from bones to interstitium part one

FROM BONES TO INTERSTITIUM PART ONE SOME THOUGHTS & IMAGES FROM AN HISTORICAL & PARADIGMATIC PERSPECTIVE Stéphane Heude

Table of contents 1.

Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 2

2.

Epistemology's basics .................................................................................................................. 3 a.

What is science? ...................................................................................................................... 3

b.

Updating the body map: the iceberg bias ............................................................................... 4

c.

What is "new”? ........................................................................................................................ 7

3.

A short history of new biological paradigms ............................................................................... 8 a.

Bones and soul ........................................................................................................................ 8

b.

from soul to communication theory ..................................................................................... 13 i.

“Middle Age” ..................................................................................................................... 13

ii.

XVIIth century ..................................................................................................................... 20

iii.

XIXth to XXIth century .......................................................................................................... 25

iv.

Scientific images, map of meaning, and Art ...................................................................... 32

v.

Milieu intérieur, autopoiesis, and eco-systems ................................................................ 35

From bones to interstitium, part one http://tempsdrespirer.fr

1/38

1. Introduction A buzz started spreading in March 2018 among newspapers: "Move over skin, there’s a new largest human organ in town, and it comes with a fancy name to boot: the interstitium. 1", or another punchline: "The human body was thought to have 79 organs—until researchers stumbled on a strange phenomenon that could turn medicine and what we thought we knew about the body upside down."2 The name is tantalizing and is talking to our imagination, there are great images provided, and the idea that there was something that we have missed for so long is thrilling.

Vitruvian Man, 1487 Image : LeonardoDaVinci.net

In this paper we will discuss what leads to the interstitium concept, from the first modern body's drawing representations, due to dissection (Vesalus, Leonardo da Vinci) to its latest developments with new imagery tools that let us see living organisms at microscopic level.

When does a paradigm shift occur? In other words, when does a social acceptance's shift to new models (or system of beliefs) occur? This will lead us to study the evolution of the main concepts that reshape the way we see ourselves, from the zodiac man, Darwin with his evolution theory, Louis Pasteur and "germs", Claude Bernard and his milieu intérieur, epigenetic, the interstitium... What is new? Are ideas really new? What happened? Why do some ideas take some time before becoming a cultural reference? In what way do images help to explain complex scientific ideas and are a vector to the acceptance of new concepts? Do Sciences and Arts share things in common in their search of reality representation?3 Human body's story is a story about life and death, a story of the soul. Before anatomy and physiology, there was no “science” but “natural philosophy”, with sometimes a religious framework of analysis of the living. And as every history, it is filled with myths. This is a tale on bones, what remains, i.e. a symbol of death. Tissues, the brain, cells, extracellular stuff and at last fluid filled spaces inside the body. Some concepts existed for a very long time, but it was some experiments and observations, sometimes made possible thanks to technological

1

https://www.inquisitr.com/4844308/scientists-discovered-a-new-human-organ-possibly-the-biggest-in-your-body-andnamed-it-interstitium 2 https://www.thedailybeast.com/meet-the-interstitium-the-largest-organ-we-never-knew-we-had 3

http://www.sporobole.org/la-science-est-elle-un-art-13-vasari-versus-riegl/


2/38

improvements, that lead to the refutation of some theories or the acceptance of new ones. From this perspective, it is also a story of beliefs.

2. Epistemology's basics a. What is science?

Mindmap of some ideas explored in this chapter

“Finally, with regard to this time-binding, a man cannot live beyond the grave. Each generation that discovers something from its experience must pass that on, but it must pass that on with a delicate balance of respect and disrespect, so that the [human] race– now that it is aware of the disease to which it is liable–does not inflict its errors too rigidly on its youth, but it does pass on the accumulated wisdom, plus the wisdom that it may not be wisdom. It is necessary to teach both to accept and to reject the past with a kind of balance that takes considerable skill. Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers of the preceding generation”. Richard Feynman4 The great XXth physicist Richard Feynman gave a lecture about what science is, with the challenge to pass knowledge from one generation to another (“time-bending” issue), the gain it represents to pass a memory rather than to all learn by one self’s experiment. There is also sometimes a confusion between belief and science. Science is a process. Moreover, the worm is in the fruit. Alfred Korzybski developed the idea of general semantic. To exchange we use language and models of representation. Models are just models, with their inner 4

http://www.feynman.com/science/what-is-science/ “Another of the qualities of science is that it teaches the value of rational thought as well as the importance of freedom of thought; the positive results that come from doubting that the lessons are all true. You must here distinguish–especially in teaching–the science from the forms or procedures that are sometimes used in developing science. It is easy to say, “We write, experiment, and observe, and do this or that.” You can copy that form exactly. But great religions are dissipated by following form without remembering the direct content of the teaching of the great leaders. In the same way, it is possible to follow form and call it science, but that is pseudoscience.”


3/38

properties, advantages and flaws. A common mistake is to consider a map as the territory. A map is not the territory. We can confuse the word itself with what the word stands for, facts with our beliefs, and use language to ‘separate’ what in the actual world cannot be separated such as “space” from “time”, “mind” from “body”. Thomas Kuhn developed some ideas around the notion of paradigm5, the practices that define a scientific discipline at a certain point in time.

As a human person, we live in a cultural context, and we see and interpret the world through our cultural lens. So what makes our common cultural referential evolve? What makes us update our old “models”?

Geneticist Richard Dawkins coined the term meme. Meme was seen as a gene of the immaterial world. Ideas spread through people’s minds. We could talk of “ideas virus”. Howard Bloom said that memes shape social groups. With modern social medias, we can see how people fight for their ideas/beliefs! And since we are considering science's history, we must consider what historians told us. History is full of myths6, so we must be aware not to consider a mythical past in our analysis. Another error would be to analyze the past with the mindset our present cultural context. The study of knowledge and justified belief is called epistemology7. b. Updating the body map: the iceberg bias So how has our vision of the human body evolved from a medical perspective? How has tools’ evolution or body representation lead to new ways to consider ourselves? How do our beliefs make us resist change? Did great minds change the way we see ourselves through our lifetime?

We will try to develop the idea of the iceberg bias, world is interpreted through what we see. We will try to rationalize it through the emerged part only.

Hand washing is a common practice, right? In fact, in the XIXth century the practice could have been odd. Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865), an Austrian physician, saw a correlation between puerperal fever and unwashed hands among the hospital staffers and proposed to clean hands in 1847. Despite studies that showed a reduced mortality thanks to this practice, his ideas were rejected by the medical community and had an impact on his social life and career. Semmelweis finished sadly his life in an asylum, eventually beaten to death by some guards. Why did his ideas not spread among scientists of his time? We can have a guess:

5

"Margaret Masterson identified 21 distinct senses in which Kuhn used the term paradigm." https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/07/18/486487713/what-is-a-paradigm-shift-anyway 6

On this subject:"Le moyen-âge une imposture" by Jack Heers, or Bruno Dumézil, Sylvain Goughenheim, Didier Le Fur, Claire Colombi or the Philosopher Philippe Nemo in his "Deux républiques françaises" on how politicians rewrite purposely history, like in fictional "1984" by Orwell. 7 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/


4/38

•

•

•

People believe what they see. If we do not see, we do not believe. A germ theory was proposed by an Italian physician, Girolamo Fracastoro in 1546. But it will be proved and accepted after the works of French biologist Louis Pasteur that disproved spontaneous generation theory. Germ = germination, and we now use the word pasteurization for the boiling process to kill germs in liquids. It was neither the right time nor the right model, even if in practice Semmelweis could spare lives, his theorical model of “cadaverous particles” did not convince and was inaccurate. Despite his claims stemmed from the ideas prominent in his epoch,, it arrived a few years too early and with a communication problem. Did his ideas have an impact on his social life or did his social skills deserve his ideas? Or both? Experts know better. If you were a doctor, if Semmelweis theory was true, it would have induced that medical staff was responsible for spreading infections to their patients. This would have been difficult to accept. With the advantage of time binding, a new generation will challenge old beliefs. Indeed, for a person maintaining some beliefs all his life, it would probably be complicated to change after a long period of time.

