Dialogues with Jay. Donald R. Fletcher
“And began,” Luc said, “to see much further, both out and in, than natural sight could see. More and more instruments were devised, and are being devised, to see deeper and better into outer space, and into the intricacies of inner space as well, the most minute building blocks of matter, of all that exists.”
“Agreed,” Jay rejoined. “All of these achievements are impressive. We are becoming aware of the vastness of our universe, of an extension of space outward in huge immensity and inward in minute complexity that staggers comprehension. But in all of that I trust that you would agree, Luc, that science builds on what it sees, on what can be observed. What is scientifically factual is what is observed. If it is not observable, it can’t be established as fact.”
“And the dimension of time,” I prompted, curious to see where Jay was going with this. “That appears as another vastness that science has been exploring.”
“Exploring in just one direction,” Luc added. “Facts can be gathered from the past. The future has to be limited to estimate and hypothesis.”
“But it’s remarkable—really astounding,” I said, warming to a favorite topic, “to consider how much we are learning about our human past—the evidence of human beginnings—for that matter, the evolution on the planet of all forms of life. So much has been uncovered, and can be uncovered, pieced together from scattered fragments that patient searching continues to find.”
“All of that on one tiny, more-or-less junior planet,” Luc commented, with a shrug of dry humor. “While those paleontologists are digging out and analyzing fossils, a couple of hundred miles above them the Hubble telescope and its successors are peering, and will be peering, into almost unimaginably distant space to observe galaxies so far away and moving away at such speed that the light from them reaching us now is showing them as they were billions of years ago, in the relatively early existence of the universe. That’s going far back in time, considering that the current scientific consensus puts the beginning of the cosmos—meaning also the beginning of time—at about 13.8 billion years ago.”
“A magnificent perspective!” Jay said. He shifted in his chair and I thought he seemed to be tiring, as he went on. “The achievements of science, all branches of science, are immensely impressive. Our life is greatly bettered by them, and continues to be bettered, even though science is also used for evil and destructive ends that threaten us all—but we’ll leave that aside.
“I find still hanging in the air the question with which we began today: what is death? Luc, you gave us, excellently, a scientific answer. Is that all? Is knowledge—the sum of mental acuity—the total, or is there an aspect of human life that we haven’t touched on today?”
“I think that there is,” I said. “There is soul, spirit, human personhood.”
“I thought that something like that would be coming,” Luc said. “Don wouldn’t let that final curtain close, and stay closed. With enough applause, it might open again.”
“And I’m ready with the applause;” I told him, “but it’s late for bringing that up. We’re subject, still, to the dimension of time.”
“Right.” Luc stood up and so did I. “Jay, we’ve very much enjoyed being with you.”
I added, “It’s like old times, only better, after these thirty years.”
“Then please come again, both of you,” Jay responded, managing again to get to his feet. “Don has ended our one conversation by just beginning another.”
We laughed, but we also promised at the door that we’d find another time.
II
For our next time with Jay, Luc brought his daughter Beth, a striking young woman. Some might call Beth beautiful, some not. I’d say that the beauty is in her clear eyes, quickly intense beneath a broad forehead. I was glad that she was wearing her dark hair up, so that it didn’t get in the way of her eyes.
“Jay,” Luc said, when we were comfortably settled, “I was telling Beth about our conversation, and she said she had to come.”
“That is, if you don’t have a younger age limit, or an all-male rule,” she put in lightly.
“Very glad to have you;” Jay said. “Just the perspective that we need.”
“Then let me ask about something coming out of the conversation of the other day, as Dad was telling me about it. We’re creatures of space and time, part of a constantly flowing stream of life; but each of us would like to think that he or she is unique. If we are, what is that something that makes me, me, and makes you, you?”
Jay turned from Beth to her father. “Luc, does science have an answer for us?”
Luc plainly was ready. “At least a partial answer—partial, as in general our answers need to be, because almost always there’s more to be learned. We need to keep pushing out the frontiers of knowledge a bit further. So, about individual personality—what some call personhood—we can consider DNA. We all know that this has been one of the most revolutionizing discoveries of the present era, that we all carry a make-up of genes, complex chemical molecules, that control our physical and mental development. And while there’s an overall pattern—a human genome that is what makes each of us a human creature, as distinct from other forms of life—there are also minute genetic variations in DNA that mark each one as a unique individual.
“As we know, analysis of DNA is proving of immense value for criminal investigation and any situation in which a specific human body needs to be identified; but that is secondary. The fact that stands out here is that in our physical make-up each of us is unique, that uniqueness being generated by the genes that we carry. We were born with them, although they can be subject to mutation in ways science is only beginning to understand.”
Luc paused. “This sounds like an opening lecture for Genetics 201,” he said.
“We’re glad to be in your class,” Jay responded. “Please go on.”
“All right; I’ll try to keep it concise,” Luc continued. “Genes control the development and function of the brain, along with those of the rest of our physical being. Your brain, in turn—how it functions and what it has been given to function with—is who you are. The brain can be modified. There can be injury, disease, chemical substances, or other factors, and such modification may show itself in apparent changes in personality. There is also the use that you make of the capacities of that brain. Such use is up to you, although it may be influenced—even much influenced—by factors of your heritage and environment. You make choices of the images you store in your brain’s memory and the ideas you embrace, pondering them and being shaped by them, as well as competing ideas that you choose to brush aside.
“All of this sets a pattern of function in your brain that is reflected in how you speak and act, and that, as other people see it, becomes part of your personality—part of the person that you are; which means that it is still so: your brain, at any given point in its life development, is who you are.”
Luc stopped, then said, with a smile and a shrug, “Well, then, lecture finished. I thought I heard the bell.”
“Lecture or not, Dad, that was pretty convincing,” Beth said, looking at him with frank admiration.
Then it was Jay, adding, with a cordial smile, “And I’m glad you put it out so well for us. That’s why we’re here together, I trust—to think, and to speak our ideas as clearly and convincingly as we can. We know we won’t always agree, which is healthy, and we know, I’m sure, that no-one will be offended. So, I add my admiration to Beth’s: Luc, that was powerfully presented. You know the human brain best of the four of us, and we can’t negate what you say about it. My own stance would be just to inquire: having said that, have you said it all?”
He paused, and Beth came in, “Is there more to say, I wonder—anything more that makes each of us the unique person that he or she is?”
I’d