Changing: 1.31 Rhythms in Human Nature

1. RHYTHMS IN HUMAN NATURE

     The two outcome rhythms, aggregation-dispersal and expansion-contraction, interact to produce higher level behaviors. In our study of human nature, as we have already mentioned, the most important high level behaviors are social approach-separation and internal withdrawal-return. The evolution of approach-separation and withdrawal-return from aggregation-dispersal and expansion-contraction respectively, returns us to the main theme of the book: the meaning-bestowing rhythms of love and wisdom. I’ll trace out some possible routes we took to get here. They start almost at the dawn of life.
     Lynn Margulies speculates that the first social movements of approach-separation occurred in archaic bacterial mats.

“In some cases, like swarms of cyst-forming myxobacteria (for example, Chondromyces, Myxococcus), the component genomes sense each other and fuse, forming a larger structure—no membranes are breached. In others, as when the akinetes of a cynobacterium float away, the genomic systems disperse.”³³

In primitive eukaryotic cells, the two ur-rhythms combine to produce quasi-social rhythms. They probably reflect the bacterial endosymbiosis from which they originated. gonium: a colonial organism

     Approach-separation rhythms become functionally social in the clustering phases of single celled colonial organisms like the gonium.   Typically, they move into agglomerations of 8, 16 or 32 members in their social stages. Through the microscope, you can see them vibrating together. Their social vibrations are themselves rhythmical and move at tremor rhythm frequencies.
     Wherever single celled life merges into multicellular life, we find approach and separation working.

     You can observe it in colonial sponges, in coral formations, and in slime molds that cluster and disperse in different stages of growth, signaled by intracellular chemical changes that pulse rhythmically as signals sent out into the surrounding medium. slime mold cycle

The slime mold has been well researched. It shows many of the rhythmic components later carried into the complex social lives of multicelled organisms. The ameboid cells that become the slime mold live as independent individuals. However, when they are starving, they emit periodic waves of cyclic AMP. Jeremy Campbell describes it this way:

“In the metamorphosis of slime molds, periodic waves of cyclic AMP are a medium of communication. A cell acts as a ‘center of attraction’ by putting out pulses of the chemical and other cells start to converge on the center in a rhythmic motion… This cell mass is called a slug, and before it settles down to produce spores, it moves along the ground by means of rhythmic contraction.”³⁴

RNA molecules approaching and separating from docking spaces along the ribosomes in each single-celled organism themselves drive the rhythmic waves of cyclic AMP. You can see it unfolding in the spiral patterns. Nearby cells receive the cAMP message and begin to move toward the source, at the same time emitting cyclic AMP signals of their own. slime mold spirals

They form into a spiral wave with a central focus. Then the individual cells join into a wormlike creature that moves along with synchronous contractions." Rhythms compound upon rhythms. The slime mold next migrates to a new site better supplied with resources. There it builds a stalk, produces fruiting bodies that release thousands of spores, completing its reproductive cycle. In all of these stages, we can detect the basic features of the rhythmicity in life, all of them quantifiable: signal rhythms (cAMP), rhythmical movement (spiral waves), synchronization (migration), cooperation (building the spore tower) and dispersion (casting of the spores.) Winfree comments on the slime mold oscillations:

“We witness here, perhaps, a living fossil replaying events that were common during evolution from unicellular to multicellular organisms two billion years ago. This process has been familiar to biologists for many decades, but its frequent organization by rotating spiral waves was documented for the first time only in 1965, in the laboratory of Gunther Ferisch in Germany.”³⁵

Now that we have located the two ur-rhythms at the foundations of life, we can get back to love and wisdom to investigate whether our human virtues and passions also express themselves in primordial frequency-driven units of behavior.