange melodies, both whistled and 'talked,' with a strong
feminine connotation" (p. 415). Regarding the learning of songs by
imitation of the spirits, see also Weiss (1973, p. 44), Chaumeil
(1983, pp. 66, 219). Baer (1992, p. 91), and Townsley (1993, p.
454). See Luna (1986, pp. 104ff.) regarding the different functions
of the songs (call the spirits, communicate with them, influence
hallucinations, cure). See also, more generally. Lamb (1971),
Siskind (1973), Dobkin de Rios and Katz (1975), Chevalier (1982),
Luna and Amaringo (1991), Luna (1992), and Hill (1992). Finally,
Bellier (1986) writes that among the Mai Huna of the Peruvian
Amazon, "it is inconceivable to take yage [ayahuasca], to penetrate
the primordial world (mina) and to remain silent" (p. 131).
16. Luna and Amaringo (1991, pp. 31, 43). Luna writes: "I asked
Pablo how he conceives and executes his paintings. He told me that
he concentrates until he sees an image in his mind - a landscape, or a
recollection of one of his journeys with ayahuasca - complete, with
all the details. He then projects this image upon the paper or
canvas. "When this is done, the only thing I do is just add the
colors." When painting his visions he often sings or whistles some
of the icaros he used during his time as vegetalista. Then the
visions come again, as clear as if he were having the experience
again. Once the image is fixed in his mind, he is able to work
simultaneously with several paintings. He knows perfectly well where
each design or color will go. In his drawings and paintings there
are no corrections - in the
five years since we met he has never thrown away one single sheet of
paper. Pablo believes that he acquired his ability to visualize so
clearly and his knowledge about colors partly from the ayahuasca
brew" (p. 29).
17. Suren Erkman, personal communication, 1994.
18. Jon Christensen, personal communication, 1994.
19. See Crick (1981, pp. 51, 52-53, 70). He also writes: "Consider a
paragraph written in English. This is made from a set of about
thirty symbols (the letters and punctuation marks, ignoring
capitals). A typical paragraph has about as many letters as a
typical protein has amino acids. Thus, a similar calculation to the
one above would show that the number of different letter-sequences
is correspondingly vast. There is, in fact, a vanishingly small hope
of even a billion monkeys, on a billion typewriters, ever typing
correctly even one sonnet of Shakespeare's during the present
lifetime of the universe" (p. 52).
7: MYTHS AND MOLECULES
1. Angelika Gerhart-Sayer, personal communication, 1995.
2. The quotes about the Ouroboros are from Chevalier and Gheer-brant
(1982, pp. 716, 868, 869), who also write that the dragon is "a
celestial symbol, the power of life and of manifestation, it spits
out the primordial waters of the Egg of the world, which makes it an
image of the creating Verb." Mundkur (1983) writes in his exhaustive
study of the serpent cult: "It is doubtful, however, that any
serpent can or has ever been known to attempt to bite or 'swallow'
its own tail" (p. 75).
3. According to Graves (1955), Typhon was "the largest monster ever
born. From the thighs downward he was nothing but coiled serpents,
and his arms which, when he spread them out, reached a hundred
leagues in either direction, had countless serpents' heads instead
of hands. His brutish ass-head touched the stars, his vast wings
darkened the sun, fire flashed from his eyes, and flaming rocks
hurtled from his mouth" (p. 134). Chuang-Tzu (1981) begins his book
with this paragraph: "In the North Ocean there is a fish, its name
is the K'un; the K'un's girth measures who knows how many thousand
miles. It changes into a bird, its name is Peng; the Peng's back
measures who knows how many thousand miles. When it puffs out its
chest and flies off, its wings are like clouds hanging from the sky.
This bird when the seas are heaving travels to the South Ocean. (The
South Ocean is the Lake of Heaven.) In the words of the Tall
stories, 'When the P'eng travels to the South Ocean, the wake it
thrashes on the water is three thousand miles long, it mounts
spiraling on the whirlwind ninety thousand miles high, and is gone
six months before it is out of breath'" {p. 43).
4.
Laureano Ancon is quoted in Gebhart-Sayer (1987, p. 25). Eliade
(1949) svrites: "A limitless number of legends and myths represent
Serpents or Dragons who control the clouds, live in ponds and
provide the world with water" (pp. 154-155). According to Mundkur
(1983): "Among the Aborigines of Australia, the most widespread of
mythic beliefs has to do with a gigantic Rainbow Serpent, a
primordial creature associated largely with beneficent powers of
fertility and water. He (sometimes she) is also the source of
magical quartz crystals known as kitnba from which the medicine man
derives his own power" (p. 58). According to Chevalier and
Gheerbrant (1982): "The Underworld and the oceans, the primordial
water and the deep earth form one single materia prima, a primordial
substance, which is that of die serpent. Spirit of the primary
water, it is the spirit of all waters, those of below, those that
run on the surface of the earth, or diose of above" (p. 869). Davis
(1986) writes about Damballah, the Great Serpent of Haitian myth:
"On earth, it brought forth Creation, winding its way through the
molten slopes to carve rivers, which like veins became the channels
through which flowed the essence of all life. In the searing heat it
forged metals, and rising again into the sky it cast lightning bolts
to the earth that gave birth to the sacred stones. Then it lay along
the path of the sun and partook of its nature. Within its layered
skin, the Serpent retained the spring of eternal life, and from the
zenith it let go to the waters that filled the rivers upon which the
people would nurse. As the water struck the earth, the Rainbow
arose, and the Serpent took her as his wife. Their love entwined
them in a cosmic helix that arched across the heavens" (p. 177).
Davis (1996) discusses the cosmological notions of Kogi Indians as
reported by Reichel-Dolmatoff: "In the beginning, they explained,
all was darkness and water. There was no land, no sun or moon, and
nothing alive. The water was the Great Mother. She was the mind
within nature, the fountain of all possibilities. She was life
becoming, emptiness, pure thought. She took many forms. As a maiden
she sat on a black stone at the bottom of the sea. As a serpent she
encircled the world. She
was the daughter of the Lord of Thunder, the Spider Woman whose web
embraced the heavens. As Mother of Ice she dwelt in a black lagoon
in the high Sierra; as Mother of Fire she dwells by every hearth. At
the first dawning, the Great Mother began to spin her thoughts. In
her serpent form she placed an egg into the void, and the egg became
the universe" (p. 43) - see also Reichel-Dolmatoff (1987). Bayard
(1987) writes regarding the serpents symbolism: "Serpents, in their
relationship with the depths of the primordial waters and of life,
intertwine and establish the knot of life, which we find in the
Osirian way in the druidic conception of the Nwyre" I (p. 74).
5. Each human cell contains approximately 6 billion base pairs (= 6
X 109, meaning 6 followed by 9 zeros). Each base pair is 3.3
angstroms long [1 angstrom = 10-10 meters (m)]. Multiplying these
two figures, one obtains 1.98 m in length, which is generally
rounded to 2 m. Moreover, the double helix is 20 angstroms wide (20
X 10-10 m). By dividing the length by the width, one obtains a
billion - see Calla-dine and Drew (1992, pp. 3, 16-17). The average
little finger is more or less 1 centimeter wide; Paris and Los
Angeles are separated by a distance of approximately 9,100
kilometers. This comparison is supposed to give a notion easy to
visualize rather than an exact equation; in fact, the DNA contained
in a human cell is 10 percent longer, relatively speaking, than a
centimeter-wide finger stretching from Paris to Los Angeles.
Moreover, in the wide spectrum of electromagnetic waves, human eyes
perceive only a very narrow band, from 7 X 10-7 m (red light) to 4 X
10-7 m (violet light). De Duve (1984) writes: "Even with a perfect
instrument, no detail smaller than about half the wavelength of the
light used can be perceived, which puts the absolute limit of
resolution of a microscope utilizing visible light to approximately
0", 25 µm" (p. 9); that is, 2,500 angstroms.
6. Wills (1989) writes that the nucleus of a cell "is about two
millionths of the volume of a pinhead" (p. 22). Frank-Kamenetskii
(1993) writes: "If we assume that the whole of DNA in a human cell
is one molecule, its length L will be about 2 in. This is a million
times more than the nucleus diameter" (p. 42). Moreover, according
to some estimates, there are 100 thousand billion, or 1014, cells in
a human body - see, for example, Sagan and the Editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1993, p. 965), Pollack (1994, p. 19), and
Schiefelbein (1986, p. 40). However, there is no consensus on this
figure.
Dawkins (1976, p. 22) uses 1015 ("a thousand million million"); Margulis and Sagan (1986, p. 67) use 1012, but in the French
translation of their book they write: "The human body is made up of
1016 (10 million billion) animal cells and 1017 (100 million
billion) bacterial cells" (1989, p. 65). The difference between 1012
and 1016 is of the order of 10,000! To calculate the total length of
the DNA in a human body, 1 chose the figure that seems to be the
most widely used, and that is halfway between the extremes. When I
write that our body contains 125 billion miles of DNA, or 200
billion kilometers, it is merely a rough estimate; the true number
could be 100 times greater, or smaller. Finally, a Boeing 747
traveling for 75 years at 1,000 k/h would travel 657 million
kilometers, which is 0.32 percent of 200 billion kilometers; the
average distance between Saturn and the Sun is 1,427,000,000
kilometers.
7. Most cells contain between 70 and 80 percent water. According to
Margulis and Sagan (1986): 'The concentrations of salts in both
sea-water and blood are, for all practical purposes, identical. The
proportions of sodium, potassium, and chloride in our tissues are
intriguingly similar to those of the worldwide ocean... we sweat
and cry what is basically seawater" (p. 183-184). Without water, a
cell cannot function; as De Duve (1984) writes: "Even the hardiest
bacteria need some moisture around them. They may survive complete
dryness, but only in a dormant state, with all their processes
arrested until they are reawakened by water" (p. 21). On the
relationship between water and the shape of the DNA double helix,
see Calladine and Drew (1992). who write: "We see right away how DNA
forms a spiral or helix on account of the low solubility in water of
the bases" (p. 21).
8. Pollack (1994. pp. 29-30).
9. Both quotes are from Margulis and Sagan (1986, pp. 115-116, 111).
On the terrestrial atmosphere before the apparition of life, see
Margulis and Sagan (1986, pp. 41-43). They also write: "Barghoorn's
Swaziland discovery of actual 3,400-m ill ion-year-old microbes
raises a startling point: the transition from inanimate matter to
bacteria took less time than the transition from bacteria to large,
familiar organisms. Life has been a companion of the Earth from
shortly after the planets inception" (p. 72). The recently
discovered traces of biological activity dating back 3.85 billion
years consist of a reduced ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12 in
sedimentary rocks in Greenland - see Mojzsis et al. (1996) and Hayes
(1996); Hayes writes: "The new finding seems to extend that record
to the very bottom of our planet's sedimentary pile, crucially
altering earlier views of these oldest sediments and leaving almost
no time between die end of the 'late heavy bombardment' of bodies
within the inner Solar System by giant meteorites and the first
appearance of life" (p. 21). Judson (1992) writes regarding
nucleated cells ("eukaryotes"): "Eukaiyotic cells are far larger
than bacteria - proportionately as a horse to a bumblebee. They have
hundreds of times more genes, and 500-fold more DNA" (p. 61).
10. Lewontin (1992) writes: "Fully 99.999 percent of all species
that have ever existed are already extinct" (p. 119). For estimates
regarding the current number of species, see Wilson (1990, p. 4,
"most biologists agree that die actual number is at least 3 million
and could easily be 30 million or more") and Pollack (1994, p. 170,
"five million to fifty million"). Wilson (1992, p. 346) also writes:
"Even though some 14 million species of organisms have been
discovered (in the minimal sense of having specimens collected and
formal scientific names attached), the total number alive on earth
is somewhere between 10 and 100 million."