This story shows that some ideas (like the "germ" theory) took centuries before there were works that proved them, and that lead to general acceptance. Even with clinical evidence, some theories can be confronted to strong beliefs among scientists. Since then, we have been able to observe at a microscopic level. Most bacterial cells range in size from 0.2 to 10 microns (millionth of a meter or μm)

Chart size of different living organisms8

8

image from http://microbiologyonline.org/about-microbiology/introducing-microbes/overview


5/38

biofilm grown (2013) from Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), invented in 1937 Courtesy of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory9

Since the "germ" theory, we have been discovering the very small world of bacteria and viruses. In the 1950s, with the works and Nobel prize of James Watson and Francis Crick for their discovery of DNA, we changed the way we see balance mechanisms in human life. Nowadays, since microbiome has gained general acceptance, bacteria in our guts are an important part of our immune system and even have an impact on our cognitive functions! And we have recently established that bacteria represent 13% of the earth’s total biomass, compare to 0,01% for Humans10…. Oh, by the way… What we call DNA, this molecule was first identified by a Swiss chemist called Johann Friedrich Miescher back in 186011.

9

https://www.flickr.com/photos/pnnl/9496315557 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/05/15/1711842115 11 https://www.yourgenome.org/stories/the-discovery-of-dna 10


6/38

c. What is "new”? "Move over skin, there’s a new largest human organ in town". Reading all those articles, explaining we have discovered another organ, we could ask ourselves when was the last time we "discovered" an organ? The answer could surprise us, it was in 2017, there was another story that went viral. We "discovered" a new organ, the "79th". 79? The mesentery, a fan-shaped fold that lines the guts.

“It’s a silly number, if a bone is an organ, there’s 206 organs right there. No two anatomists will agree on a list of organs in the body”12 What makes an organ? Wikipedia tells us "Organs are collections of tissues with a similar function". But who validates that a part of the body is an organ? We have known the mesentery for a very long time... Is this the better understanding of it that leads to a status change? Some research shows that this is not so simple since we had already known the new claim for a very long time. Discover magazine did make the investigation: "But Coffey didn’t discover the mesentery, nor was he the first to describe its contiguous structure. Leonardo Da Vinci depicted it as a single organ. In 1878, Carl Toldt echoed Da Vinci’s findings, which then were echoed by anatomist Edward Congdon in 1942 and again by Wylie J. Dobbs in 1986. But these findings were largely ignored in mainstream literature, and British surgeon Sir Frederick Treves’ description of a fragmented mesentery — from 1885 — enjoyed a long shelf life, but no longer. Gray’s Anatomy has been updated in light of mounting evidence like Coffey’s, and the mesentery is whole once again."13 So, here is the question: what makes an organ? And, perhaps, who makes an organ? "However, this is an unofficial distinction; for a body part to officially become an organ, a consensus would need to develop around the idea as more researchers study it"14

12

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2017/01/06/got-mesentery-news-wrong

13

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2017/01/06/got-mesentery-news-wrong 14 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/meet-your-interstitium-a-newfound-organ/


7/38

3. A short history of new biological paradigms a. Bones and soul When people are dead, bones remain. This has an impact on human arts, as we represent death with skulls and bones. Due to plagues, famines, wars, a new form of Art developed in Occident from the XIVth to the XVIth century, the danse macabre15, with picture representation of skeletons as personification of death, dancing with living people, highlighting social distinction's vanity. This could probably have had a cultural impact, to explain the importance bones had when people started to study human body. This is an anchor bias.

La danse macabre des saints innocents, 1484 source Gallica16

This fascination continues, through TV shows like “bones”17 where we can follow crime investigation through the eyes of a forensic anthropologist, where bones tell us stories when you know how to read them. One major contribution to our modern representation of the human body started with Flemish Andreas Vesalius’s work, most known actually for his drawings in The Fabrica (1543 & 1555). According to Vesalius, the bones are the foundation of the body, the structure to which everything else must be related. Analysis and representation of the body was referred to what was on the bones. His work is a combination of drawings and texts as well as philosophy of medicine. We can also see he considers the body as a whole and not only as parts. As of today, sole images would not have been enough to make sure his work becomes a major one. The very word “fabrica” could be interpreted as referring not only to the structure of the body but to the basic structure or foundation of the medical art as well.

15

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse_Macabre http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k97352151/f134.planchecontact.r=Danse%20macabre%20du%20clo%C3 %AEtre%20des%20Saints%20Innocents 17 http://bones.wikia.com/wiki/Temperance_Brennan 16


8/38

In addition to that, we can see that Vesalius was aware of problems of terminology (naming as a metaphor), pedagogy and methodology. The name “mitral valve” comes from the “bishop’s miter”, and the malleus from a hammer shape. "The presentation of a new anatomy and anatomical method raised several problems, of which the first was that of terminology. As in the Tabulae Anatomicae (1538), Vesalius continued to use terms from several languages but stressed the Greek form wherever possible. If this was not enough for clarity, an extensive description was given to localize the part with reference to other parts, and illustrations of the particular organ or structure were provided. Additionally, as a mnemonic device and for increased comprehension, anatomical structures were related to common objects, the radius, for example, being compared to the weaver’s shuttle and the trapezius muscle to the cowl of the Benedictine monks. Some of Vesalius’ terms are still in use, so that this aspect of his pedagogy plays the same role today as it did in the sixteenth century."18 Andreas Vesalius, Source19

It is interesting to consider why some other greats mind of the same time could have seen their ideas rejected. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) made a very impressive production, we mostly know his work as a painter, with a lot of details in anatomy, as we can see with its Saint Jerome:

St Jerome, c. 1482, detail, source: Musei vaticani20

18

https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/medicine/medicine-biographies/andreas-vesalius

19

https://nyamcenterforhistory.org/tag/andreas-vesalius/ http://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/musei/la-pinacoteca/sala-ix---secolo-xvxvi/leonardo-da-vinci--s--girolamo.html 20


9/38

He used his skills to produce anatomical drawings with great accuracy despite the limited technology of his time.

“The bones, muscles and tendons of the hand c.1510-11 and 3D image of a dissected hand.” Photo: Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2013 /© Mark Mobley, West Midlands Surgical Training Centre – Source: Telegraph21

Leonardo also had an interest in embryology and produced some studies based on dissection too:

source: Royal collection22

21

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/edinburgh-festival/9923336/Leonardo-da-Vinci-was-right-allalong-new-medical-scans-show.html 22 https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/themes/exhibitions/leonardo-da-vinci/the-queens-gallerypalace-of-holyroodhouse


10/38

From a physiological perspective, Da Vinci noticed the continuity from an ontogenic point of view, between the mother and the fetus, he wrote: "In the case of this child, the heart does not beat and it does not breathe because it lies continually in water. And if it were to breathe, it would be drowned, and breathing is not necessary to it because it receives life and is nourished from the life and food of the mother."23 Far from our beliefs, what made Leonardo da Vinci a heretic at this time was not that he practiced dissection, but his views on soul's nature that diverged from the dogma. Yes, you read it well, sometimes this subject is discarded in scientific writings, but we will consider it. He believed the mother and the fetus shared one soul until birth, contrary to the main Aristotle's dogma that ensoulment happened at around day forty of the fetus’s development24. At this time, research was interpreted in a cultural framework called "natural philosophy". Soul mattered. Image: Human embryo development by Kosekatsumi CC BY-SA 3.0 from Wikimedia Commons25

