Firstly, I apologise for there being no blog last month. The frustration of my main computer being “away for repair” goes on!
So much has happened since my September blog, but I really don’t want to get into any Trumpian stuff right now – there will be time enough in the coming months. It’s plenty scary enough just seeing who he plans to put in charge of the various Government offices and his previously recorded anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. It seems that even the Republicans are worried! And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, you have large parts of the US church underpinning the support for him. Listen to Reporter Reads on BBC Sounds. There are times I feel quite ashamed of wearing the badge of “Christian”.
At the polar opposite end of that scale, in the last fortnight, we have just said goodbye to one of the best Christian preachers and communicators of this generation, Tony Campolo, aged 89. His field was in social sciences in which he was a professor, but he says of himself: “I place my highest priority on the words of Jesus, emphasizing the 25th chapter of Matthew, where Jesus makes clear that on Judgment Day the defining question will be how each of us responded to those he calls “the least of these”.” I heard him speak several times over the years, and he is one of those people who you could listen to for hours. For a long time, he toed the Evangelical line on everything, but around the time (maybe just after), I was exploring my own theology around sexuality, he came out and made it clear he was “finally ready to call for the full acceptance of Christian gay couples into the Church.” Read his full statement. It’s wording may seem a little odd, but he suffered pelters for his changed position from much of the church, and one of the current Anglican bishops accused him at the time of not taking the words of Scripture seriously. Tony eventually felt that the Evangelical church had moved so far that he could no longer shelter under that “Evangelical” banner. Instead, he identified as a “red-letter” Christian. In many Bibles the words Jesus speaks are written in red, so he wanted to identify himself with the words of Jesus. Tony Campolo will be missed by many – but welcomed with open arms by the Saviour.
Now for a handbrake turn!
Aryabhata lived around 476-550 BC/CE somewhere around the time of Pythagoras in Greece and was 23 when he compiled his major work the Aryabhatiya, a Sanskrit poem dealing with much of the advanced mathematics of the day – far in advance of the Romans. As the Historian William Dalrymple explains in the Podcast, he co-presents with Anita Anand, called “Empire”:
“He measures the circumference of the Earth with incredible accuracy. He works out not only that the Earth spins on its own axis, but he works out the distance between the Earth and the moon, and he writes this extraordinary mathematical treatise in poetry, in a dense short poem that covers […]: arithmetic, squares, cubes, square roots, cube roots, triangles, the properties of a circle, algebra, fractions, quadratic equations and sines. It utilises the decimal system with place value*, and it contains a very close approximation to the value of pi of 3.1416. I mean, it’s extraordinary, and he also deals with spherical trigonometry, and he also writes these very complex lines about the movements of the planets, eclipses, and the exact length of the solar year to the accuracy of seven decimal points.
… Aryabhata correctly calculates thousands of years before [ ] Copernicus and Galileo and all those sorts of characters, that the Earth rotates about its axis daily, and the apparent movement of the stars is a relative motion caused by the rotation of the earth. And so, all this is sort of extraordinary, and as I say, it’s contained in a single dense poem.
(*place value – see explanation at: https://www.splashlearn.com/math-vocabulary/place-value/place-value)
If you enjoy history, or are fascinated by numbers, the podcast is well worth a listen. That’s an either/or, or both!
In the written preamble for the show, the editor writes: “Often called Arabic numerals, the modern number system we use today actually originates in India. Whilst in the west they were using Roman numerals, in India they were using numbers 1-9. Then, the great Brahmagupta in the 7th century made one of the most monumental developments in human history. He invented zero in its modern form. Therefore, these basic rules of mathematics for the first time allowed any number up to infinity to be expressed with just ten distinct symbols: the nine Indian numbers plus zero. Rules that are still taught in classrooms around the world today. This step was a major advance that had never previously been attempted elsewhere and it was this Indian reincarnation of zero as a number, rather than just as an absence, that transformed it and gave it its power.”
The Romans didn’t have zero (they used the word “nulla” = none), and, as an exercise, how would you personally go about the multiplication and division of a Roman number. If you are curious, here are a couple of suggestions: https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/questions/how-did-romans-multiply-their-numerals and https://www.themathdoctors.org/arithmetic-with-roman-numerals/. Seems complicated to me with my 20th century background! (I was in school in the sixties and seventies.)
So, why spend so much time on numbers? Well, it’s not just the idea of numbers but how comfortable we are with them. The brain is remarkable and remarkably different from person to person.
Numeracy is a spectrum of not just ability, but also, a spectrum of interest in numbers. My competency and enthusiasm will be different to yours. Why do some people thrive when playing with numbers, loving the artistry and possibilities, whilst others have absolutely zero interest (and thank you to India for making that concept possible!). Then you also have folks who are intellectually incapable of any great degree of numeracy – including those who struggle with Dyscalculia.
In between those two extremes you have people like me who are competently numerate and enjoy, to a degree, simple mathematics and their concepts, along with constructing the odd spreadsheet, but when people talk about tax, pensions, investments or pivot tables, my brain turns to intellectual sand that blows away in the gentlest of breezes!