11. Wills (1991, p. 36). Regarding the direct observation of DNA's
propensity to wriggle ("like small snakes slithering through mud"),
see Lipkin (1994, p. 293). Dubochet (1993) writes: "It is not the
enzyme that rotates along the DNA helix during transcription, but
the DNA that rotates on itself, while moving like a supercoiled
conveyor belt" (p. 2).
12. Regarding the "paradoxical passage," see Eliade (1964, p. 486).
Regarding the serpent-dragon guarding the axis, see Eliade (1949,
pp. 250-251), Chevalier and Gheerbrant (1982, p. 385). and Roe
(1982, p. 118).
13. To describe DNA's form, Pollack (1994, p. 22) talks of "twisted
vines"; Calladine and Drew (1992, pp. 24, 42, 123) of a "highly
twisted ladder," a "spiral staircase," and a "snake"; Blocker and
Salem (1994, p. 60) of a "spiral staircase"; Stocco (1994, p. 37) of
a "ladder"; Frank-Kamenetskii (1993, p. 14) of a "rope ladder." The
quote in the text ("like two lianas") is from Frank-Kamenetskii
(1993, p. 92). Regarding the genetic nature of cancer, and the
recent advances in scientific understanding of the phenomenon, see
Sankarapandi (1994) and Jones (1993).
14. The quote is from Weiss (1969, p. 302). He also writes: "The
Sky-Rope motif, which we have already encountered among the Campas
and Machiguengas, and which we now find present among the
Piros, turns out to be quite widespread among the Tropical Forest
tribes. It is reported, in one form or another, for the Cashinahua.
the Marinahua, the Jfvaro, the Canelo, the Quijo, the Yagua, the
Witoto, a number of the Cuiana tribes (the Korobohana, Taulipang and
Warrau), the Bacairi, the Umotina, the Bororo, the Mosetene, and the
Tiatinagua; it is also reported for the Lengua, Mataco, Toba, and
Vilela of the Chaco region.... Clearly equivalent to the concept of
the Sky-Rope is that of the Sky-ladder, reported for the Conibo, the
Tucuna and the Shipaya, and that of the Sky-Tree, reported for the
Sherente, the Cariri, the Chamacoco. the Mataco, the Mocovf, and the
Toba - in each case comprehended as having once connected Earth with
Sky. The distribution of tliis motif might be extended even further
if we care to recognize as equivalent the idea of a chain of arrows
to the sky, reported for the Conibo, die Shipibo, the Jfvaro, the
Waiwai, the Tupinamba, the Chiriguano, the Guarayu, the Cumana, and
the Mataco" (p. 470). Weiss also notes: "Of particular interest is
the Taulipang identification of the Sky-Rope with the same
peculiarly stepped vine as that which the present authors Campa
informants pointed out as their own inkiteca" (p. 505).
15. Bayard
(1987) writes in his book on the symbolism of the caduceus: "First,
one must retain the association of elements that we find in all
civilizations, from India to the Mediterranean, including Egypt,
Palestine and Sumerian Mesopotamia: the stone, the column, the
truncated and sacred tree, with one or two entwined serpents.... The
cult of the serpent is thus linked to the art of healing since the
most ancient times" (pp. 161-163). Regarding the caduceus, Chevalier
and Gheerbrandt (1982) write: "The serpent has a doubly symbolic
aspect: one is beneficial, the other is evil, of which the caduceus
represents, as it were, the antagonism and equilibrium; this
equilibrium and polarity are above all those of the cosmic currents,
which are figured more generally by the double spiral"; in Buddhist
esotericism, for example, "the caduceus's staff corresponds to the
axis of the world and the serpents to the Kundalini," the cosmic
energy inside every being (pp. 153-155). See also Boul-nois (1939)
and Baudoin (1918) on the ancientness of this symbol. According to
Bayard (1987), the two serpents of the caduceus, the yin-yang of the
T'ai Chi, and the swastika of the Hindus all symbolize "a cosmic
force, with opposed directions of rotation" (p. 134) See Guenon
(1962, p. 153) on the equivalence of the caduceus and the yin-yang.
16. There is a certain confusion surrounding the origin of the
caduceus as the symbol of Western medicine. To start with, in Greek
mythology, the caduceus's staff is the symbol of Hermes, who is,
according to Campbell (1959), "the archetypal trickster god of the
ancient world ... Hermes, too, is androgyne, as one should know from
the sign of his staff' (p. 417). Campbell (1964) adds that Hermes is
the "guide of souls to the underworld, the patron, also, of rebirth
and lord of the knowledges beyond death, which may be known to his
initiates even in life" (p. 162). Hermess staff is topped by two
wings and is thus a variant on the theme of the plumed serpent.
However, Hermess staff has mainly been interpreted as a peace
symbol, devoid of medical significance. The official medical
caduceus is considered to belong to Aesculapius, who was said to be
a real-life healer practicing around 1200 B.C., and who only became
the Greek god of healing much later. Around the 5th century B.C.,
rationalism and patriarchy were being set up and myths were
modified: Zeus, who was at first represented as a serpent, defeats
the serpent-monster Typhon with the help of his daughter Adiene
("Reason"), thereby guaranteeing the reign of the patriarchal gods
of Olympus; concomitancy, he brings Aesculapius back to life (having
previously killed him with a lightning bolt) and gives him a staff
with a single serpent wrapped around it. According to the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Aesculapius's staff "is the only true
symbol of medicine. The caduceus with its winged staff and
intertwined serpents, frequently used as a medical symbol, is
without medical relevance since it represents the magic wand of
Hermes, or Mercury, the messenger of the gods and the patron of
trade" (vol. 1, p. 619). To make things more complicated, the
caduceus symbol, sometimes with one snake, sometimes two, has been
taken up again in the twentieth century for unclear reasons. For
instance, in 1902, the medical department of the United States Army
adopted Hermess staff as its symbol - while the American Medical
Association took Aesculapius's staff shortly thereafter (see
Friedlan-der 1992, pp. 127ff., 146ft). The caduceus formed by the
cup and the serpent became the official symbol of French pharmacies
only in 1942 (see Burnand 1991, p. 7). The pharmacists with whom I
talked invariably said that the serpent was linked to dieir
profession "because of the venom" - for which pharmacies have
antidotes.
17. Metraux (1967, pp. 191,85,83, 95).
18. There are many different translations of Heraclitus's fragmented
work. I rely mainly on Kahn (1979). The fragment that I quote is:
'The lord whose oracle is in Delphi neither declares nor conceals,
but gives a sign" (p. 43). The town of Delphi was originally called
Pytho. The oracle in Delphi first belonged to the earth goddess Gaia
and was defended by her child, the serpent Python. Later, Apollo
slew Python and appropriated the oracle.
19. See Eliade (1954, pp. 96ff.) on the secret language of shamans.
Why
has there not been more interest in this language of spirits, which
is
reported around the world? I believe that one of the reasons is that
most anthropologists do not believe that spirits really exist, so
they
cannot take them seriously. As Colchester (1982) writes in his study
of the cosmovision of the Sanema in the Venezuelan Amazon: "We
can only designate this spiritual realm a 'meraphoric' one, because
we do not believe in its reality. Our effective understanding of
Sanema phenomenology founders on this lack of belief (p. 131).
Unfortunately, Colchester's honesty is not typical.
20. The six quotes are from Townsley (1993, pp. 459-460, 453, 465).
Townsley is not the only anthropologist to report the existence of a
highly metaphoric shamanic language. Siskind (1973, p. 31),
regarding the songs of Sharanahua ayahuasqueros, writes: "These
songs are sung in an esoteric form of language, difficult to
understand, and filled with metaphors." See also Colchester (1982,
p. 142) on the "poetic licence" used by Sanema shamans in their
songs, and Chaumeil (1993, p. 415) on the "archaic language which is
incomprehensible to most" and which is used by Yagua ayahuasqueros.
21. The double helix wraps around itself completely every 10 base
pairs. As there are 6 billion base pairs in a human cell, the
latter's DNA wraps around itself approximately 600 million times.
22. The estimate of 97 percent of non-coding passages in the human
genome is the most frequent - see, for example, Nowak (1994, p. 608)
or Flam (1994, p. 1320); but Calladine and Drew (1992) consider that
only 1 percent of the human genome codes for the construction of
proteins (p. 14), and Blocker and Salem (1994) write: "Currently, it
is generally considered that only 10% of the human genome, at most,
codes for proteins; ... No precise function has yet been found for
the remaining 90% of our DNA, and it is not even certain diat one
will be found: it could possibly be mere 'scrap'" (p-127). Regarding
palindromes, Frank-Kamenetskii (1993) writes: "Palindromes are
frequently encountered in DNA texts. Since DNA consists of two
strands (i.e., as if they were two parallel texts), its palindromes
may be of two types. Such palindromes in an ordinary, single text
are called 'mirrorlike.' But more frequently to be met in DNA are
palindromes that read alike along either strand in the direction
determined by the chemical structure of DNA" (p. 106). The
expression "junk DNA," meanwhile, was first coined by Orgel and
Crick (1980) in an article entitled "Selfish DNA: The ultimate
parasite," where they write: "In summary, then, there is a large
amount of evidence which suggests, but does not prove, that much DNA
in higher organisms is little better than junk. We shall presume,
for the rest of this article, that this hypothesis is true" (pp.
604-605). See also Dawkins (1982, pp. 156ff.).
23. Calladine and Drew (1992, p. 14). Wills (1991, p. 94) estimates
that there are between 30,000 and 50,000 "ACACACACACAC..." passages
in the human genome. Nowak (1994, p. 609) estimates that the "Alu"
sequence (which is 300 bases long) is repeated half a million times
in the human genome. According to Watson et al. (1987, p. 668),
there are several sorts of "Alu" sequences amounting to a total of a
million. Jones (1993, p. 69) considers that approximately a third of
the human genome is made up of repeat sequences.
24. Among the 64 words of the genetic code, only "UGG" has no
synonym; it is the only word signifying the amino acid tryptophan.
(The words of the genetic code are written in RNA, rather than DNA,
with a U instead of a T.) 'I "he 63 other words all have at least
one synonym. For instance, there are no fewer than six words for
arginine: "CCU," "CGC," "CCA," "CGG," "AGA," "AGG." Moreover, two
words have a double meaning: "AUG" and "GUG," which correspond
respectively to amino acids methionine and valine, can also signify
to the transcription enzyme where to start transcribing the text
("start"). Lewontin (1992) writes about this ambiguity:
"Unfortunately, we do not know how the cell decides among the
possible interpretations" (p. 67). Moreover, Watson et al. (1987)
write: "Many amino acids are specified by more than one codon, a
phenomenon called degeneracy" (p. 437, original italics).
Tremolieres (1994) writes: "The code is considered to be degenerate.
The word is perhaps badly chosen; let us say that we are dealing
with a language that has many synonyms" (p. 97).
25. Editing enzymes are called "snurps" (small nuclear
ribonucleopro-teins). Regarding the editing of the genetic message,
Frank-Kamenetskii (1993) writes: "But what tells the enzyme how to
cleave the molecule correctly and how to splice together the
resulting RNA fragments? And how do in-between spaces get dropped
out in the process? The inner workings of such cutting and
assembling are far from simple, for if an enzyme just cuts RN A into
pieces. Brownian motion will scatter them around, with no hope for
Humpty-Dumpty being put back together again" (p. 79). Blocker and
Salem (1994) write: 'The role of introns is extremely mysterious.