From our perspective, perhaps we can consider the "soul" debate of no interest and quite surreal. But let us consider abortion’s harsh debate between pro-choice (mother‘s point of view) and pro-life (fetus’ point of view) at our time. In France26, a woman can legally have a medical procedure to abort till 12th week's pregnancy. In other cultures, for example some indigenous tribes in Brazil, "the human body is the result of a cultural "construction". This is a complete process that stretches from birth to puberty"27, and we can encounter infanticide. In Asia, in some countries, female feticide was so high that some people asked if it were some kind of girl genocide?28 In England, there has been a huge controversy against the state that decided to let a baby die while his parents wanted to save him despite his brain condition and the fact that Italy agreed to treat him at no cost29. In other countries, genetic tests plus voluntary abortion lead to the end of some genetic diseases like Down syndrome: 23

http://fn.bmj.com/content/77/3/F249 https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/leonardo-da-vincis-embryological-annotations and see also Domenico Laurenza "Leonardo L'anatomia" 25 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MRM_of_human_embryo 26 https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F1551 27 Bioethics, culture and infanticide in Brazilian indigenous communities: the Zuruahá case http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0102-311X2010000500002 28 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276525998_Female_Infanticide_in_19thCentury_India_A_Genocide 29 https://erlc.com/resource-library/articles/how-to-understand-the-alfie-evans-controversy 24


11/38

"We ended a possible life that may have had a huge complication... preventing suffering for the child and for the family. And I think that is more right than seeing it as a murder -- that's so black and white. Life isn't black and white. Life is grey."30. Eric Blechschmidt (1904 – 1992), researcher on human ontogenetic, explains us that we know today that no developmental phase exists that constitutes a transition from the not-yet-human to the human31. In other words, since the very first cell, individuality is here. Abortion is an ethical subject with very emotional reactions because of its intimacy, cultural context, personal history and projections we all make. What is important to take in consideration for our article is that emotional reaction seems to exist on most subjects that are linked with our beliefs. Even in scientific fields, it is easier to be less emotional when subjects are far in time or space, or if do not have a deep impact on our map of representation. After that, France’s ruler, King Francis offered a title to Leonardo as “Premier Painter and Engineer and Architect to the King,”, and Leonardo came to France where he finished his life there. In what way Leonardo's anatomical work changed medical sciences of his time? The answer could probably be disappointing. Unfortunately, his work was not published and was even "lost"' for a hundred years as part of his personal papers...

While we are in France at this era, we can consider another great mind of his time: Ambroise Paré (1510-1590), modern surgery's "father", also known for « Je le pansay, Dieu le guarist » (I dressed him, God cured him). He was official royal surgeon of several kings in France, and military surgeon. He developed teeth's implantation, artificial limbs, and artificial eyes, and noticed phantom limb syndrome. He was concerned about minimizing patient's pain and promoting healing. Because his writings were published without having requested the Faculty of Physicians (“The Method of Treating Wounds Made by Harquebuses and Other Guns” was published in 1545 without having validated by the Faculty of Physicians), he was ridiculed. Moreover, it was written in French rather than in Latin and he was therefore called an "ignorant". His many innovations did not win immediate medical acceptance32. In other words, his practice challenged "beliefs" or more exactly beliefs of people in power in medicine of his time. To conclude this chapter, Leonardo did not have a great opinion about physicians of his time... he believed that we need to understand our nature in order to preserve health: “Strive to preserve your health; and in this you will the better succeed in proportion as you keep clear of the physicians, for their drugs are a kind of alchemy concerning which there are no fewer books than there are medicines ... You know that medicines when well used restore health to the sick: they will be well used when the doctor together with his understanding of their nature shall understand also what man is, what life is, and what constitution and health are."33

30

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/down-syndrome-iceland/ The Ontogenetic Basis of Human Anatomy: The Biodynamic Approach to Development from Conception to Adulthood, 32 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ambroise-Pare 33 http://fn.bmj.com/content/77/3/F249 31


12/38

b.

from soul to communication theory

i. “Middle Age” "MIDDLE AGE" (from 1200) Some subjects that matters What it implies Greek philosophers' rediscovery Natural philosophy framework of analysis Universities development Power's struggle between ecclesiastical and secular, local and central power. Manuscript to print Knowledge organization and diffusion of ideas Artistic Painting Better representation of the human body from a medical point of view Dissection Basic tools to explore the body Bones & soul Where the foundation of human representation lays Latin "International" medical language, with limitation to the diffusion of ideas 34 Postal system Mainly for business since the 13th century No copyright The time of copyists to preserve knowledge35 Epidemic and "black death" Depending of your location, the death rate was between 20 and (1347-1670)36 60%37... we can understand the psycho-social impact on society: "Most people believed plague and mass illness to be a punishment from God for their sins."38 Viruses and bacteria were not known at this time. Now that we have considered the most advanced minds of their time, let us have a look at the medieval cultural framework. Man was a world of his own, more exactly a little world, a microcosm, which reflected the macrocosm universe39. These cosmological beliefs were based on the Greeks’ views such as Ptolemy and Aristotle40, and reflected ideas about an ordered universe, a geocentric sphere model (earth-centered), and the link between the world as a whole and as a part (the upper one was perfect and gave movement to the others). In fact, during Man's evolution, we can find similar models among the Babylonians, Egyptians, Mayans, Chinese... In this article, we will have a focus on the past to study its evolution from a Western perspective. Image: Liber divinorum operum, 13th century, man

34

https://www.britannica.com/topic/postal-system See Aristote au mont Saint-Michel : Les racines grecques de l'Europe chrétienne by Sylvain Gouguenheim 36 http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC1743272&blobtype=pdf 37 https://infogram.com/the_black_death-7 38 https://www.historytoday.com/ole-j-benedictow/black-death-greatest-catastrophe-ever 39 https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/macrocosm-andmicrocosm 40 http://www.luminarium.org/encyclopedia/medievalcosmology.htm 35


13/38

as the "microcosm" in the centre of the celestial spheres.41

The great mystical Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) explained the soul to us: "Just as a mirror, which reflects all things, is set in its own container, so too the rational soul is placed in the fragile container of the body. In this way, the body is governed in its earthly life by the soul, and the soul contemplates heavenly things through faith." Some centuries later, Robespierre, during the French revolution, on 18 Floreal (May 7th, 1794), established the Cult of the Supreme Being. New religion, same soul. The French people recognize the existence of the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul42

Beside the Soul, there was another cultural difference with our time: the way physicians were perceived. Till the late XIXth century, physicians dressed themselves in black. Some explanations point to the fact that black was formal. And perhaps we will need to wait until there is true knowledge to get respect without formal dress… Another point is linked to death culture: “An additional or alternative possibility for the dark garb might be that until the late 19th century seeking medical advice was usually a last resort and frequently a precursor to death. Until the last third of the 1800s, an encounter with a physician rarely benefited the patient. In fact, up to that point, virtually all of "medicine" entailed many worthless cures and much quackery.”43 This long introduction was important to have a better understanding of the Homo signorum, the zodiac man. Whatever era we can consider, we would probably find an equilibrium theory, a theory of balance. The upper world exerts influence on our lower world through “humor”, four fluids in the body. Aristotle was rediscovered in the XIIth century and had a huge impact on the ideas of this time, as well as Hippocrates or Galen (Greek from 129-216 AD). The mind’s inclination follows the body’s temperature. Some people even consider that this theory of humor had influence centuries later on Shakespeare’s characters (1564-1616). The four humors were thought to define peoples‘ physical and mental health, and determined their personalities, as well as the four elements were thought to have an impact on the four humors of the body44.