Most of us love listening to music. We don’t all love the same stuff because that too is on a spectrum, from Grunge and Garage, through Genesis and Girls Aloud, to Glenn Miller, Gershwin and Grieg. Most musicians only play one style – but some might be able to play a second style after months of practice. There are a few multi-disciplinary musicians, but the rest will be limited in what they play. A good example of a multi‑disciplinary musician is Nigel Kennedy , who is known for his classical music, but also for jazz and his work with The Who and Kate Bush.
Let’s add to that the fact that there are many types of instruments: stringed, keyboard, wind and percussion. Most musicians will focus on just one or two instruments, usually in the same family, but a few naturally talented musicians might play multiple instruments. Mike Oldfield is a case in point and here you can see him surrounded by the instruments he played on one of his albums. As I infer, music is a spectrum of spectrums: appreciation, ability and response – and then at the other end of one of those spectrums you have some people seemingly with no interest in music at all. For them music is a waste of time!
I love listening to music and at one time had hundreds of vinyl albums and CD’s (these would probably be of different genres and artists to you) but although I enjoy music, I can’t sing and clap at the same time! I have no real, instinctual, rhythm.
On that subject of rhythm, why are some people much more rhythmic than others? Again it comes down to the wiring in the brain, and there is again a fascinating Podcast hosted by Dr Hannah Fry and Dara Ó Briain in the series called “Curious Cases”. The episode is called “In the Groove” and is on BBC Sounds. Once more, another spectrum of ability, and responsiveness. Can you see where we are headed yet?
Why is your taste in music different to others? The SciTechDaily website contributes to the debate, ultimately concluding: “The bottom line? Each person is unique in many ways, and their musical tastes reflect that uniqueness.”
We can turn to art and sculpture and make very similar observations. You have artists like Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst, whose pieces leave me untouched and cold, whereas I can be fascinated by the architecture and paintings of someone like Roger Dean, but that kind of dates my era! Yes, there were some wondrous stories from that time! I also love landscapes and mountains, and illusory pictures and photos. I recognise that some photos I take, leave others wondering what was in my cereal!
When looking at this field of creative arts we can readily see multiple spectrums of styles, materials, subject matter, colours/black and white, historic, romantic, murals on buildings, graffiti, photo-realism, representations and allusions of everyday life, and so, so much more. Everybody seems to have a different taste in appreciation, ability to create, and the materials they use.
We all have differing capacities in our scope for creativity. We could or should ask, why can some people paint, or, design cars, buildings, bridges, ships, planes and space vehicles and others struggle to draw stick people? In all these things there is a spectrum of ability.
Some people enjoy creating images with pens and pencils, oil paints or watercolours, others with fabrics, and still others with pressed flowers and natural products. Sculptors use whatever they enjoy working with: various types of stone, metals, woods, plastics, etc.
Of course, I am compelled to say there are also spectrums in the field of vision! People experience colour blindness, which affects up to 1 in 12 males (8%) and 1 in 200 females (0.5%) (See NEI articles). Then we have conditions like “aphantasia” – the inability to visualise, where some people just don’t see mental images at all, whereas others (it seems like only 15% of the population according to present information – though it could change as more research is done) have a photo-realistic imagination. If you have never heard of this, there is a fascinating BBC podcast from Dr Adam Rutherford and Dr Hanna Fry about “The Case of the Blind Mind’s Eye” which you can download and listen to here, which I mentioned in my Blog “Holed below the waterline” (February 2023).
Closely related to the things we see or perceive is the phenomenon that some people seem to have “photographic” or eidetic memories which is the ability to retain information with minimum effort. As with all the conditions I have talked about, this too is unsurprisingly always on a spectrum – it is not an on/off switch where you either have it or not, there will be grades or a spectrums of experience. I’m sure you can see the connection by now!
Another strange condition is Synaesthesia which is a neurological phenomenon where the stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in another. People with synaesthesia might, for instance, “see” sounds, “taste” words, or “hear” colours. It’s a blending of the senses, where one sensory experience is automatically linked to another, often in a consistent and personalised way.
You’d be surprised if there weren’t several types of synaesthesia! Here are a couple of the common ones:
- Grapheme-colour synaesthesia: Letters or numbers are perceived as inherently coloured. For example, the letter “A” might always be seen as red.
- Chromesthesia: Sounds (such as music or voices) trigger the perception of specific colours.
- Lexical-gustatory synaesthesia: Certain words evoke specific tastes in the mouth.
I’ll not go into causes, but most seem to be aligned to brain wiring in some way or other, and it frequently runs in families, so there is likely to be a genetic component.
Games – pretty much no two of you will agree about your favourite game or computer game, and why it is a favourite. For me I prefer fairly simple computer games. I remember playing one early car racing game on my PC, where you controlled the direction and speed of the vehicle using the direction keys on the keyboard, and I became quite nauseous because my hand/eye co-ordination wasn’t good enough, and I kept crashing the car after spinning. I would also blame the software writers because the game response was slow – it took a second for the keypress to affect what happened on screen! Yes, gaming technology is far better now.