Strangely, they arc copied during the first stage of transcription
only to end up not being transformed into 'messages.' Indeed,
"pre'-messenger RNA contains the entire gene, introns and exons.
Then, still within the nucleus, a complicated mechanism takes out,
or edits out, the introns. ... Furthermore, the editing of a gene
can occur in several different ways, from one time to another, often
to respond to die particular demands ot a given cell type. This
means that this 'choice in editing' is probably stricdy regulated
inside each type of cell, but the way in which this regulation is
realized remains almost entirely unknown" (p. 128). The alternation
of exons and introns within genes is the province of "higher"
organisms - in chickens, for instance, the gene corresponding to the
instructions to build collagen contains fifty exons (see Watson et
al. 1987, p. 629); in comparison, bacterial DNA contains practically
no introns. For genes that contain up to 98 percent introns, see
Wills (1991, p. 112).
26. Most estimates consider that the human genome contains 100
thousand genes. But Pollack (1994) writes: "If larger human
chromosomes carry as many surprises [as veast s], we can expect to
find we are carrying, not the current estimate of one hundred
thousand genes, but at least four hundred thousand genes, the
majority of thein unexpected and unknown" (p. 92). Meanwhile, Wade
(1995b) reports on the rapid gains on the sequencing of the human
genome ("which may be 99% done by 2002").
27. For the translation of these signs, see Gardiner (1950, pp. 33,
122, 457, 490,525) and Jacq (1994. pp. 45, 204).
8: THROUGH THE EVES OF AN ANT
1. Jones (1993) writes: "A useless but amusing fact is that if all
the DNA in all the cells in a single human being were stretched out
it would reach to the moon and back eight thousand times" (p. 5).
This calculation is based on an estimate of 3 X 1012 cells in a
human body, which is 33 times smaller than the usual estimate of
10'* (which I use to obtain 125 billion miles of DNA in a human
body).
As I explained in a note to Chapter 7, this estimate varies
considerably from one specialist to another.
2. Margulis and Sagan (1986) write: "In their first two billion
years on Earth, prokaryotes continuously transformed the Earths
surface and atmosphere. They invented all of life's essential,
miniaturized chemical systems - achievements that so far humanity has
not approached. This ancient high biotechnology led to the
development of fermentation, photosynthesis, oxygen breathing, and
the removal of nitrogen gas from the air" (original italics, p. 17).
Wills (1991) writes: "So the DNA molecules themselves pack over a
hundred trillion times as much information by volume as our most
sophisticated information storage devices" (p. 103). Pollack (1994)
writes: "The second strand [of the DNA molecule) is the minimum
imaginable amount of extra-molecular baggage necessary to make
either strand's information self-replicating" (p. 28).
3. Luna and Amaringo (1991, pp. 33-34).
4. For the details regarding the visual system, see Ho and Popp
(1993, p. 185) and Wesson (1991, p. 61).
5. See Weiss (1969), pp. 108, 202 (Avfreri, "the Great
Transformer"), p. 212 ("Avireri creates the seasons), and more
generally pp. 199-226. Regarding the universality of the
trickster-transformer in creation myths, Radin writes: "In the
entire world there is no myth as widespread as the 'Trickster myth'
that we will deal with here. There are few myths about which we can
so confidently say that they belong to humanity's most ancient modes
of expression; few other myths have kept their original content in
such an unchanged way. The Trickster myth exists in a clearly
recognizable form among the most primitive peoples as well as more
evolved ones; we find it among the Ancient Greeks, the Chinese, the
Japanese and in the Semitic world.... Though it is always linked to
other myths and though it is markedly reconstructed and retold in a
new form, the fundamental action seems always to have prevailed over
the others" (in Jung, Kerenyi, and Radin 1958, p. 7).
6. Stocco(1994,p.38).
7. Harner (1973) writes: "Both Jívaro and Conibo-Shipibo Indians who
had seen motion pictures told me that the ayahuasca experiences were
comparable to the viewing of films, and my own experience was
corroboratory" (p. 173).
8. In an article entitled "Evidence of photon emission from DNA in
living systems," Rattemeyer et al. (1981) write: "Probably, DNA is
the most important source of 'ultra-weak' photon emission (or
electromagnetic radiation) from living cells" (p. 572). On DNA's
trapping and transfer of electrons, see, for example, Murphy et al.
(1993), Beach et al. (1994), Clery (1995), and Hall et al. (1996);
Hall et al. write: "Although the reaction we have described involves
long-range photoinduced electron transfer, the precise mechanism for
this DNA-mediated charge transfer is not yet known" (p. 735).
9.
Wilson (1992) writes: "The black earth is alive with a riot of
algae, fungi, nematodes, mites, springtails, enchytraeid worms,
thousands of species of bacteria. The handful may be only a tiny
fragment of one ecosystem, but because of the genetic codes of its
residents it holds more order than can be found on the surfaces of
all the planets combined" (p. 345). See also Wilson (1984, p. 16).
10. Margulis and Sagan (1986) write: "As soon as there were
significant quantities of oxygen in the air an ozone shield built
up. It formed in the stratosphere, floating on top of the rest of
the air. This layer of three-atom oxygen molecules put a final stop
to the abiotic synthesis of organic compounds by screening out the
high-energy ultra-violet rays" (p. 112). Meanwhile, the depth of the
layer of microbial life on the planet is only beginning to be
investigated - see Broad (1994). Frederickson and Onstott (1996) write
in their article "Microbes deep inside the earth" that they have
found bacteria "from depths extending to 2.8 kilometers (1.7 miles)
below the surface" (p. 45). Regarding the presence of cell-based
life in the air we breathe, Krajick (1997) writes: "A cubic yard of
the atmosphere can contain hundreds of thousands of bacteria,
viruses, fungal spores, pollen grains, lichens, algae, and protozoa"
(p. 67).
11. Quoted in Gebhard-Sayer (1987, p. 25).
12. Harner (1973) writes: "The shamans under the influence of
ayahuasca see snakes apparently at least as often as any other
single class of beings" (p. 161). Harner cites visions of snakes
among the Jivaro, Amahuaca, Tukano, Siona, Piro, and Ixiamas Chama.
According to Schultes and Hofmann (1979): "Ingestion of Ayahuasca
usually induces nausea, dizziness, vomiting, and leads to either an
euphoric or an aggressive state. Frequently the Indian sees
overpowering attacks of huge snakes or jaguars. These animals often
humiliate him because he is a mere man" (p. 121).
13. In a groundbreaking and fascinating work, Reichel-Dolmatoff
(1978) gave color crayons to Desana-Tukano shamans and asked them to
draw their visions; there are a good number of serpents in
these drawings - see drawings, I, IV, V, VI, VII, XVIII, XXI, XXIII,
XXVI, XXVII, XXIX, XXXI, and XXXII; the latter shows two pairs of
serpents wrapping around each other in spirals and, to their right,
a yellow double helix; according to the caption: "This design
represents four 'yage' snakes' (gahpí piró) that are seen after one
or two cups of yagé and are in the act of climbing up the
house-posts and winding around the rafters. The other, irregular,
lines represent luminous sensations in the form of yellow flashes"
(p. 112). Dobkin de Rios (1974) writes about the inhabitants of
Iquitos who consult ayahuasqueros: "Informants repeatedly told of
the boa appearing before them while under the effects of ayahuasca.
However, despite the negative implications of a large, fearsome
creature, this shared vision was believed to be an omen of future
healing" (p. 16). See also Dobkin de Rios (1972, pp. 118-120).
William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg (1963) were among the first to
write about ayahuasca; Ginsberg describes his visions: "And then the
whole fucking Cosmos broke loose around me, I think the strongest
and worst I've ever had it nearly ... - First I began to realize my
worry about the mosquitoes or vomiting was silly as there was the
great slake of life and Death - I felt faced by Death, my skull in my
beard on pallet on porch rolling back and forth and settling finally
as if in reproduction of the last physical move I make before
settling into real death - got nauseous, rushed out and began
vomiting, all covered with snakes, like a Snake Seraph, colored
serpents in aureole around my body, I felt like a snake vomiting out
the universe - or a Jivaro in headdress with fangs vomiting up in
realization of the Murder of the Universe - -my death to
come - everyone's death to come - all unready - I unready.. (pp. 51-52).
The Cashinahua talk also of brightly colored and large snakes (see
Kensinger 1973, p. 9), as does ayahuasquero Manuel Cordoba-Rios (see
Lamb 1971, p. 38). Anthropologist Michael Taussig (1987) writes
about his personal experience with ayahuasca: "My body is
distorting and I'm very frightened, limbs stretch and become
detached, my body no longer belongs to me, then it does. I am an
octopus, I condense into smallness. The candlelight creates shapes of a new world,
animal forms and menacing. ... Self-hate and paranoia is stimulated
by horrible animals - pigs with queer snouts, slithering snakes
gliding across one another, rodents with fish-fin wings. I am
outside trying to vomit; the stars and the wind above, and the
corral for support. Its full of animals; moving" (p. 141). Some
anthropologists drink
ayahuasca without seeing snakes; Philippe Descola (1996) writes
about his experience with the Achuar Jivaros: "It seems likely that
the strange beings, monstrous spirits and animals in a perpetual
state of metamorphosis that throng their visions - but have not yet
visited me- - appear to them like a succession of temporarily
coagulated forms against a moving background composed of die
geometric patterns whose strange beauty. I am now experiencing" (p.
208) - though barely a page previous to this he also writes: "Animal
forms of unrecognized species display their metamorphoses and
transformations before my eves: the water-marked skin of the
anaconda merges into tortoise-shell scales that elongate into the
stripes of an armadillo, (hen reshape into the crest of an iguana
against the intense blue of the wings of a Morpho butterfly, then
stretch into black stripes which immediately fragment into a
constellation of haloes standing out against the silk)- fur of some
large cat" (p. 207). Some people hallucinate with greater
difficult)' than others; the dose of the hallucinogen also plays a
role; this may have influenced Descola's experiences based on "half
a coffee-cupful" of ayahuasca (p. 206). According to
Reichel-Dolmatoff (1975), the Desana-Tukano people can glance at a
drawing of hallucinations and estimate almost exactly how many cups
of ayahuasca the artist had consumed:" This is what one sees after
two cups,' they would say; or This one can see after six cups'" (p.
173).
14. Of the 48 paintings by Pablo Amaringo in Ayahuasca visions
(Luna and Amaringo 1991), only three do not have serpents (nos. 1.
6, and 28). The 45 odier pictures are filled with fluorescent
snakes, often exceptionally large, and rather frightening. Amaringo
comments on painting no. 3, called Ayahuasca and chacruna: "This
painting represents the two plants necessary in preparing the
ayahuasca brew. Out of the ayahuasca vine comes a black snake with
yellow, orange and blue spots, surrounded by a yellow aura. There is
also another snake, the chacruna snake, of bright and luminous
colors. From its mouth comes a violet radiation surrounded by blue
rays. The chacruna snake penetrates the ayahuasca snake, producing
the visionary effect of these two magic plants" (p. 52). Luna
writes: "By far the most conspicuous motif in Pablo's visions is the
snake, which, together with the jaguar, is in turn the most commonly
reported vision under the effects of ayahuasca by all tribes" (pp.
41^12). Finally, the snakes shaped like hammocks shown in painting
no. 19 correspond exactly to the use of the word "hammock" to
signify "anaconda" in
the twisted language of Yaminahua ayahuasqueros (see Townsley 1993,
p. 459): the Yaminahua live hundreds of miles from Pucallpa, where
Pablo Amaringo lives.