41

https://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/galileopalazzostrozzi/object/HildegardOfBingenLiberDivinorumOperum.html http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b6950538d 43 http://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/2007/04/mhst1-0704.html#GrossClinic 44 https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/shakespeare/introduction.html 42


14/38

Here is a table that link different characteristics to humors: Humor BLOOD PHLEGM YELLOW BILE BLACK BILE

Element AIR WATER FIRE EARTH

Behavior SANGUINE PHLEGMATIC CHOLERIC MELANCHOLIC

Season SPRING AUTUMN SUMMER WINTER

Organ HEART BRAIN GALL BLADDER SPLEEN

Planet JUPITER MOON MARS SATURN

Each part of the body is linked to a zodiac sign. For example, Scorpio is linked to reproductive organs, pelvis, urinary bladder, rectum, or Aries to head, eyes, adrenals, blood pressure. The diagram informed doctors and barbers/surgeons when to perform or avoid medical procedure (surgery, bloodletting, medication) and to avoid interfering with a body part when the moon could be found in its corresponding sign45 : "Membrum ferro ne percutito, cum Luna signum tenuerit, quod membro illi dominatur."[ attributed to Claudius Ptolemy].

Heymandus de Veteri Busco, 1488, Ars computistica, with astrological and divinatory material Source: https://wellcomelibrary.org/item/b19504883

Till what century did the humor system work? Research discarded old models of representation. The circulatory system, digestive system, respiratory system put an end to the humor theory. Do we have to take in consideration when we discovered new models or when there was social acceptance? 17th, 18th century? Another interesting part, if the physiological aspect of the humor was invalidated, Swiss physiognomist Johann Kaspar Lavater used the four humors to advance four specific persona types as dictated by their respective facial structures, expressions and colourations.46

45 46

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiac_Man http://www.thecolourworks.com/hippocrates-galen-the-four-humours/


15/38

1420 source Wellcome Libray47

European “Middle-age” was a time of University development under the Catholic Church. After a strike in the University of Paris in 1229, succeeding riots and deaths, Pope Gregory IX published the bull "Parens scientiarum", where University became the "Mother of Sciences". This point illustrates the struggle of power between secular power rising in town and the Church, and between local religious power and centralized religious power. University were placed under papal patronage48. In 1451 Gutenberg was at the beginning of Europe’s modern printing techniques. It was a huge change in human history. Copy and diffusion of books and ideas.

47 48

https://wellcomelibrary.org/item/b19684915 https://worldhistoryproject.org/1227/3/19/ugolino-di-conti-gregory-ix-elected-pope


16/38

Before medical book printing, books were manuscript. So, our ancestors needed to have a simple index to manage information. This index was the wounded man49. This survived for some centuries. With time, it became just as an illustration since the text had vanished. Image 1420 Wellcome Library

The wounded man was a graphical representation of all things that can occur to a man, from Scorpio’s venom to a wound by weapon, with the description and index to related information inside the book. The wounded woman version exists, too.

This illustration is from a German manuscript. We can notice that it is written in Latin, the "English" from the time. We can notice on the breast specific interest for women: "cancer mamilla" "defectio lactis". Fasciculus medicinae, Venedig, 14911

49

http://www.britishartstudies.ac.uk/issues/issue-index/issue-6/wound-man http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2016/08/wound-man-part-1-origins/


17/38

Another consideration: How are these drawings realistic compared to Leonardo da Vinci’s works? In our time, we still use this kind of diagram representation, for example on this image that illustrates some stress effects on the body, both schematic image + text. image wikimedia50

Before the "scientific revolution", this was not about "biology/physiology" but "natural philosophy". Physiognomy, astrology, and magic mattered at this time. Now this would be considered as pseudo-scientific. But, every era, even since science has "replaced" religions, considers old beliefs as pseudo-science and no longer to be shared. Perhaps, we just need to try considering the subjects that are used as lenses to explain today's world in order to discover modern myths. So, how did the study of human biology interact with philosophical concepts of their time? Ubi desinit philosophus (or physicus), incipit medicus “where the philosopher ends, the physician begins” Daniel Furlanus (1600)51. And what was the place of images in studies and knowledge transmission? “The effort and significant cost expended to create these and other philosophical images attest to how highly such prints were valued in the study and transmission of philosophy. “52

And finally, how was managed knowledge (old beliefs versus new ones)? At this time “cosmographers” used to map the universe as a whole system as we have seen, combining both geography and philosophy. A map is not just an illustration. A map structures knowledge. As we can notice on the image we see from this time, in astrology representation, there was a will of order, that represented Greek philosophical concepts.

50

By Gdudycha [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], from Wikimedia Commons 51 "so went a proverb which implied an ambiguous boundary between the two disciplines: on the one hand, it reflected the need to move beyond the theory represented by philosophy and into the actual practice of medicine; on the other, it affirmed the idea that natural philosophy was necessary in order to prepare for medical studies." https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natphil-ren/ 52

https://publicdomainreview.org/2017/08/30/the-art-of-philosophy-visualising-aristotle-in-early-17thcentury-paris/


18/38

“I know very well that some might say: Just who is this new cosmographer who in his writings takes to task ancient as well as modern authors, in order to assert new things? But I ask them: is nature so constrained by and subject to what the Ancients said about her, that she could not subsequently have changed, producing yet another vicissitude in those things they had described?” Cosmographie Universelle, Thevet, 1555 53

La mesure cosmographique du monde, Sébastien Münster 1552, 1565, et 1568, frontispice, source Persée54

Funny fact, it is only in the XXIth century that we come to understand that map we use to represent continents were false. This lead to the misrepresentation of territory size on earth, upsizing Europe and downsizing Africa.

Image https://thetruesize.com

53

https://www.academia.edu/6143169/Passing_Knowledge_Andr%C3%A9_Thevets_Cosmographical_Epistemolo gy 54 https://www.persee.fr/doc/ahess_0395-2649_1991_num_46_2_278945#ahess_03952649_1991_num_46_2_T1_0242_0000


19/38

ii. XVIIth century Visualization of Aristotelian natural philosophy, through spatial construct and commentaries:

Clara totius physiologiae synopsis ; 1615, Gaultier, France, source Gallica55

Even if evolution is a process, it is time to look at the "scientific revolution" of the XVIIth century. Cultural framework evolution leads to change far beyond just one specific domain. Some stories we want to highlight: the discoverer of the circulatory system was so afraid of the reaction about his findings, that heart was a pump and not the location of the soul, that he published his work outside his country, hoping no one would notice. This is very interesting because, in our time, with the Internet, there is no such space, we call this subject free speech. But free speech can have a deep social impact on the lives of the people that use it. Social acceptance is not linked to an "objective truth" but to our cultural beliefs. The XVIIth century was a time of technological developments and new tools lead to new discoveries. The microscope lead to observe bacteria. As we saw it, it will take some more time before spontaneous

55

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b55002425z/f1.item


20/38

generational theory is disproved, and that bacteria changed in importance on our representation of the world and life. René Descartes and others introduced an age of deductive reasoning. If Descartes is remembered as a metaphysician, he was also a mathematician. In his correspondence, he wrote that "he had decided not to explain “just one phenomenon” (the parhelia), but rather to compose a treatise in which he explained “all the phenomena of nature, that is to say, the whole of physics” "56. Portrait of René Descartes, source Gallica57

This lead to separate scientific fields, between what we would call science and pseudo-science from our modern days. Descartes has had such a huge impact on medical fields, that we can still feel it today! Earlier culture had a vision of the human body as a reflection of the Soul. Descartes told us that body and mind were distinct, we call it today "mind-body dualism". This was at the core of the bodymind problem, how can these two distinct substances interact?58 Nowadays, we still see specialization in medicine between fields that manage the body, and fields that manage the mind as separate objects. [T]here is a great difference between the mind and the body, inasmuch as the body is by its very nature always divisible, while the mind is utterly indivisible. For when I consider the mind, or myself in so far as I am merely a thinking thing, I am unable to distinguish any parts within myself; I understand myself to be something quite single and complete…. By contrast, there is no corporeal or extended thing that I can think of which in my thought I cannot easily divide into parts; and this very fact makes me understand that it is divisible. This one argument would be enough to show me that the mind is completely different from the body…. (AT VII 86-87: CSM II 59).59 Sixth Meditation, René Descartes