Moving on, we could make a similar case about the tastes we pick up on our tongues, and the smells we like or dislike. We all have different tastes that we enjoy. How many of you know someone who enjoys chillies, celery, grapefruit, liquorice, aniseed and Marmite? Not at the same time – obviously – that’d be weird! We can go into how the tongue works, and how the olfactory system works and then how the brain interprets that data, and how we are once again, all different in our likes and dislikes.
Even in sleep we differ in the amount of sleep we need, and how we behave when we sleep. Some sleep deeply and long, others will be restless, fitful and shallow. Some will walk in their sleep (listen to BBC Sounds – Curious cases: Night Walkers). Many will dream, and again some will remember their dreams and others not. Some will remember their dreams for only seconds after they wake, and others for hours, days, weeks, or even longer.
We can also mention sporting talent. Not just anybody can be a sports person or athlete, even with practice – genetics is involved. When I wrote my original essay I talked about the swimmer Michael Phelps: “his arm span (6ft 7in) is greater than his height (6ft 4in). His lung capacity is said to be 12 litres — double the average man’s. His size 14 feet are more like flippers”. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/9449673/London-2012-Olympics-Faster.-Higher.-Longer.-Stronger.html (sadly you now need to login to read the full article – but it IS free). I also mentioned Usain Bolt, Sir Bradley Wiggins, Matt Pinsent and Sir Steve Redgrave. To excel in a sport or game, your body needs to be suited to that activity and that is largely down to genetics (i.e. a gift of God). No matter how much most of us trained for any particular sport or activity, we would never be a world champion, BUT we would get better than we are today. There is an exploration of this in another of those “Curious Cases” podcasts called, “Be more Athlete”.
Some people simply have much better balance, stamina and hand/eye co-ordination than the rest of us, which makes them better equipped for some sort of sporting activity. Yes, we can all practice and get better, but there are a small group who are genetically pre‑disposed to do better that the rest of us – especially if they commit themselves to train. As a parent you might want your child to be the next Harry Kane, but if their physique isn’t right, you’re whistling in the wind.
On many previous occasions and again in my original essay I have talked about the fact we all have different sized body parts – literally all of them. The less obvious being our head sizes (why are hats different sizes?); our eyes can be closer or further apart than others (the optician will measure the distance between your two pupils when getting new glasses); our teeth (Why can’t you get dentures off-the-shelf?). The dentist will take moulds of our teeth when we need a crown or dentures, because we’ve all got different shaped and sized mouths
Jockeys make poor basketball players and vice versa! 😉 Even if I had the body of a Usain Bolt, that wouldn’t mean I would be world champion, I would have to want to be the fastest, I would have to be prepared to commit myself to a lifestyle. How many potential Usain Bolts have there been who are more interested in cookery, or computer game design, or ecology, or simply watching TV, rather than athletics‽
If you look at the science of producing new drugs, if people were essentially identical other than biological gender, it should be easy to test new drugs, instead you have long sheets of reported side effects different people have reported during testing, and that if you have this condition, or that, you should talk to your doctor before taking the drug. This illustrates just how different each person is from the next: different microbiomes, different genetics, different personal biology’s.
So, to answer the question at the top? To my mind our brains are influenced by genetics, by our environment, our nutrition, the use/exercise it gets (the stimuli from the work we do, or the books we read, the conversations we have, what we learn, how actively involved it is with what is going on around us, and on screens), and any damage it has received physically, and through ageing.
You must have got the message by now and surely don’t really need me to bring this blog in for a landing, you can do it yourself!
Everything I have written about has involved a spectrum, or range, of how much a person is affected by a condition, or relative size of a body-part, or the way the mind has been wired. The categories of some, are small, but others large. Why do some seek public office, or to be film stars – to have a spotlight on them, whilst others hate the public eye, and do their best work when no-one is watching? Each of us are very much unique. I haven’t really tackled emotions, sensitivities, obviously along with sexuality and gender identities, but you have huge variations in those areas as well, as you know.
So, when it comes to attractions or sexual preferences why do so many people unquestioningly insist that it is impossible to be anything other than biologically male or female? Personally, as a “probably typical” straight cis-gendered man, I am drawn to be attracted to women – but only to a small percentage of them matching certain specific criteria. Why? It’s the way my brain works. I am not attracted to every women – only a narrow spectrum. There is not even one specific type you can pigeon-hole. Height, shape, skin colour, race, rich/poor, abilities and interests, hair colour, intelligence, personality – probably those last two, for me, might be of greater importance, but not exclusive show-stoppers. Other peoples preferances will be very different. As I am married, acting on those attractions has been closed to me for years.
However, too many people just haven’t thought the issue through – they just cling onto the headline. They take a position, not supported by the Bible and cling like limpets to their cause, but sadly lack any intellectual credibility. They refuse to engage with what they see in front of them, thinking instead that if they shout really loudly, they will win. Trump made that work recently; we need to heed the warning. So, in closing, do what you can to help people understand. We need people to wake up and see that the intolerance we see within society bodes ill for the future, and God has a call on our lives to build bridges and show grace, “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8.
Changing Minds 