15. Eliade (1964, p. 497).
16. Kekute describes his dream: "I turned the chair to the fireplace
and sank into a half sleep. The atoms flittered before my eyes. Long
rows, variously, more closely united; all in movement wriggling and
turning like snakes. And see, what was that? One of the snakes
seized its own tail and the image whirled scornfully before my eyes.
As though from a flash of lightning I awoke; I occupied the rest of
the night in working out the consequences of the hypothesis" (quoted
in Beveridge 1950, p. 56). The commentator I quote Is Thuillicr
(1986, p. 386). The quote on the universality of snake dreams is
from Wilson (1992, p. 349).
17. Mundkur (1983, p. 6,8). Wilson (1984), who cites Mundkurs study,
formulates the fear-of-venom theory as follows: "What is there in
snakes anyway that makes them so repellent and fascinating? The
answer in retrospect is deceptively simple: their ability to remain
hidden, the power in their sinuous limbless bodies, and the threat
from venom injected hypodermically through sharp hollow teeth. It
pays in elementary survival to be interested in snakes and to
respond emotionally to their generalized image, to go beyond
ordinary caution and fear. The rule built into the brain in the form
of a learning bias is: become alert quickly to any object with a
serpentine gestalt. Overlearn this particular response in order to
keep safe" (original italics, pp. 92-93).
18. Drummond (1981), one of the rare critics of Mundkurs theory,
writes: "Mundkur finds that the relevant empirical feature is its
venom: The serpent, in my view, has provoked veneration primarily
through the power of its venom,' In making this generalization, he
apparently forgets the several examples of venerated but
nonvenomous serpents (i.e., boas and pythons) cited in his useful
survey of the 'serpent cult.' Indeed, it would be difficult to make
sense of The Serpents Children, and other Amazonian anaconda myths
in an ethnographic context where die fer-de-lance and bushmaster are
an everyday threat to life" (p. 643). Meanwhile, Eliade (1964)
writes about the costume of the Altaic shaman: "A quantity of
ribbons and kerchiefs sewn to its frock represent snakes, some of
their being shaped into snakes" heads with two eyes and open jaws.
The tails of the larger snakes are forked and sometimes three snakes
have only
one head. It is said that a wealthy shaman should have 1.070 snakes
on his costume" (p. 152).
9:
RECEPTORS AND TRANSMITTERS
1. Weiss (1969) writes: "The Campas believe that the inability of
the human eye to see the good spirits in their true form can be
overcome by the continual ingestion of narcotics, especially tobacco
and ayahuasca, a process that in time and with perseverance will
improve the eyesight to the point where the good spirits can be seen
for what they are" (p. 96). Sullivan (1988) writes in his
comparative work on South American religions: "Tobacco smoke is a
prime object of the craving of helper spirits, since they no longer
possess fire as human beings do" (p. 653). Wilbert (1987, p. 174)
lists fifteen Amazonian peoples who explicitly consider tobacco a
food for the spirits; I will not repeat his work here, but will
simply add to his list the Yagua, who also consider tobacco "a food
for the spirits in general" (Chaumeil 1983, p. 110).
2. Wilbert (1987) writes: "In any case, tobacco craving is regarded
as symptomatic of the hunger sensation of Supernaturals and is
transferred from the tobacco-using practitioner to the spirit world
at large. Lacking tobacco of their own, the Supernaturals are
irresistibly attracted to man not just, let us say, because they
enjoy the fragrance of tobacco smoke or the aroma of tobacco juice,
but more basically to eat and to survive. Unfortunately, a scrutiny
of the ethnographic literature gives the impression that had the
idea been less exotic for Western observers or had investigators
succeeded in penetrating indigenous ideology more deeply than they
ordinarily did, we might have learned more often about this
existential reason, as it were, behind 'the spirits' predilection for
tobacco. Scanty as the ethnographic record may be, tobacco as spirit
food, nevertheless, has been documented for a good number of
societies in lowland South America, which are widely spread and
numerous enough to suggest that the concept is of long standing on
the subcontinent" (pp. 17^-174).
3. In a human brain there are tens of billions of neurons, and they
are of several sorts. Each neuron is equipped with approximately a
thousand synapses, which are junction sites connecting the cells to
each other. Each synapse has ten million or so receptors. The number
of
neurons is frequently estimated at ten billion - see, for instance,
Snyder (1986, p. 4), but Changeux (1983, p. 231) talks of "tens of
billions," Wesson (1991, p. 142) puts the figure at 'TOO billion or
so," and Johnson (1994, p. E5) proposes a bracket from "100 billion
to a trillion." Sackmann (quoted in Bass 1994, p. 164) estimates the
number of receptors at each synapse at "about ten million." There
are approximately 50 known neurotransmitters, and a given cell can
have different receptors for several of these (see Smith 1994). The
nicotine and acetylcholine molecules have different shapes, but the
receptor cannot tell them apart because they have the same size (10
angstroms) and the distribution of their electrical charges is
similar (see Smith 1994. p. 37). Wilbert (1987) writes: 'This
simulation capability of nicotine has been likened to the function
of a skeleton key inasmuch as it fits and opens, so to speak, all
cholinergic locks of postsynaptic receptors in the body" (p. 147).
4. See the article by Changeux (1993) for a clearly illustrated
presentation of nicotinic receptors. The central role played by
calcium ions in the activation of DNA transcription is discussed by
Farin et al. (1990), Wan et al. (1991), and Evinger et al. (1994).
Concerning the activation of DNA transcription by nicotine, see also
Koistinaho et al. (1993), Mitchell et al. (1993), and Panget al.
(1993). Concerning nicotines activation of genes corresponding to
the proteins that make up nicotinic receptors, see Cimino et al.
(1992); the latter note, however, that most studies of nicotinic
receptors have been conducted on rats, and that recent research on
monkeys reveals great differences from one species to another. The
rat has nicotinic receptors in its cortex, which is not the case for
the monkey; the precise distribution of these receptors in the human
brain is still poorly understood: "It is difficult to perform such
studies in human brain since the tissue can only be obtained a long
time after death and it is difficult to obtain normal young brain.
For these reasons, we undertook a preliminary study on nicotinic
receptor distribution in monkey brain, whose CNS [central nervous
system] organization is more similar to the human CNS organization
than that of the rat or chick" (p. 81). Concerning the still poorly
understood cascade of reactions set off by nicotine inside the nerve
cell, see Evinger et al. (1994), as well as Pang et al. (1993), who
note in passing: "The mechanisms with which nicotine . .. leads to
repeated self-administrative behavior are poorly understood" (p.
162).
5. The Nicotiana rustica species used by shamans contains up to 18
percent nicotine (Wilbert 1987, pp. 134-136), whereas the
Virginia-type tobacco leaves contain from 0.5 to 1 percent nicotine
in Europe and occasionally reach 2 percent in the United States
(according to the Centre for Tobacco Research, Payerne, Switzerland,
personal communication, 1995). Some forms of contemporary Amazonian
shamanism use cigarettes, as in the case I described in Chapter 3.
However, the influence of the use of an adulterated product on the
efficacy of the cure has not yet been studied. Moreover, according
to the Edict on foodstuffs published by the Federal Chancellery of
Switzerland (1991), producers are allowed to add a series of
substances to tobacco "that will not exceed twenty-five percent [of
the final dry product] for cigarettes, cigars and similar smoking
articles and thirty percent for cut or rolled tobacco" (p. 196).
These additives are divided into five categories, including
moistening agents, preservatives, and flavor enhancers. The fourth
category reads as follows: "d. Products for ash bleaching and
combustion accelerators: aluminum hydroxide, aluminum oxide,
aluminum and silicium het-eroxides, aluminum sulphate, alum, silicic
acid, talc, titanium dioxide, magnesium oxide, potassium nitrate,
carbonic, acetic, malic, citric, tartaric, lactic and formic acids,
and their components of potassium, sodium, calcium and magnesium, as
well as ammonium, potassium, calcium, magnesium and sodium
phosphates." The fifth category reads: "e. Adhesives: the gelling
and thickening agents of the Edict of the 31st of October 1979 on
additives as well as pure lac, collodion, cellulose,
ethyl-cellulose, acetyl-cellulose, hydroxy-ethyl-cellulose.
hyxlroxy-propyl-methyl-cellulose, hydroxy-ethyl-mediyl-cellulose,
polyvinyl acetate and glyoxal" (pp. 196-197) Unfortunately, it is
not possible to obtain from the cigarette manufacturers the precise
list of additives for each brand, given that the recipes for this
"foodstuff" are jealously guarded.
6. Cigarettes emit 4,000 toxic substances, according to
(Switzerland's) Federal Office of Public Health (1994, p. 1).
Klaassen and Wong (1993) write in their article on radiation in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica: "The largest nonoccupational radiation
sources are tobacco smoke for smokers and indoor radon gas for the
nonsmoking population" (vol. 25. p. 925). Martell (1982) writes in a
letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine: "Indoor
radon decay products that pass from room air through burning
cigarettes into mainstream smoke are present in large, insoluble
smoke particles that are selectively deposited at bifurcations. Thus, the smoker receives alpha
radiation at bronchial bifurcations from three sources: from indoor
radon progeny inhaled between cigarettes, from 2l4Po Ipolonium-214]
in mainstream smoke particles, and from 210 Po [polonium-210] that
grows into 210Pb [lead-210]-enriched particles that persist at
bifurcations. I estimate that the cumulative alpha dose at the
bifurcations of smokers who die of lung cancer is about 80 rad (1600
rem) - a dose sufficient to induce malignant transformation by alpha
interactions with basal cells" (p. 310). Evans (1993) writes in an
article entitled "Cigarette smoke - radiation hazard": "In 1 year, a
smoker of 1 to 2 packs per day will irradiate portions of his or her
bronchial epithelium with about 8 to 9 rem. This dose can he
contrasted with that from a standard chest x-ray film of about 0.03
rem. Thus, the average smoker absorbs the equivalent of the dosages
from 250 to 300 chest x-ray films per year" (p. 464). Strangely
enough, the radioactivity of cigarette smoke is rarely mentioned in
the majority of the articles dealing with the toxicity of this
product. Abelin (1993), who provides a list of the different forms
of cancer provoked by cigarettes, also notes that low-tar cigarettes
have a lower risk factor than normal cigarettes. However, "up until
now, a lowering of the risk of heart attacks or chronic lung
diseases among smokers of 'light* cigarettes has not been noticed"
(pp. 15-16).
7. Weiss (1969, p. 62) notes two literal translations for
sheripidri. "he who uses tobacco" and "he who is transfigured by
tobacco." Elick (1969. pp. 203-204) suggests the word combines sheri
("tobacco") and piai ("a rather common designation for the shaman in
northern South America"). Baer (1992) translates the Matsigenka word
serip-i'gari as "he who is intoxicated by tobacco" - the Matsigenka
being the Ashaninca's immediate neighbors. In any case, the word
means "healer" and contains the root sheri (or sen),
"tobacco."
8. Johannes Wilbert, personal communication, 1994.
9. That the otherwise infallible Schultes and Hofmann omitted
tobacco from their classic Plants of the gods: Origins of
hallucinogenic use (1979) is an indication of the degree to which
Western science has underestimated it. Wilbert. who has led a long
and solitary campaign for the recognition of tobaccos importance in
shamanism, wrote in 1972: "Tobacco (Nicotiana spp.) is not generally
considered to be a hallucinogen. Yet like the sacred mushrooms,
peyote, morning glories, Datura, ayahuasca, the psychotomimetic
snuffs, and a whole series of other New World hallucinogens, tobacco
has long been known to play a central role in North and South
American shamanism, both in the achievement of shamanistic trance
states and in purification and supernatural curing. Even if it is
not one of the 'true' hallucinogens from the botanists or
pharmacologist's point of view, tobacco is often conceptually and
functionally indistinguishable from them" (p. 55).