“The body parts in the man’s basket, which seems also to hold is left foot, represent an explication of how a whole human body may be divided into parts”60

Artificiosa totius logices descriptio, 1614 source Gallica 61

56

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/ http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8404201d.r=gravure%20de%20Descartes?rk=21459;2 58 http://www.iep.utm.edu/descmind/ 59 http://www.iep.utm.edu/descmind/ 60 https://publicdomainreview.org/2017/08/30/the-art-of-philosophy-visualising-aristotle-in-early-17thcentury-paris/ 61 http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8401680g/f1.item 57


21/38

One last story to illustrate the XVIIth century’s state of mind. Let’s go back to another personal physician of the king. The king is Louis XIV, we are in France. Our physician is named Jean-Baptiste Denis. Jean-Baptiste Denis transfused calf’s blood into a man, thinking it could cure his madness62. About the question on why transfer animal blood to a human being? There are many answers, the “purity” of the blood, in order to change “bad blood” (remember the humors?). Another reason was that it is simple to take blood from an animal if there is any problem…. Image “An early blood transfusion from lamb to man” CC BY Wellcome Library63

The man died, there was a trial. Denis claimed his wife poisoned the patient… Blood transfusion was prohibited after that by law. Outside the “faculté de Paris” that was considered “against practice”64. Man to man transfusion will start a long time later in the XIXth century, and blood transfusion will start to become safe only after blood groups have been discovered at the beginning of the XXth century. Japan will develop its own kind of pseudo-scientific discrimination based on blood groups in 1927, named burahara.

“It was believed that the four blood groups corresponded to the classes of feudal Japan: type O (confident and strong-willed) for warriors; type A (mild-mannered and submissive) for farmers; type AB (intelligent and sensitive) for artisans; and type B (cheerful and outgoing) for tradesmen.”65 XVIIth century Some subjects that matters What it implies Scientific and epistemological René Descartes emphasized the use of reason to develop natural revolution sciences. Before that, there was a focus on sensory experience to understand the world, and Descartes and others developed reason and deductive reasoning. "His works were placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1663" in catholic lands.66 62

http://portail.atilf.fr/cgi-bin/getobject_?a.124:178./var/artfla/encyclopedie/textdata/IMAGE/ https://wellcomecollection.org/works/jj7nx247 64 https://www.ints.fr/TransfusionHistorique.aspx https://www.thoughtco.com/17th-century-timeline-1992482 65 https://www.thedailybeast.com/un-true-blood-japans-weird-taste-for-discrimination-against-type-bs 66 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/ 63


22/38

Isaac Newton explained that all natural philosophy could be explained through mathematics67. His law of universal gravitation and three laws of motions (inertia, acceleration, action and reaction) are still known in physics. This lead to the development of modern science based on reasoning and mathematic.

Human Circulatory System

First blood transfusion in France to men First description of a bacteria Areopagitica

Calculating machine The beginning of “vaccination”

This had some major impact in splitting some fields like: astronomy and astrology, alchemy and chemistry. William Harvey68, personal physician of the English King, proved the existence of the circulatory system with an experiment. He was so afraid of the reaction of his discovery that he published his discoveries outside his country with a German publisher, in Latin (the scientific language of the time), hoping no one would notice it in England! He had "fear of mob reactions, church condemnation when he said that the heart was just a muscular pump and not the house of soul and consciousness"69. Animal to man transfusion to cure madness, that will lead to a halt in this practice for some centuries. Anton Van Leeuwenhoek, created the microscope and described bacteria.70 John Milton is still today a famous writer, known for his Paradise Lost. He also published a book Areopagitica, For the Liberty of unlicensed Printing. This text had no impact at his time. But it is still very atemporal since it writes about free speech and censorship. According to George H Sabine: "Its basic principle was the right and also the duty of every intelligent man as a rational being, to know the grounds and take responsibility for his beliefs and actions. Its corollary was a society and a state in which decisions are reached by open discussion, in which the sources of information are not contaminated by authority in the interest of party, and in which political unity is secured not by force but by a consensus that respects variety of opinion." Some kind of basic. In China there was a long practice of inoculation to protect against smallpox, “variolation”… It spread to Turkish regions in the XVIIth century, before coming to European attention at the beginning of the XVIIIth71. At the end of the eighteenth century, observations on milkmaids lead to vaccination (vaccine derived from “vache”, in french: a cow).

67

https://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/famous-scientists/physicists/isaac-newton2.htm http://www.aabb.org/tm/Pages/highlights.aspx 69 https://thegreatestsciencediscoveries.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/human-circulatory-system-5/ 70 https://www.thoughtco.com/anton-van-leeuwenhoek-1991633 71 http://www.gilbertling.org/lp5.htm 68


23/38

As XXIth century Internet users, we probably think that the practice of “visual memes” started with the Internet and social media. We can even find studies that “analyze these memes related to semiotics and mythologies, as well as their role as a dominant part of popular cyber-culture. This paper will also serve as an understanding of teaching students of how images, texts, and art relate with each other to become another way of communication and at the same time, create meanings or messages.”72 We use the same image with a different text; the art produced can go viral and live for a few hours, days or even years… A very famous Internet meme is the Philosoraptor, that asks questions. There is also an image of a man looking at another woman that has been reused a

lot recently: In fact, the reuse and recycling of images already existed in the XVIIth century, mainly because woodcut was expensive and difficult to produce73. So, the same image was reused in different contexts. This self-replication illustrates the popular cultural framework of a time, and how an image can be the support for spreading ideas and shaping minds.

You can insert your own text in the bubble Source: https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/34937/

We will not discuss the XVIIIth century in this paper but just mention a book, "Origine des découvertes attribuées aux modernes"(1776)74 (On the Origin of Discoveries Attributed to Moderns) where the 72

http://english.binus.ac.id/2013/06/24/analysis-on-internet-memes-using-semiotics/ https://publicdomainreview.org/2018/06/06/early-modern-memes-the-reuse-and-recycling-of-woodcuts-in17th-century-english-popular-print/ 74 https://archive.org/details/originedesdcou01dute 73


24/38

author tries to show that modern ideas in science and philosophy can be found in ancient wisdom. Perhaps this paper's idea is not completely new. iii. XIXth to XXIth century The center of interest in science evolved, with the new science of anthropology in the XIXth century. With The origin of species by Charles Darwin, 1859, scientist started to have interest into evolution, and what makes us different from apes. One of the interest was in the intelligence, that make us "special" in the evolution. In some point of view, we can consider we symbolically switched of interest from the soul to the mind/brain. Unfortunately, there were political claims based on pseudoscience as justification of supremacy on some human groups on others…. This new paradigm lead to develop so-called "science" of the crane shape, which was used to justify racist policies. "Craniometry is the measurement of cranial features in order to classify people according to race, criminal temperament, intelligence, and so on… In the 19th century, the British used craniometry to justify its racist policies toward the Irish and black Africans, whom the British considered to be inferior races." 75

This focus on the brain lead to scientific myths that do persist still in our days... For example, every person that has interests in medicine or cognitive science must have read about Phineas Gage, a man that survived a "javelin” through his skull. The fact is, most of what we read is just fantasy. Portrait of Gage holding the tamping iron that injured him. Phyllis Gage Hartley/Creative Commons

Macmillan calls it “scientific license.” “When you look at the stories told about Phineas,” he says, “you get the impression that [scientists] are indulging in something like poetic license—to make the story more vivid, to make it fit in with their preconceptions.” 76 One of our cognitive biases is that we, humans, like stories. And we can be good narrators if we want to convince our audience. Another mind subject of the XIXth century was the power of the mind. It lead to fraud and manipulation with “table-turning”, “mind to mind communication” and to the beginning of the new science of

75

http://skepdic.com/cranial.html

76

https://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/05/phineas_gage_neuroscience_case_true_ story_of_famous_frontal_lobe_patient.html


25/38

hypnosis with Mesmer (that is now used in some hospitals). With the discovery of other cultures, it lead to a lot of fantasy literature that shows the confrontation of two different cultures/powers, between occidental science and the “mystical” power of the mind developed in India (for example in France, La guerre des Vampires, 1909 Gustave Lerouge).

Edwin D. Babbitt’s The Principles of Light and Color (1878) — source archive.org77.

If we look back on our history, perhaps we will consider that things evolved faster than ever. Of course, highlighted subjects are very subjective, even with a science and knowledge filter.

What we can take into consideration: communication tools have evolved in a way that let people communicate easily through distance and time, both with writing or with voice or video recordings. The discoveries in physics lead to the development of new technologies that go far beyond the microscope of the XVIIth century and shed the light on living organisms. If the XVIIth century was a century that lead to science, and where we developed specialized fields of knowledge, our last decades are a time where different fields of knowledge started to merge in order to have a more global picture. At the same time, we have discovered new tools that were not so long ago just science fiction dreams. We have rediscovered that humans have great potential by themselves. And, perhaps it could surprise this evolution since anti-science and anti-reality ideologies (postmodernism) emerged in the XXth century.

Another major shift is that with technological evolution, we started to use the living to study the living. Before that, “medical exploration took place most frequently in the domain of death” (Holly Tucker in Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution78). This point is very important to consider how the intersitium concept is an evolution.

77 78

https://archive.org/details/gri_c00033125011227010 https://hyperallergic.com/190130/an-artistic-history-of-death/


26/38

From an epistemological point of view, there was an evolution. Stephen Hicks, a contemporary philosopher, summarizes it this way.

Image courtesy of Stephen Hicks79

Let us then carry on with our overview table: XIXth century Some subjects that matter What it implies Mathematical development More complex models. "Napoleon emphasized the practical usefulness of mathematics and his reforms and military ambitions gave French mathematics a big boost, as exemplified by “the three L’s”"80 Stratigraphy Around the 1800ies William Smith81 mapped out rocks with their content fossils. Fossils have been discovered all over the world always in a sequence. This is the first observable pattern before an evolution theory. The origin of species Man is part of nature, a "big ape" and nature is a system of evolution. Continuation of the struggle between spiritual and secular power. 79

http://www.stephenhicks.org/2018/05/20/pillars-of-modernist-and-post-modernist-philosophy-lectureexcerpt/ 80 http://www.storyofmathematics.com/19th.html 81 http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/benton.html


27/38

Microbiology End of spontaneous generation theory. Humans are able to explore the very small world. Practical applications: in medicine (sterilization, antibiotic), food (pasteurization). The strange history of vibrators Or when doctors masturbated their female patients82. Public education development Education brought to the masses in the Western world (England, France...). Creation of the "Middle Age" a concept developed not by historians but by school ideologists83. Slow transportation of goods, people, Through horses, ships, trains, books, newspapers. ideas around the world Beginning of the telephone. plumbing Bacteria again, in the water. Sanitation vanished with the fall of Rome. It took some times before we understood its benefits. “Sanitation prevents disease by removing the cause of disease transmission”.84 We associate usually only health with medicine, but the improvement of our quality of life, with cheap energy, better nutrition, clean water, better social organization played a lot on this subject. "Physician-assisted paroxysm" Doctors treated “female hysteria” with clitoridean masturbation and this was the beginning of vibrators.

XXth century Physic development electron, X-rays and radioactivity with the consequent development of relativity and quantum physics, nuclear energy85. Physics developments gave new tools for medical development. DNA, RNA, bacteria, microbiome, At the core of mechanisms of life mycobiome, viruses Computer science, telecom Power of calculation, new tools with radio and TV to share information, image and voice replaced writings as the main mass vector of communication. Writing is still useful as you can notice in this article. Internet Communication at personal level Cross fertilization After knowledge specialization, all the fields nourish each other and some may even merge. Epistemology Science of knowledge and justified beliefs developed with time binding, semantic, paradigms, myth representation, cognitive biases.... Modern medicine So many discoveries, that it changed what was medicine and its perception to the general audience! So many causes of mortality for our ancestors, where we only had prayers, became almost forgotten in a few generations86. Gene-culture co-evolution & Culture has an impact on evolution as well as the Dysevolution environment. Over the last "10 000 years ", human group population evolved very fast. One idea is that cultural 82

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201303/hysteria-and-the-strange-history-vibrators See Jacques Heers and Philippe Nemo 84 http://www.organiclifestylemagazine.com/how-plumbing-not-vaccines-eradicated-disease 85 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41587243_History_of_XXth_century_physics 86 https://www.britannica.com/science/history-of-medicine/Medicine-in-the-20th-century 83


28/38

Fast transportation of goods, people and ideas around the world

Science Fiction

Fraudulent papers

Simple ideas that goes viral but are wrong Size matters

World wars + genocides Beginning of space exploration Human progress

Body-mind

environment evolved so fast that there is some paradox called dysevolution. The lack of physical activities, the lack of sun, sitting, nutrition, shoes, antibiotic, the use of screens and so on lead to new pathologies. Through cars, planes, ships, fast trains, books, TV, radio, phones, the Internet. TED is a video platform where "ideas are worth spreading". It is very popular and interesting. One problem is that some very popular talks were absolutely false87. The moral responsibility felt by scientists after the second World War and the atomic bomb lead to a new kind of literature: science-fiction is where science and philosophy meet. “Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold. What does the scientist have to offer in exchange? Uncertainty! Insecurity!" Isaac Asimov's Guide to Science (1972) The Wakefield fraudulent papers about vaccination and autism88 show that it takes more energy to refute modern myths than to produce it. Discovered in the XXIth century, it looks there are also ethical problems of research oriented by corporations like the Sugar industry89. For example, the myth of "dopamine as the pleasure chemical"90 Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset explains that what defines modern society is a mass revolt. Population size has a societal impact. Dunbar shows that human brains can only manage a limited number of human links (150). This has an impact on social organization and on our virtual life on social medias. Contribute to psycho-social traumatic memories afterwards. Moon! and some conspiracies started to tell no human went there… Contrary to common beliefs, global extreme poverty is reducing fast91, life expectancy is rising around the world92. We saw in the introduction with semantic general that words separate. We separate time and space with words but we do know that it is a continuum. It is the same with the body-mind. Cognitive science discovered the

87

like the "power posture" talk. We human are very receptive to rhetoric, but it is not a guarantee about the inner quality of what we are hearing. 88 https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/four-vaccine-myths-and-where-they-came 89 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2548255?redirect=true 90 https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/27/17169446/dopamine-pleasure-chemical-neuroscience-rewardmotivation 91 https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty 92 https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy


29/38

Polylogism (how not to debate opposite views)

Political correctness (ideology before reality)

What is “truth”?