10. The interaction of specific snake venoms with the different
nicotinic receptors varies. Deneris et al. (1991) show that certain
nicotinic receptors are sensitive to given snake toxins, but not to
others, and that there is even a subclass of nicotinic receptors
that is insensitive to all snake venoms. See Alberts et al. (1990,
pp. 319-320) for an explanation of the central role played by
nicotinic receptors in the history of ion channels and by the venom
of certain snakes in their identification. Changexix (1993) provides
a detailed historical outline of the evolution of the research
conducted on the acetylcholine receptor, where he explains the
successive stages covered by scientists and the role played by
nicotine, curare, and the snake venom a-bungarotoxin. He also
explains the importance of the development, in the 1980s, of new
techniques which allow die determination of the exact sequence of
amino acids making up the proteins that constitute the receptors.
11. Of course, the legislation on controlled substances varies from
one country to another, but legislation in die United States seems
to serve as a model for many other Western countries. For an
exhaustive survey of American legislation on controlled substances,
see Shulgin (1992). Moreover, Strassman (1991) discusses in detail
the labyrinth of bureaucratic, and sometimes Orwellian, obstacles he
had to surmount to obtain N, N-dimethyltryptamine and to administer
it to human beings in the framework of a scientific investigation.
12. According to Strassman and Quails (1994): 'The group was high
functioning, with only one subject not being a professional or
student in a professional training program" (p. 86). According to
Strassman et al. (1994): "Our description of subjective effects of
DMT [dimethyltryptamine] used reports obtained by experienced
hallucinogen users who were well prepared for the effects of the
drug. In addition, these subjects. .. found hallucinogens highly
desirable. Thus, our sample differed from those used to characterize
hallucinogens' effects in previous studies" (p. 105). As I mentioned
in Note 8 to Chapter 5, the studies by SzaVa (1956, 1957, 1970).
Sai-Halasz et al. (1958), and Kaplan et al. (1974) all consider
dimethyltryptamine as a "psychotomimetic" or a "psychotogen."
Concerning the use of prisoners to test this substance, see, for
example. Rosenberg et al. (1963), whose article starts with the
following sentence: "Five former opiate addicts who were serving
sentences for violation of United States narcotic laws volunteered
for this experiment" (p. 39). Leary (1966) describes his visions in
a scientific and personal study of the effects of
dimethyltryptamine: "A serpent began to writhe up and through the
soft, warm silt... tiny, the size of a virus ... growing... now
belts of serpent skin, mosaic-jeweled, rhythmically jerking,
snake-wise forward ... now circling globe, squeezing green salt
oceans and jagged brown-shale mountains with constrictor grasp ...
serpent flowing blindly, now a billion mile endless electric-cord
vertebrated writhing cobra singing Hindu flute-song" (p. 93).
13. Strassman et al. (1994, p. 100).
14. Two articles published in die late 1980s (McKenna et al. 1989
and Pierce and Peroutka 1989) demonstrate that different
hallucinogens activate distinct serotonin receptor subtypes.
Deliganis et al. (1991) went on to show that dimethyltryptamine
stimulates serotonin receptor TA" while blocking serotonin receptor
"2." According to Van de Kar (1991): "Furthermore, an understanding
of the 5-HT [serotonin ) receptor sub-types has led to a
reevaluation of old data on the neuroendocrine effects of 5-HT
agonists and antagonists" (p. 292). It had often been claimed
throughout the 1980s that hallucinogens activated a single receptor
(see Glennon et al. 1984). So far the precise serotonin receptors
stimulated by psilocybin have not been determined.
15. According to Van de Kar (1991), serotonin receptor "3" is an ion
channel, while the remaining six receptors (la, lb, le, Id, 2, and
4) are membrane-spanning antennae. Recent research subdivides these
seven serotonin receptors into fifteen subcategories - see Thtebot and
Hamon (1996).
16. Pitt et al. (1994) write in their article on the stimulation of
DNA by serotonin: "Thus it is apparent that a novel intracellular
signaling pathway contributes to the increase in DNA synthesis
caused by 5-HT [serotonin] in smooth muscle and other cells in
culture" (p. 185).
17. Kato et al. (1970) administered four to eleven LSD injections to
four pregnant monkeys in their third or fourth month of pregnancy.
The
total amount of these doses varied from 875 micrograms/kg to
9,000 micrograms/kg; the average total dose being 4,937
micrograms/kg. An average dose for a human being is estimated at
1.5 micrograms/kg (about 100 micrograms for a person weighing 70
kg or 154 pounds). Thus, die average total dose inflicted on
these monkeys was 3,000 times greater than the normal quantity
ingested by humans. Along the same lines, it is worth mentioning
the research conducted by Cohen et al. (1967), which set off the
whole "chromosome breaks" scare: These scientists poured high
concentrations of LSD on cultured cells and went on to show that
the chromosomes of these cells featured twice as many breaks as
normal. It has since been
shown that substances in common use, such as milk, caffeine, and
aspirin, lead to similar results at sufficient concentrations (see,
for instance, Kato and Jarvik 1969). Dishotsky et al. (1971), who
reviewed a total of 68 studies on the supposed effects of LSD on
chromosomes, wrote in the conclusion of their article for Science:
"From our own work and from a review of the literature, we believe
that pure LSD ingested in moderate doses does not damage
chromosomes in vivo, does not cause detectable genetic damage, and
is not a teratogen or a carcinogen in man. Within these bounds,
therefore, we suggest that, other than during pregnancy, there is no
present contraindication to the continued controlled experimental
use of pure LSD" (p. 439). Finally, see Yielding and Stcrglanz
(1968), Smythies and Antun (1969), and Wagner (1969) concerning the
intercalation of LSD into DNA.
18. Yielding and Sterglanz (1968)
write: "A study of the interactions between LSD and such
macromolecules as DNA may also be relevant to the psychotomimetic
actions of such drugs.... Thus, binding to DNA would appear to be a
general property of this group of drugs" (p. 1096). This idea was
taken further by McKenna and McKenna (1975) in a visionary
speculation: "We speculated that information stored in the
neural-genetic material might be made available to consciousness
through a modulated ESR [electron spin resonance] absorption
phenomenon, originating in superconducting charge-transfer complexes
formed by intercalation of tryptamines and beta-carbolines into the
genetic material. We reasoned that both neural DNA and neural RNA
were involved in this process: Serotonin or, in the case of our
experiment, exogenously introduced methylated tryptamines would
preferentially bind to membrane RNA, opening
the ionic shutter mechanism and, simultaneously, entering into
superconductive charge transfer with its resulting modulated ESR
signal; beta-carbolines could then pass through the membrane via the
RNA-ionic channel and intercalate into the neural DNA" (p. 104).
Dennis McKenna has since become an experienced researcher on
neurological receptors, but his work does not deal any further with
DNA. Terence McKenna (1993) tells the story behind the conception of
these visionary speculations.
19. The advances accomplished over the last twenty-five years
regarding science's understanding of neurological receptors can be
gauged by reading Smythies (1970) on the possible nature of these
receptors: 'This makes deductions from the chemical relation between
various agonists and antagonists to the possible nature of the
receptor site tentative at best. Such arguments would be more cogent
if anything were known, on independent grounds, of the chemical
nature of the receptor site. Unfortunately very little is known" (p.
182). In those days, scientists could only advance on this question
by groping in the dark; Symthies theorized, incorrectly, that the
receptors were made of RNA.
20. For instance, in die most recent edition of the Psychedelics
encyclopedia (Stafford 1992). there is no reference to DNA. To my
knowledge, the only other mention of a link between hallucinogens
and DNA is by Lamb (1985). who suggests in passing: "Perhaps on some
unknown unconscious level the genetic encoder DNA provides a bridge
to biological memories of all living things, an aura of unbounded
awareness manifesting itself in the activated mind" (p. 2). Lamb
elaborates no further on this.
21. See Rattemeyer et al. (1981), Popp (1986), Li (1992), Van Wijk
and Van Aken (1992). Niggli (1992), Mei (1992). and Popp. Gu, and Li
(1994).
22. Popp (1986, p. 207).
23. Popp (1986, pp. 209,207). See also Popp, Gu,
and Li (1994)
regarding the coherence in biophoton emission.
24. Suren Erkman, personal communication, 1995.
25. Strassman et al. (1994, pp. 100-101).
26. Etymologically, "hallucination" comes from the Latin
hallucinari, "to wander in the mind." which corresponds quite
precisely to the description I propose of the phenomenon induced by
hallucinogens^ - namely, a shifting of consciousness away from
ordinary reality toward the molecular level. The word hallucinari only acquired
the pejorative meaning "to be mistaken" in the fifteenth century;
but I do not consider this connotation a sufficient reason not to
use a word which is commonly understood and the original etymology
of which corresponds to the described phenomenon. Finally, and in
opposition to a certain number of current scholars. I do not
subscribe to the use of the newly coined word "entheogen" (to
replace "hallucinogen"), because it jargonizes a difficult subject
and loads it with divine (theos = "God") connotations.
27. Popp, Gu, and Li (1994) write; "There is evidence of
nonsubstantial biocomniunication between cells and organisms by
means of photon emission" (p. 1287). On blophoton emission as a
cellular language, see Galle et al. (1991), Gu (1992), and Ho and
Popp (1993). One of the most eloquent experiments in this field
consists of placing two lots of unicellular organisms in a device
which measures photon emission and separating them with a metal
screen; under these circumstances, the graph of the first lot's
photon emission shows no relationship to that of the second lot.
When the metal screen is removed, both graphs coincide to the
highest degree - see Popp (1992a, p. 40). On the role of biophoton
emission in plankton colonies, see Galle et al. (1991).
28. Ho and Popp (1993, p. 192).
29. Fritz-Albert Popp, personal communication, 1995.
30. On the precursory work of Alexander A. Gurvich, see the
references in Popp, Gu, and Li (1994) as well as the writings of
Anna A. Gurvich (1992, for example).
31. Reichel-Dolmatoff (1979, p. 117). On the importance of quartz
crystals in shamanic practices, see also Harner (1980, pp. 138-140)
and Eliade (1972).
32. Baer (1992) writes concerning the use of quartz crystals by
Matsi-genka shamans: "Light-colored or transparent stones,
especially quartz crystals, are regarded as curative. They are
called isere'pito. Although this designation is the same as that for
the auxiliary spirits, it is more correct to view them as 'bodies,'
'residences,' or material manifestations of these spirits.... The
Matsigenka say the shaman feeds his stones tobacco daily. If he does
not do so, his auxiliary spirits, which materialize in the crystals,
will leave him, and then the shaman will die" (pp. 86-87). The same
practice is found among neighboring Ashaninca sheripiari (see Elick
1969, pp. 208-209).
33. Frank-Kamenetskii (1993, p. 31).
34. Blocker and Salem (1994) write: "In DNA, one finds four bases
which are different and all quite complex. The structure of two of
these bases, thymine (T) and cytosine (C), is hexagonal. The other
two, adenine (A) and guanine (G), have a nine atom structure, with a
hexagon placed next to a pentagon" (p. 55).