PUBLISHING, PERISHING, AND THE ECLIPSE OF SCHOLARSHIP (quantity / quality problem)

homunculus. As a result, we have a full representation of the body in our brain. “Polylogism is not a philosophy or an epistemological theory. It is an attitude of narrow-minded fanatics, who cannot imagine that anybody could be more reasonable or cleverer than they themselves are. Nor is polylogism scientific. It is rather the replacement of reasoning and science by superstitions. »93 “The reality is different. Political Correctness is the use of culture as a sharp weapon to enforce new norms and to stigmatize those who dissent from the new dispensation; to stigmatize those who insist on values that will impede the new "PC" regime: free speech and free and objective intellectual inquiry. »94 “For centuries knowledge meant proven knowledge — proven either by the power of the intellect or by the evidence of the senses.” “One cannot simply water down the ideal of proven truth - as some logical empiricists do — to the ideal of ’probable truth’ or — as some sociologists of knowledge do — to ‘truth by [changing] consensus’”95 Is the "publish or perish" dictum breaking down the academic system in the United States and Occident?96

XXIth century, where some recent science fiction became true CRISPR/Cas9, regenerative therapy, Tool to edit DNA, gene therapy, cells to repair, microbiome therapy modification of microbiome to balance immune response Microbiology (again!) Age of super bugs, do we fight, can we win? Or do we live with them and use them?97 New models on how traumatic "unresolved traumatic memories may augment the pain memories are stored and how it Experience through affective “loading” of pain"98 influences chronic pain New methods with EMDR smartphone Internet + telecom + computer science + social networks in one tool Social network Replace the way we share and consume data. "copyright"99 at the digital age Literary intertextuality and ideas that go viral challenge the notion of "autorship"100 and "originality", copyright laws from the XVIIIth century "cyborg" Electronic implant to help damaged neural part 93

Luwig Von Mises https://www.mises.org/library/what-nazis-borrowed-marx "Political Correctness : A Short History of an Ideology," edited by William Lind (November 2004). 95 Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-010-1863-0_14 96 http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/E/bo3618387.html 97 https://www.statnews.com/2017/05/18/superbug-new-model-infection/ & https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-05-secret-longevity-microbiome-gut.html 98 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7238653_EMDR_in_the_treatment_of_chronic_pain 99 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law 100 https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-981-287-079-7_14-1 94


30/38

IA Artificial intelligence to diagnose Interstitium Where a pathologist redefines anatomists’ maps, describing not the stuff, but its negative, empty spaces in between, as an organ. Where we discover true size of Maps misrepresented size for centuries…. continents on earth Mars Exploration of Mars, a science fiction dream, with a lot of discoveries…101 Studies on how space travel affects The ISS (International Space Station) will let us consider DNA and epigenetic how the space environment affects the human body even at cellular and DNA level.102 Reproducibility Project. A rich man declared war on bad science funding a reproducibility project103. Experiments on psychology could only be verified at 40%... Crisis. Medical fields are now studied with meta-analysis. "Why most published research findings are false.”104 Intellectual Dark web “As Peterson rightly tells us, we don’t live in a world of (where internet as a tool for social mere objects but rather of spiritually significant actions — conformity leads to a free speech a world of karma, in other words. The ‘thing’ or objective space, or the control vs liberty debate) part of reality is only the surface — even if that surface is very complex. Our world is not just random atoms, but a realm of spirit, with dense and overlapping meanings and metaphors—hidden realities that are as real (or actually more real) than atoms. »105 #sciencemustfall "I have a question for all the science people. There is a place (“decolonizing the science”) in KZN called Umhlab'uyalingana. They believe that through the magic' you call it black magic' they call it witchcraft' you are able to send a lightning to strike someone. Can you explain that scientifically because it's something that happens?"106 "Real peer review" A twitter account is satirizing bad research, based on ideological post-modernism.107 Distortion of coverage by media of Media coverage does not reflect statistical importance of subjects subjects. That can lead to a misunderstanding of the relative importance of subjects.108 Breathing and cold exposure Where we rediscover that breathing and cold exposure has an impact on our immune system, and humans have perhaps more potential than what we usually think.

101

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-that-liquid-water-flows-on-today-s-mars https://www.whatisepigenetics.com/epigenetic-research-space-exploration/ 103 https://www.wired.com/2017/01/john-arnold-waging-war-on-bad-science/ 104 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16060722 105 https://medium.com/rebel-wisdom/the-intellectual-dark-web-is-dead-a1b63cd0e799 106 https://reason.com/blog/2016/10/14/watch-leftist-students-say-science-is-ra 107 https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/31093/ 108 https://owenshen24.github.io/charting-death/ 102


31/38

iv. Scientific images, map of meaning, and Art During the XX century, a technology was developed to see the human body through living people: we passed from autopsies of corpses to microscope and bacteria to fluids analysis, radiography, ultrasounds, scan and fRMI and so much more... th

If we look at a radiography, we still come back to our "foundation" (because of the density), bones:

pelvis image from Wiki radiography109

Radiography can even become a piece of Art, for example this radiography:

Hum, perhaps you are not convinced? But what if you learn that this is Marilyn Monroe’s radiography? Does this change the way you see it? It sold USD 45,000.00 at an auction110!

109 110

http://www.wikiradiography.net/page/Pelvis+Radiographic+Anatomy https://metro.co.uk/2010/06/28/marilyn-monroe-breasts-x-ray-sold-for-45000-421993/


32/38

Some examples of modern imagery to "see" a brain:

Connectome (neural connexion map) source human connectome project 111

scan of the author's brain

Having new tools do not erase epistemological problems of general semantic and paradigms. What can we "see”? Two different maps of the same reality. But what does the scan say about my feelings at the moment the scan was taken112? This other brain image is interesting. Of course, there is no color, and nothing is “moving” in a real brain, but we can perceive “waves” through this image. image is credited to Joshua Jacobs/Columbia Engineering.

This image is from a study about memory, “The study of traveling waves opens up new directions for brain research, as it now allows us to consider not only what the brain is representing but how information 113 moves around the brain” . A new dimension is now understood and studied. 111

http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org With AI we start to estimate cognitive abilities from fMRI scan, so perhaps another information in a near future! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5901965/The-AI-tell-smart-REALLY-just-looking-brainscan.html 113 https://neurosciencenews.com/memory-brain-waves-9286/ 112


33/38

To come back to Korzybski, we have new maps of meaning, but these are just maps. Very useful in one specific context, and of course, all of this helps to better understand how we are "working". And it helps diagnose some medical pathology from a medical point of view. The very fast technological and knowledge evolution is fascinating. And even if we know far more than before, there are so many things left to explore and understand.

Bacteria in the mouth, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) Image courtesy of Steve Gschmeissner http://theworldcloseup.com/

Steve Gschmeissner produces very rare and beautiful images with SEM technology. He had the great kindness to answer some questions for this article. That will help us to better understand that there is a strong link between what Vesalus and Leonardo da Vinci produced as medical artwork with their drawings and what is produced with modern technology, even if it could seem a bit strange to us: "My aim is to make scientific imagery accessible to the lay man and remove it from the restrictive scientific field. Imagery can explain complex scientific ideas in a way that words are unable to do and are universal. I colour my images as the Scanning Electron microscope use electrons to make images not light so they are black and white. We live in a coloured world hence I generally colour my images sympathetically although B&W images are always popular." Steve Gschmeissner


34/38

v. Milieu intérieur, autopoiesis, and eco-systems One of the major shift about how we see humans comes from homeostasis. French physiologist Claude Bernard (1813 - 1878) was behind a new concept: internal environment or milieu intérieur. In our research to better understand the model or paradigm behind the "interstitium", it is probably important to look at what Claude Bernard wrote in his book "Leçons sur les phénomènes de la vie communs aux animaux et aux végétaux"114 (1878-1879, Lessons on the phenomena of life common to animals and plants). He developed a systematic approach to biology and came to view animals as complex multicomponent and multilevel systems that were neither mystical nor reducible to straightforward physicochemical phenomena.115 "I do believe I am the first to have insisted on the idea that there are really two environments for the animal: an external environment in which the organism is placed, and an interior environment in which the elements of the tissues live. The existence of one being does not happen in the external environment, atmospheric air for the aerial being, fresh or salty water for the aquatic animals, but in the internal liquid formed by the circulating organic liquid which surrounds and where bathe all the anatomical elements of the tissues; it is the lymph or the plasma, the liquid part of the blood, which, in the higher animals, penetrate the tissues and constitute all the interstitial liquids, expression of all the local nutritions, source and confluence of all the exchanges elementary ..."116 So, Claude Bernard stated that we communicate with an external environment and that there is an internal one inside us. And to live, there are complex mechanisms at different levels struggling to find a dynamic balance, what we call homeostasis. He also highlights the circulating organic liquids that bathe all the anatomical elements of the tissue, interstitial liquids. Sound familiar ? I do believe this seed developed in a more global model, that we know as the theory of cognition (1980): "Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This statement is valid for all organisms, with or without a nervous system" in Autopoiesis and Cognition, The Realization of the Living (1980), Maturana, H.R., Varela With this new model, evolution started to be seen in a new way. Change, occurs probably at many levels. Change is cultural. The societal impact of the Internet has contributed to the thoughtless evolution of people’s mental map. We passed from a paradigm of centralized organization ("brain rules"), to a paradigm of decentralized organization ("oh there are some kinds of nervous cells in the gut"). When you do not take into consideration only some parts (as bones or brain), you start to search how every part communicates and operates. At this point, you start to discover "new organs", just because you look with new eyes at what you "already knew". A pathologist and an anatomist perhaps do not have the same point of view, and this will lead to new discoveries. And as we saw, this does not mean that no one in the past has never "discovered" what you are looking at. The point is about the cultural reference we share, new observations allowed thanks to technical evolution. All of this leads to new models through which we can see and analyze the world.

114

http://www.claude-bernard.co.uk/page24.htm https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780123851574008289 116 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milieu_int%C3%A9rieur 115


35/38

excerpt from the article Photosynthetic Stages and Light-Absorbing Pigments117

Images are great vector to communicate, because abstract ideas can be very complicate if we do not spend a lot of time to study them. As we can see with the extract above, if we do not grasp mathematics and a bit of physics, equations will not talk to us directly118.

An image "talks" to us directly (and sometimes to our biases). The discoveries in physics have permitted developments in other fields like medical knowledge. Even, resolving physics problems activate new learning parts of the brain119 ! With new discoveries we have new models. When we looked at cells and at the extracellular matrix, we considered blood and lymph. We started to look at how there was communication inside us through mechanical forces: hormones and electricity. And we even started to consider "light" that we cannot see with our eyes, that is called ultra-weak photon emission (UPE, discovered in the 1920’s), or referred to as bio-photons: "A growing body of evidence suggests that the molecular machinery of life emits and absorb photons. Now one biologist has evidence that this light is a new form of cellular communication"120. And perhaps one could write an article from the perspective of the sun, photons and bio-photons, from photo-synthesis121 to human fears that lead to rituals all over the world (solstices, solar eclipses…). _________________________ Let's go back to our specific point of view. First there was the soul that inhabits our physical bodies. Then there was a split, and two separate substances, the mind and the physical body. The XXth century was the century of reconciliation. Words and perception separate. Time and space. Physics teach us that time-space is a continuum. It is the same with the body and the mind, it is a continuum, a bodymind. These subjects have been studied both by neuro-scientists and people who work on reeducation

117

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21598/ Moreover « Parts of the brain not traditionally associated with learning science become active when people are confronted with solving physics problems, a new study shows. » « physics is based in laws, so there are absolutes that govern the way the body works. » https://drexel.edu/now/archive/2018/May/New-parts-of-the-brain-become-active-after-students-learnphysics/ 119 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180524141527.htm 120 https://www.technologyreview.com/s/427982/biophoton-communication-can-cells-talk-using-light/ 121 And we still are discovering new things on this subject ! https://phys.org/news/2018-06-photosynthesis.html 118


36/38

methods. Historically we could cite the famous mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body). New body-mind methods appeared (with Alexander, Fendelkrais). Thierry Janssenn (surgeon and therapist), arguing that there is a divorce between mind and body, and we have to look for all the dimensions of a human being in order to find a balance. In some ways, we can consider this as a new form of spirituality (another word for the soul): The word "spirit" - spirit, in English - comes from the Latin spiritus: the breath. It is this breath that crosses the being and makes it alive. We can therefore say that the spirit is the set of links that exist between all the dimensions of the living. Life only manifests itself because these links are established at all levels: subatomic, molecular, cellular, organic, psychological, sociological ...122 Spirit, the breath. At a time of a technological potential that we only dreamed about through science fiction till recently, a man started to develop a method based on meditation, breathing and cold exposure, that shows the human body has a great potential. Perhaps those ideas will not sound completely new to everyone. Wim Eric Hof, the "iceman", has been working with different teams of researchers to understand how it works and what it can do123. That is quite different from free assertions made by different gurus. For example, one of the studies (2018): "Brain over body" - A study on the willful regulation of autonomic function during cold exposure124, "suggests the compelling possibility that the WHM (Wim Hof Method) might allow practitioners to develop higher level of control over key components of the autonomous system, with implications for lifestyle interventions that might ameliorate multiple clinical syndromes." More rigorous studies need to be done on the subject. Other studies not related with Wim Hof point in the same direction: "Enduring cold temperatures alters fat cell epigenetics"125, "Nasal Respiration Entrains Human Limbic Oscillations and Modulates Cognitive Function"126. "How do we change science; how do we do things different than ever before? Be different and change. Go by your Soul, no competition. Find the best. Use cold, heat, elements of nature, emotions, it is all there" Wim Eric Hof

We are living a very exciting time to a better understanding of the world and ourselves. Considering how views on evolution have become more global, I would like to carry on with this proposition: Universe is a time-space cognitive process. Biological living organisms are just a part of its evolution and complexification. Living systems (with or without a nervous system) are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. Universe is less awareness than reproduced living organisms with awareness of their environment. 122

https://www.inrees.com/articles/Thierry-Janssen-A-la-recherche-de-l-esprit/ https://www.wimhofmethod.com/science 124 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/29438845/ 125 https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-04-cold-temperatures-fat-cell-epigenetics.html 126 http://www.jneurosci.org/content/36/49/12448 123


37/38

Life has been considered as an exception. This is probably an anthropocentric bias. Another framework of thinking could consider that life emerges "naturally" from the universe's cognitive process. Astrobiology thinks now that ribose, the key element of RNA and biological life as we know, can be found in space127. NASA has just also discovered evidence of liquid water on Mars128. Technological progress permitted all these new discoveries. And we developed very impressive medicine compared to what we used to have some centuries ago, and sometimes even decades ago. Separating the mind from the body helped develop different fields of specialization. It has lead to a better understanding and technical developments. Perhaps, this engineering culture has some impact on medical fields and framework of analysis, and lead to consider the human body like a machine to fix when there are some pathologies. It has helped. Maps are useful, but maps are not everything. I hope this paper using the history of science helped understand that the human being is also a matter of beliefs, and that the debate on “science vs religion” is not so simple, because we, as human beings, tend to believe, even if we do not have awareness of that; and sometimes we can become puritans to fight for our beliefs. "The human psyche has many levels. What is religious exists at the very deepest of those levels. What is religious is what is fundamental. People are religious, whether they know it or not, because they must have fundamental beliefs. Otherwise they cannot act. They can’t even perceive. They can be very confused about the nature of those fundamentals. Their psyches can be fractured, disjointed and incoherent. Without axiomatic beliefs, however, we cannot simplify the world enough to act within it." Jordan Peterson129 I would like to finish this first part with a few words from Neil Theise, the lead author of the article on the interstitium, and this to start considering the body differently than from an engineering perspective: "Bodies are not machines but eco-systems" Neil Theise130

To be continued... Some thoughts and images of body representation in evolution theories, manual therapies, cells, extracellular matrix and interstitium to come.

127

In fact, it is not a recent idea, but it cannot be verified until recently: " Md. Researchers had suspected sugars could form on interstellar ice. And the chemistry at work here has been understood for 155 years, he says. But no one had actually done the experiment before." https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/key-sugar-life-earth-could-have-formed-space 128 https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-that-liquid-water-flows-on-today-s-mars 129

https://jordanbpeterson.com/books/maps-of-meaning-intro/

130

Webinar 05/08/2018


38/38