35. While I suggest the hypothesis that DNA's "non-coding" repeat
sequences serve, among other things, to pick up photons at different
frequencies, it is worth mentioning that Rattemeyer et al. (1981)
proposed, in the first article published on DNA as a source of
photon emission, that the non-coding parts of the genome could play
an unsuspected electromagnetic role: "Only a very small proportion
(about 0.1 and 2%) of DNA operates as genetic material and is
organized in nucleotide sequences according to the genetic code.
Models have, therefore, been proposed which suggest some regulatory
role for the non-protein-coding DNA. Recently, this regulatory role
is being seen more in terms of some basic physical mechanisms,
particularly the coherent electromagnetic interactions between
different DNA sections, rather than a biochemical store of
information" (p. 573). Li (1992, p. 190) also suggests that the
aperiodic nature of the DNA crystal facilitates the coherence of
photon emission. I suggest here that the converse is also true and
that die repeat sequences in the DNA crystal facilitate its capacity
to pick up photons.
36. Of course, biophoton researchers are aware of die fact that
photon emission, considered as a cellular language, necessarily
implies a receptor. Ho and Popp (1993) write that this phenomenon
"points to the existence of amplifying mechanisms in the organisms
receiving the information (and acting on it). Specifically, the
living system itself must also be organized by intrinsic
electrodynamical fields, capable of receiving, amplifying, and
possibly transmitting electromagnetic information in a wide range of
frequencies - rather like an extraordinarily efficient and sensitive,
and extremely broadband radio receiver and transmitter, much as
Frohlich has suggested" (p. 194). I write that biophoton reception
has not been studied, but Li (1992, p. 167) and Niggli (1992, p.
236) both mention in passing the necessary existence of a
photon-trapping mechanism.
37. Chwirot (1992) writes: "The properties of chromatin [the
substance contained in Uie nucleus - that is, DNA and its coating of
proteins], optical ones included, are very different in vivo and in
vitro and depend on many factors which have not yet been fully
understood (pp. 274-275). Popp, Gu, and Li (1994) conclude their
review of the
biophoton literature by writing that "the mechanism [of biophoton
emission] is not known in detail at present" (p. 1293). 38. Popp
(1992b) writes: The entity of all living systems (which can be
considered as a more or less fully interlinked unit), rather than
the individuals, is always developing" (p. 454).
10: BIOLOGY'S BLIND SPOT
1. Crick (1981, p. 58). Jones (1993) writes: The ancestral message
from the dawn of life has grown to an instruction manual containing
three thousand million letters coded into DNA. Everyone has a unique
edition of the manual which differs in millions of ways from that of
their fellows. All this diversity comes from accumulated errors in
copying the inherited message" (p. 79). Delsemme (1994) writes: "The
mechanism [of evolution] is extraordinarily simple, as it rests on
two principles: copying errors, which cause 'mutations'; survival of
the individual best adapted to its environment" (p. 185). Francis
Crick coined the term "central dogma" in 1958. Blocker and Salem
(1994) write regarding the central dogma: "However,... this
principle can be seriously challenged. In fact, from a certain point
of view, one can almost consider it to be wrong: information
actually flows back from the proteins to the genes, but by a
different means, that of regulation" (p. 66). Regarding resistance
to the theory of natural selection until the middle of the twentieth
century. Mayr (1982) writes: "Up to the 1920s and 1930s, virtually
all the major books on evolution - those of Berg, Bertalanffy,
Beurlen, BOker, Gold-schmidt, Robson, Robson and Richards,
Schindewolf, Willis, and those of all the French evolutionists,
including Cuenot, Caullery, Vandel, Guy^not, and Rostand - were more
or less strongly anti-Darwinian. Among nonbiologists Darwinism was
even less popular. The philosophers, in particular, were almost
unanimously opposed to it, and this opposition lasted until
relatively recent years (Cassirer. 1950; Grene, 1959; Popper. 1972).
Most historians likewise rejected selectionism (Radi, Nordensldold,
Barzun, Himmelfarb)"' (p. 549). Mayr goes on to describe an
international symposium held in 1947: "All participants endorsed the
gradualness of evolution, the preeminent importance of natural
selection, and the populational aspect of the origin of diversity.
Not all od»er biologists were completely converted. This is evident
from the great efforts made by Fisher, Hal-dane, and Mnller as late
as the 1940s and 50s to present again and
again evidence in favor of the universality of natural selection,
and from some reasonably agnostic statements on evolution made by a
few leading biologists such as Max Hartmann" (p. 569).
2. Crick (1966,
p. 10) and Jacob (1974, p. 320).
3. Monod (1971, pp. 30-31).
4.
Jakobson (1973, p. 61). He also writes: "Consequently, we can say
that, of all the information-transmitting systems, the genetic code
and the verbal code are the only ones that are founded on the use of
discrete elements, which are, in themselves, devoid of meaning, but
which are used to constitute the minimal units of significance,
namely the entities endowed with a meaning that is their own in the
code in question" (p. 52). See Shanon (1978) on the differences
between the genetic code and human languages.
5. Calladine and Drew
(1992) write: "The mass of DNA is surrounded in most cells by a
strong membrane with tiny, selective holes, that allow some things
to go in and out, but keep others either inside or outside.
Important chemical molecules go in and out of these holes, like
memos from the main office of a factory to its workshops; and indeed
the individual cell is in many ways like an entire factor)', on a
very tiny scale. The space in the cell which is not occupied by DNA
and the various sorts of machinery is filled with water" (p. 3). De
Rosnay (1966) writes: "The cell is, indeed, a veritable molecular
factory, but this 'miracle' factory is capable not only of looking
after its own maintenance - as we have just seen - but also of building
its own machines as well as the drivers of those machines" (p. 62).
Pollack (1994) compares a cell to a city, radier than to a factory:
"A cell is a busy place, a city of large and small molecules all
constructed according to information encoded in DNA. The metaphor of
a city may seem even more farfetched than that of a skyscraper for
an invisibly small cell until you consider that a cell has room for
more than a hundred million million atoms; that is plenty of space
for millions of different molecules, since even the largest
molecules in a cell are made of only a few hundred million atoms"
(p. 18). In his book The machinery of life, Goodsell (1993) writes:
"Like the machines of our modern world, these molecules are built to
perform specific functions efficiently, accurately, and
consistently. Modem cells build hundreds of thousands of different
molecular machines, each performing one of hundreds of thousands of
individual tasks in the process of living. These molecular machines
are built according to four basic molecular plans. Whereas our
macrosocopic machines
are built of metal, wood, plastic and ceramic, the microscopic
machines in cells are built of protein, nucleic acid, lipid, and
polysaccharide. Each plan has a unique chemical personality ideally
suited to a different role in the cell" (p. 13). De Rosnay (1966. p.
165) compares enzymes to "biological micro-computers" and to
"molecular robots," whereas Goodsell (1993, p. 29) calls them
"automata." Wilis (1991) writes: "The genome is like a book that
contains, among many other things, detailed instructions on how to
build a machine that can make copies of it - and also instructions on
how to build the tools needed to make the machine" (p. 41). For
discussions of DNA as a "language" or a "text," see, for example,
Frank-Kamenetskii (1993, pp. 63-74), Jones (1993), or Pollack
(1994). Atlan and Koppel (1990) reject the classical metaphor of DNA
as a "program" and suggest instead that it is better understood as
"data to a program embedded in the global geometrical and
biochemical structure of the cell" (p. 338). Finally, Delsemme
(1994, p. 205) writes that "we can consider with complete peace of
mind that life is a normal physicochemical phenomenon."
6. Piaget (1975) writes: Thus the most developed science remains a
continual becoming, and in every field nonbalance plays a functional
role of prime importance since it necessitates re-equilibration" (p.
178).
7. Scott quoted in Freedman (1994), whose article inspired this
paragraph. Goodsell (1993) writes that "proteins are self-assembling
machines," which, among other functions, "form motors, turning huge
molecular oars that propel bacterial cells" or "specific pumps
[that] are built to pump amino acids in, to pump urea out, or to
trade sodium for potassium" (pp. 18,42).
8. Calladine and Drew (1992, p. 37). See Wills (1989, p. 166) on the
speed of carbonic anhydrase. See Radman and Wagner (1988. p. 25) on
the minute rate of error of repair enzymes. Science nominated DNA
repair enzymes "molecules of the year 1994." Recently, it was found
that these enzymes are highly adaptable and that "repair" enzymes
also participate in DNA replication, the control of the cell cycle,
and the expression of genes. Similarly, enzymes that splice the
double helix can do so in both chromosome recombination and repair
operations. Enzymes that unwind DNA can act during transcription of
the genetic text as well as repair (see Culotta and Koshland 1994).
Wills (1991) writes on the speed of DNA duplication by enzymes
called replisomes: "Replisomes work in pairs. As we
watch, about 100 pairs of replisoines seize specific places on each
of the chromosomes, and each pair begins to work in opposite
directions. Since all the chromosomes are being duplicated at once,
there are about ten thousand replisomes operating throughout the
nucleus. They work at incredible speed, spewing out new DNA strands
at die rate of 150 nucleotides per second.... At full bore, the DNA
can be replicated at one and a half million nucleotides per second.
Even at this rate, it would still take about half an hour to
duplicate all six billion nucleotides" (pp. 113-114).
9. Margulis and Sagan (1986, p. 145). Since the time of writing the
French original of this book, two articles by Heald et al. (1996)
and Zhang and Nicklas (1996) seem to indicate that the dance of
chromosomes is orchestrated by spindle microtubules, which function
even in the absence of chromosomes. This does not remove the
question of intention, however. As Hyams (1996, p. 397) comments: "A
great many questions about mitosis remain to be answered. To what
extent do chromosomes contribute to spindle formation and to their
own movement at anaphase? Do they have a role in positioning the
cleavage furrow? What holds sister chromatids together, how are they
'unglued,' and what is the signal for this detachment? How do the
checkpoints that sense a single detached chromosome or an imperfect
one work?"
10. Wade (1995a) writes: "Only DNA endures. This thoroughly
depressing view values only survival, which the DNA is not in a
position to appreciate anyway, being just a chemical" (p. 20).
11. Tremolieres (1994, p. 138) considers that "our human
comprehension and intelligence reach their own limits. It seems that
our brain is one of the most complex objects that we can find in the
universe." McGinn (1994, p. 67) writes: "We want to know, among
other things, how our consciousness levers itself out of the body.
We want, that is, to solve the mind-body problem, the deep
metaphysical question about how mind and matter meet. But what if
there is something about us that makes it impossible for us to solve
this ancient conundrum? What if our cognitive structure lacks the
resources to provide the requisite theory?"
12. Hunt (1996) writes: "Crow tool manufacture had three features
new to tool use in free-living nonhumans: a high degree of
standardization, distinctly discrete tool types with definite
imposition of form in tool shaping, and the use of hooks. These
features only first appeared in the stone and bone tool-using
cultures of early humans after the Lower Paleolithic, which
indicates that crows have achieved a considerable technical
capability in their tool manufacture and use" (p. 249). See Huffman
(1995) on chimpanzees using medicinal plants. Perry (1983) writes
about ants that herd aphids: "In one species, the ants take fine
earth up to the leaves and stems of plants and, using their own
saliva, cement together tiny shelters, shaped like mud huts, for
their aphid partners. These shelters help to protect the aphids from
severe weather and to some extent from predators.... Some ants will
round up local populations of aphids at the end of the day, in much
the same way that a sheepdog herds sheep. The ants then take their
aphids down into the nest for protection from predators. In the
morning the aphids are escorted to the required plant for another
days feeding and milking" (pp. 28-29). See also Holldobier and
Wilson (1990, pp. 522-529). Concerning mush room-cultivating ants,
see Chapela at al. (1994) and Hinkle et al. (1994). Wilson (1984, p.
17) compares an ants brain to a grain of sugar.
13. Monod (1971, p. 18). Wesson (1991) writes: "By what devices the
genes direct the formation of patterns of neurons that constitute
innate behavioral patterns is entirely enigmatic. Yet not only do
animals respond appropriately to manifold needs; they often do so in
ways that would seem to require something like forethought" (p. 68).
He adds: "An instinct of any complexity, linking a sequence of
perceptions and actions, must involve a very large number of
connections within the brain or principal ganglia of the animal. If
it is comparable to a computer program, it must have the equivalent
of thousands of lines. In such a program, not merely would chance of
improvement by accidental change be tiny at best. It is problematic
how the program can be maintained without degradation over a long
period despite the occurrence from time to time of errors by
replication" (p. 81). On the absence of a goal, or teleology, in
nature. Stocco (1994) writes that "biological evolution does not
proceed in a precise direction and aims at no particular goal" (p.
185), and Mayr (1983) writes: 'The one thing about which modern
authors are unanimous is that adaptation is not teleological, but
refers to something produced in the past by natural selection" (p.
324). According to Wesson (1991): "For a biologist to call another a
teleologist is an insult" (p. 10).
14. According to several recent studies, non-coding DNA might
actually play a structural role and display the characteristics of a
language,
the meaning of which remains to be determined. See Flam (1994),
Pennisi (1994), Nowak (1994). and Moore (1996).
15. The twenty amino acids used by nature to build proteins vary in
shape and function. Some play structural roles, such as making a
hairpin turn that folds the protein back on itself. Others make
sheetlike surfaces as dot-king sites for other molecules. Others
form links between protein chains. Three amino acids contain
benzene, a greasy compound that is the molecular equivalent of
Velcro and that can hold certain substances and then release them
without modifying its own structure. One finds these
benzene-containing amino acids at exactly the right place in the
"lock" of nicotinic receptors, where they bond molecules of
acetylcholine or nicotine (see Smith 1994). Couturier et al. (1990)
provide the exact sequence of the 479 amino acids that constitute
one of the five protein chains of the nicotinic receptor. My
estimate of 2,500 amino acids for the entire receptor is an
extrapolation based on their work. See Lewis et al. (1987) regarding
the presence of nicotinic receptors among nematodes.
16. Wesson (1991, p. 15).
17. Tiemolieres (1994, p. 51). He adds: "We know that more than 90%
of the changes affecting a letter in a word of the genetic message
lead to disastrous results; proteins are no longer synthesized
correctly, the message loses its entire meaning and this leads
purely and simply to the colls death. Given that mutations are so
frequently highly unfavorable, and even deadly, how can beneficial
evolution be attained?" (p. 43). Likewise, Frank-Kamenetskii (1993)
writes: "It is clear, therefore, that you need a drastic refitting
of the whole of your machine to make the car into a plane. The same
is true for a protein. In trying to turn one enzyme into another,
point mutations alone would not do the trick. What you need is a
substantial change in the amino acid sequence. In this situation,
rather than being helpful, selection is a major hindrance. One could
think, for instance, that by consistently changing amino acids one
by one, it will eventually prove possible to change the entire
sequence substantially and thus the enzyme's spatial structure.
These minor changes, however, are bound to result eventually in a
situation in which the enzyme has ceased to perform its previous
function but it has not yet begun its 'new duties.' It is at this
point that it will be destroyed - together with the organism carrying
it" (p. 76).
18. Nash (1995,68, 70).
19. See Wesson (1991, p. 52). He adds: "By Mayr's calculation, in a
rapidly evolving line an organ may enlarge about 1 to 10 percent per
million years, but organs of the whale-in-becoming must have grown
ten times more rapidly over 10 million years. Perhaps 300
generations are required for a gene substitution. Moreover,
mutations need to occur many times, even with considerable
advantage, in order to have a good chance of becoming fixed.
Considering the length of whale generations, the rarity with which
the needed mutations are likely to appear, and the multitude of
mutations needed to convert a land mammal into a whale, it is easy
to conclude that gradualist natural selection of random variations
cannot account for this animal" (p. 52). Wessons book is a catalogue
of biological improbabilities - -from bats' hypersophisticated
echolocation system to the electric organs of fish - and of die gaping
holes in the fossil record.
20. Mayr (1988, pp. 529-530). Goodwin (1994) writes: "New types of
organism appear upon the evolutionary scene, persist for various
periods of it. and then become extinct. So Darwin's assumption that
the tree of life is a consequence of the gradual accumulation of
small hereditary differences appears to be without significant
support. Some other process is responsible for the emergent
properties of life, those distinctive features that separate one
group of organisms from another, such as fishes and amphibians,
worms and insects, horsetails and grasses. Clearly something is
missing from biology" (p. x).
21. Shapiro (1996, p. 64).
22. Mycoplasma genitalium is the smallest genome currently known, at
580.000 base pairs. Mushegian and Koonin (1996) compared it to the
genome of bacterium Hemophilus influenzae, which contains 1,800,000
base pairs, and concluded that the minimal amount of genetic
information necessary for life is 315,000 base paris. This is still
an enormous amount of information.
23. See Butler (1996) on the 12 million base pair genome of the
yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. See Hills (1996) on the similarities
between yeast and human genes. In some cases, the contrary is also
true, and genomes vary greatly between closely related species: Wade
(1997b) writes about a conference on small genomes: "As work on one
genome after another was described at the meeting, the scientists'
mood was like that of people looking at newly-discovered treasure
maps, with the treasure not yet in hand but with wonderfully
tantalizing clues all about. For example, the order of genes in a
genome seems to vary widely, even between closely related species of
microbes, as if evolution were constantly shuffling the deck" (p.
A14).
24. Langaney (1997, p. 122). Holder and McMahon (1996) write:
"Remarkably, many of the genes that are important for the control of
fly development are also crucial players in vertebrate, and by
association human, development. ... Some of the similarities are
amazing: for example, mutations in both human Pax6 gene and in
eyeless, the Drosophila homologue, cause abnormal eye development.
This maintenance of function occurs in spite of the overtly
different manner in which Drosoj>hila and human eyes develop" (p.
515). Yoon (1995) writes: "From silken-petaled roses to popping
snapdragons to a willow tree's fuzzy catkins, the plant world offers
a dazzling array of flowers. Yet the difference between all this
blooming beauty and a plain green shoot appears to be nothing more
than the flicking on of one master genetic switch, according to two
new studies. Using genetically engineered plants, researchers were
able to show that either of two genes, on its own. could turn on the
cascade of thousands of genes that produce a flower. Researchers
were able to use the genes ... to produce blossoms where there
should instead have been leafy shoots in plants as diverse as
Arabidopsis, a roadside weed, tobacco and aspen trees" (p. B5). Wade
(1997c) writes: "Many of the most important fruit fly genes, like
those that tell the developing embryo to produce organs at certain
places, have been found to have counterparts in humans. The fly and
human versions of these genes are not identical but have
recognizably similar DNA sequences, reflecting their descent from a
common ancestral gene some 550 million years ago"; he also writes
that there is "surprising and extensive overlap of the genes among
all the model organisms" (p. B7). Biology's main model organisms are
fruit fly, mouse, worm C. elegans, zebra fish, and human.
25. See Hilts (1996, p. C19) on genes "that appear to clump together
in families that work on similar problems." See Wade (1997a) on the
similarities in gene clusters on mouse and human X chromosomes.
26. Pollack (1997, p. 674).
27. Luisi (1993. p. 19) and Popper (1974, pp. 168, 171). Popper
(1974) writes: "I now wish to give some reasons why I regard
Darwinism as metaphysical, and as a research program. It is
metaphysical because it is not testable. One might think that it is.
It seems to assert that, if ever on some planet we find life which
satisfies conditions (a) and (b) [heredity and variation), then (c)
[natural selection] will come into play and bring about in time a
rich variety of distinct forms. Darwinism, however, does not assert
as much as this. For assume we find life on Mars consisting of
exactly three species of bacteria with a genetic outfit similar to
that of three terrestrial species. Is Darwinism refuted? By no
means. We shall say that these three species were the only forms
among the many mutants which were sufficiently well adjusted to
survive. And we shall say the same if there is only one species (or
none). Thus Darwinism does not really predict the evolution of
variety. It therefore cannot really explain it. At best, it can
predict the evolution of variety under 'favorable conditions.' But
it is hardly possible to describe in general terms what favorable
conditions are - except that, in their presence, a variety of forms
will emerge" (p. 171, original italics). Dawkins (1986) provides a
good illustration of the tautologous tendencies of Darwinism when he
writes: "Even if there were no actual evidence in favour of the
Darwinian theory (there is, of course) we should still be justified
in preferring it over all rival theories" (p. 287). He also tells a
charming story of a beaver that undergoes a point mutation in its
genetic text; this leads to a change in the beaver's brain's "wiring
diagram." which makes the beaver hold its head higher in the water
while swimming with a log in its mouth; this makes it less likely
that the mud washes off die log, which makes the log stickier, which
makes the beavers dam a sounder structure, which increases the size
of the lake, which makes the beaver's lodge more secure against
predators, which increases the number of offspring reared by the
beavers. This means that beavers with the mutated gene will become
more numerous in time and will eventually become the norm. He
concludes: 'The fact that this particular story is hypothetical, and
that the details may be wrong, is irrelevant. The beaver dam evolved
by natural selection, and therefore what happened cannot be very
different, except in practical details, from the story I have told"
(p. 136). Wilson (1992) even provides an explicitly Darwinian
explanation for the worldwide phenomenon of snake veneration,
thereby showing that the theory of natural selection can be used to
justify more or less anything: "People are both repelled and
fascinated by snakes, even when they have never seen one in nature.
In most cultures the serpent is the dominant wild animal of mythical
and religious symbolism. Manhattanites dream of them with the same
frequency as Zulus. This response appears to be Darwinian in origin.
Poisonous
snakes have been an important cause of mortality almost everywhere,
from Finland to Tasmania, Canada to Patagonia; an untutored
alertness in their presence saves lives. We note a kindred response
in many primates, including Old World monkeys and chimpanzees" (p.
335). See also Moorhead and Kaplan, eds. (1967), Chandebois (1993),
and SchiUzenberger (1996) on the limits of Darwinism.
11: "WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?"
1. Jacques Mabit, a medical doctor doing remarkable work with
mestizo ayahuasqueros in Peru, notes that in the ayahuasca
literature, which contains over five hundred titles, less than 10
percent of the authors have tried the substance, and none has
followed the classical apprenticeship (see Mabit et al. 1992). Mabit
himself is one of the rare exceptions.
2. Hill (1992), in his article on Wakuenai musical curing, writes
regarding the fragmentation of Western knowledge: "Wakuenai curing
rituals are simultaneously musical, cosmological, social,
psychological, medical, and economic events, a multidimensionality
that 'embarrasses the categories' of Western scientific and artistic
culture" (p. 208).
3. Regarding the failure of Western-style education among the
indigenous people of Amazonia, see Gasché (1989-1990). Moreover, Gasché points out that intercultural education requires not only
funds, but a calling into question of anthropology as a science,
given that the discipline bases its existence on intercultural
dialogue between Indians and non-Indians, which can only occur
through a constant confrontation of these two realities; up until
now, an anthropology that is truly useful to the people who are its
object remains to be realized. Thus, Gasché (1993) writes: "From a
strictly logical, or more precisely topological, point of view, one
can envisage the orientation of anthropological discourse in the
direction not of the researchers own society, but, on the contrary,
of the society which is, or was, its object of study. Such a
proposition no doubt surprises, or even shocks some anthropologists,
because, indeed, it has hardly been formulated and has even less led
to careers. However, for anthropologists who assume the principle of
cultural relativism as a presupposition founding their scientific
attitude towards human societies, this proposition would logically
emerge as soon as they
postulate the coherence between their scientific statements and dieir social actions: if all societies are of equal worth, why do
anthropologists keep the benefits of the product of their labor
exclusively for their own society? This question is all the more
urgent that it brings into play two other central notions in
anthropology, namely exchange and reciprocity: the data, which are
the raw material of all anthropological thought, come from the
society that never benefits from the finished product. And it is the
question of return, of equilibration in the relationship between the
Indian society and the anthropologist, between the object and
subject of the research, which many Indians are currently posing in
the Peruvian Amazon" (pp. 27-28).
4. Davis (1993) writes: 'The current international discussion of
biodiversity prospecting and intellectual property rights fails to
comprehend this sacred or spiritual quality of Indigenous plant
knowledge, because it is so rooted in material considerations and
the economic dunking of the West" (p. 21). Posey (1994) writes:
"Intellectual property rights is a foreign concept to indigenous
peoples" (p. 235).
5. Luna and Amaringo (1991, p. 72). Regarding the multicultural past
of Pablo Amaringo, see p. 21 of the same book.
6. See Taussig (1987, p. 179).
7. Chaumeil (1992) writes: "We know about the fascination that the
forest and its inhabitants exert in matters of shamanism on Andean
and urban society. Urban and Andean shamans generally attribute
great powers to their indigenous colleagues, whom they visit
frequently, setting up vast shamanic exchange networks in Colombia,
Ecuador and Peru. In Brazil, many mestizo shamans adopt indigenous
methods and live temporarily in Indian villages to learn the
shamanic arts. Indeed, most claim to have had at least one
indigenous instructor, or recognize the indigenous origin of their
knowledge" (p. 93). Chaumeil goes on to explain that this exchange
works both ways and that there is "an increasing flux of young
indigenous people into towns where they go to learn the shamanic
arts with mestizo instructors, who develop the opposite tendency"
(p. 99).
8. Rosaldo (1980) writes: "Doing oral history involves telling
stories about stories people tell about themselves. Method in this
discipline should therefore attend to "our' stories, 'their'
stories, and the connections between them" (p. 89). Rosaldo (1989)
writes: "Such terms as objecivitij, neutrality, and impartiality
refer to subject positions once endowed with great institutional
authority, but they are
arguably neither more nor less valid than those of more engaged, yet
equally perceptive, knowledgeable social actors" (p. 21, original
italics). He adds: "Because researchers are necessarily both
somewhat impartial and somewhat partisan, somewhat innocent and
somewhat complicit, their readers should be as informed as possible
about what the observer was in a position to know and not know" (p.
69).
9. "Learned analysis" often escapes the understanding not only
of those who are its object, but of many Western individuals.
Anthropologists have written so many unreadable texts that the
literary critic Pratt (1986) writes: "For the lay person, such as
myself, the main evidence of a problem is the simple fact that
ethnographic writing tends to be surprisingly boring. How, one asks
constantly, could such interesting people doing such interesting
things produce such dull books? What did they have to do to
themselves?" (p. 33).
10. For a detailed discussion of the role of intuition, dreaming,
imagination, and illumination in the history of scientific
discoveries, see Beveridge (1950). Watson (1968) writes:
"Afterwards, in the cold, almost unhealed train compartment, I
sketched on the blank edge of my newspaper what I remembered of the
B pattern. Then as die train jerked towards Cambridge, I tried to
decide between two- and three-chain models. As far as I could tell,
the reason the King's group did not like two chains was not
foolproof. It depended upon the water content of the DNA samples, a
value they admitted might be in great error. Thus by the time I had
cycled back to college and climbed over the back gate, I had decided
to build two-chain models. Francis would have to agree. Even though
he was a physicist, he knew that important biological objects come
in pairs" (p. 166). The "B structure" mentioned by Watson refers to
an X-ray photograph of DNA taken by Rosalind Franklin, whose work
was thus central to Watson and Crick's discovery, but who received
no mention when the Nobel Prize was awarded. That she was a woman,
and that things should have occurred this way, was surely no
coincidence.
11. Beveridge (1950, p. 72). He adds: "The most important
prerequisite is prolonged contemplation of the problem and the data
until the mind is saturated with it. There must be a great interest
in it and desire for its solution. The mind must work consciously on
the problem for days in order to get the subconscious mind working
on it.... An important condition is freedom from other problems or
interests competing for attention, especially worry over private
affairs... . Another favorable condition is freedom from
interruption or even fear of interruption or any diverting influence
such as interesting conversation within earshot or sudden and
excessively loud noises.... Most people find intuitions are more
likely to come during a period of apparent idleness and temporary
abandonment of the problem following periods of intensive work,
light occupations requiring no mental effort, such as walking in the
country, bathing, shaving, travelling to and from work, are said by
some to be when intuitions most often appear.... Others find lying
in bed most favorable and some people deliberately go over the
problem before going to sleep and others before rising in the
morning. Some find that music has a helpful influence but it is
notable that only very few consider that they get any assistance
from tobacco, coffee Or alcohol" (p. 76). Mullis (1994) discusses in
his Nobel lecture how he conceived the polymerase chain reaction
while driving along a moonlit mountain road with his driving
companion asleep next to him. The polymerase chain reaction allows
one to amplify DNA from a few cells to vat full of cells in a few
hours; it spawned the genetic engineering revolution.
12. Artaud (1979, p. 193). The French original is "Je me livre a la
fievre des reves. mais e'est pour en retirer de nouvelles lois."
13. The contents of this famous soup are problematic. In 1952.
Stanley Miller and Harold Urey did an experiment that was to become
famous; they bombarded a test tube containing water, hydrogen,
ammonia, and methane with electricity, supposedly imitating the
atmosphere of the primitive earth with its permanent lightning
storms; after a week, they had produced 2 of the 20 amino acids that
nature uses in the construction of proteins. This experiment was
long cited as proof that life could emerge from an inorganic soup.
However, in the 1980s, geologists realized that an atmosphere of
methane and ammoniac would rapidly have been destroyed by sunlight
and that our planets primitive atmosphere most probably contained
nitrogen, carbon dioxide, water vapor, and traces of hydrogen. When
one bombards the latter with electricity, one does not obtain
biomolecules. So the prebiolic soup is increasingly considered to be
a "myth" (see Shapiro 1986).
14. Iteisse (1988) writes about panspermia "that this theory
presents a major defect. No acceptable criterion allows one to
measure its quality: by essence it cannot be refuted. Moreover,
panspermia in its modem version displaces the location where life
originated but leaves the fundamental problem of its origin intact"
(p. 101). De
Duve (1984) writes: "If you equate the probability of the birth of a
bacterial cell to that of the chance assembly of its component
atoms, even eternity will not suffice to produce one for you. So you
might as well accept, as do most scientists, that the process was
completed in no more than 1 billion years and that it took place
entirely on the surface of our planet, to produce, as early as 3.3
billion years ago, the bacteriumlike organisms revealed by fossil
traces" (p. 356). Watson et al. (1987) write in their chapter on the
origins of life: "In this chapter, we will assume, as do the vast
majority of practicing biologists, that life originated on Earth"
(p. 1098).
15. In the early 1980s, researchers discovered that
certain RNA molecules, called "ribozymes," could cut themselves up
and stick themselves back together again, acting as their own
catalysts. This led to the following speculation: If RNA is also an
enzyme, it could perhaps replicate itself without the help of
proteins. An RNA that is both gene and catalyst would solve the old
chicken-and-egg problem that has haunted the debate on the origin of
DNA and proteins. Scientists went on to formulate the theory of the
"RNA world," according to which the first organisms were RNA
molecules that learned to synthesize proteins, facilitating their
replication, and that surrounded themselves with lipids to form a
cellular membrane; these RNA-based organisms then evolved into
organisms with a genetic memory made of DNA, which is more stable
chemically. However, this theory is not only irrefutable, it leaves
many questions unsolved. Thus, to make RNA, one must have
nucleotides, and for the moment, no one has ever seen nucleotides
take shape by chance and line up to form RNA. As Shapiro (1994b)
writes, the "experiments conducted up until now have shown no
tendency for a plausible prebiotic soup to build bricks of RNA. One
would have liked to discover ribozymes capable of doing so, but this
has not been the case. And even if one were to discover any, this
would still not resolve the fundamental question: where did the
first RNA molecule come from?" (pp. 421-422). He adds: "After ten
years of relentless research, the most common and remarkable
property of ribozymes has been found to be the capacity to demolish
other molecules of nucleic acid. It is difficult to imagine a less
adapted activity than that in a prebiotic soup where die first
colony of RNA would have had to struggle to make their home" (p.
421). Kauffman (1996) writes: "The dominant view of life assumes
that self-replication must be based on something akin to
Watson-Crick base pairing. The 'RNA world" model of the origins of
life conforms to this view. But years of careful effort to find an
enzyme-free polynucleotide system able to undergo replication cycles
by sequentially and correctly adding the proper nucleotide to the
newly synthesized strand have not yet succeeded" (p. 497). Laszlo
(1997) writes: "The origin of life is more a question of metaphysics
than a scientific problem. The experimental facts gleaned by
different well-established authors allow only for scenarios, in an
unlimited number, all of which are fictive" (p. 26). Regarding
clay-based speculations, see Cairns-Smith (1983); regarding oily
bubbles, see Morowitz (1985); regarding self-replicating peptides,
see Lee et al. (1996).
16. Trémolieres (1994) writes: "Despite these terrible paradoxes,
the scientific world agrees that there must have existed something
before the current organization of life, and more precisely that
there were 'living* or 'pre-living' forms that did not yet contain
the genetic code, or in any case, not the code that we know. And
science has strangely developed its branches in a direction where
nothing exists any longer; this is the contrary of futurology - which
is apparently a science - or of science fiction, which is an art" (p.
70). Shapiro (1986) writes: "Scientific explanations flounder,
however, and possibilities multiply when we ask how this first cell
arose on earth. Competing theories abound - which seems always the
case when we know very little about a subject. Some theories, of
course, come labeled as The Answer. As such they are more properly
classified as mythology or religion than as science" (p. 13).
17. Shapiro (1994a, p. II). Watson et al. (1987) write:
"Unfortunately, it is impossible to obtain direct proof for any
particular theory of the origin of life. The sobering truth is that
even if every expert in the field of molecular evolution were to
agree on how life originated, the theory would still be a best guess
rather than a fact" (p. 1161). Wade (1995c) writes: "With a handful
of trivial exceptions, all forms of life have the same, apparently
arbitrary code through which DNA specifies protein molecules. If
life arises so spontaneously, why don't we see a variety of
different codes and chemistries in earths creatures? The universal
nature of the genetic code implies a one-time event, some narrow
gateway through which only a single entity or family of related life
forms was able to pass. One possibility is that life evolved
independently several times on earth and creatures with our genetic
code destroyed those based on all other codes. But there's no
evidence for such a code war. Or maybe the emergence of
life is indeed so improbable that it only happened once. Strange
then, that life seems to have arisen at the earliest moment possible
almost immediately after the primitive earth had cooled enough (pp.
22-23).
18. SuUivan(1988.p.33).
19. Chuang-Tzu(1968,p.43).