Seeking Wisdom (eBook)

From Darwin to Munger

Peter Bevelin (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
318 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
978-0-00-081373-2 (ISBN)

Infos

Peter Bevelin begins his fascinating book with Confucius' great wisdom: 'A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it, is committing another mistake.' Seeking Wisdom is the result of Bevelin's learning about attaining wisdom. His quest for wisdom originated partly from making mistakes himself and observing those of others but also from the philosophy of super-investor and Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charles Munger. A man whose simplicity and clarity of thought was unequal to anything Bevelin had seen. In addition to naturalist Charles Darwin and Munger, Bevelin cites an encyclopedic range of thinkers: from first-century BCE Roman poet Publius Terentius to Mark Twain-from Albert Einstein to Richard Feynman-from 16th Century French essayist Michel de Montaigne to Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett. In the book, he describes ideas and research findings from many different fields. This book is for those who love the constant search for knowledge. It is in the spirit of Charles Munger, who says, 'All I want to know is where I'm going to die so I'll never go there.' There are roads that lead to unhappiness. An understanding of how and why we can 'die' should help us avoid them. We can't eliminate mistakes, but we can prevent those that can really hurt us. Using exemplars of clear thinking and attained wisdom, Bevelin focuses on how our thoughts are influenced, why we make misjudgments and tools to improve our thinking. Bevelin tackles such eternal questions as: Why do we behave like we do? What do we want out of life? What interferes with our goals? Read and study this wonderful multidisciplinary exploration of wisdom. It may change the way you think and act in business and in life.

Textauszug

One: Our Anatomy Sets The Limits For Our behaviour

To understand the way we think and why we make misjudgements, we must first determine what influences our behaviour.

Why can’t we fly?

To do what we do today demands the proper anatomical foundation. To fly we need wings. To walk we need legs, to see we need eyes, and to think we need a brain. Our anatomy, physiology and biochemistry are the fundamental bases for our behaviour.

If we change anatomy, we change behaviour. Birds can’t fly if their wings are located in an area where no bones are present to anchor them. Apes can’t talk because they need speech organs and these must be positioned in a certain way. For example, a small change in how our speech organs are positioned could make speech impossible.

Another example on how a change in anatomy changes behaviour comes from the Neurosciences Institute in California. In one experiment, scientists took a small portion of developing brain tissue from a quail and put it into the same spot of a chicken embryo. When the chick hatched, it had both quail and chicken nerve cells. Depending on what cells were transplanted, the results were either a chicken that crowed like a quail or a chicken that bobbed its head like a quail.

Studies have also shown that damage to a part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex (lying behind the forehead and eyes), results in a tendency to show a high degree of disrespect for social norms, including violent behaviour. A classic example is that of railway construction foreman Phineas Gage. In 1848, he was victim of an explosion that drove an iron rod through the frontal region of his brain, damaging his prefrontal cortex. Before the accident he was considered stable, dependable, industrious, and friendly. Phineas survived the accident, but his personality changed. He became a drifter who was unreliable, arrogant, impulsive and inconsiderate.

Other studies show that damage to the amygdala - a region of the brain, linked with emotional states and social behaviour - reduces the tendency to feel and respond to fear. Stimulating the amygdala can elicit intense emotional reactions. In 1966, Charles Whitman killed 14 people and wounded 38 from the clock tower at the University of Texas, Austin. An autopsy revealed he had a tumor pressing against his amygdala.

It is our brain, its anatomy, physiology and biochemistry and how these parts function that set the limits for how we think. But since our brains parts also interact with our body’s anatomy, physiology and biochemistry, we must see brain and body together. They are part of the same system - us.

Let’s consider the anatomy of our brains to get a better understanding of what influences our behaviour.

What we feel and think depends on neural connections

A lot is known about the brain, but far from everything. There are many controversies and unanswered questions.

Nobel Laureate Dr. Gerald Edelman, director of the Neurosciences Institute says:

The brain is the most complicated material object in the known universe. If you attempted to count the number of connections, one per second, in the mantle of our brain (the cerebral cortex), you would finish counting 32 million years later. But that is not the whole story. The way the brain is connected — its neuroanatomical pattern — is enormously intricate. Within this anatomy a remarkable set of dynamic events take place in hundredths of a second and the number of levels controlling these events, from molecules to behaviour, is quite large.

Weighing only three pounds, the brain is composed of at least 100 billion nerve cells or neurons. It also contains tens of billions of other cells called glial cells supporting neurons. Neurons are connected to other neurons and interact. Each neuron has a cell body with tiny branches called dendrites that receive information from other neurons. Extending from the cell body is long fibers called axons that send information to other neurons.

Since it is the connections between neurons that cause our mental capacities, it is not the number of cells that is important but the number of potential connections between them.

How do neurons connect and communicate?

Every neuron can connect with other neurons at contact points, the space between one neuron and another, called synapses. When a neuron fire an electrical impulse down the axon, the impulse is released as a chemical substance called a neurotransmitter. When this chemical reaches the dendrite of another neuron it triggers an electrical impulse. Thereafter a series of chemical reactions begins. Some stimulation must happen for the neuron to fire. The strength of this firing and what kind of neurotransmitter is released depends on the incoming stimuli.

How does the neurotransmitter cause the electrical impulse? On the surface of the receiving neuron are proteins called receptors and every receptor is tailor-made for a specific chemical. The chemical acts as a key, and the receptor, or the lock, only"lets in" the right chemical.

Why does it feel good when our loved ones give us a kiss or a compliment?

It is the neurotransmitter dopamine that is being released. Dopamine is involved in the brain’s reward and motivation system, and in addiction. High levels of dopamine are believed to increase feelings of pleasure and relieve pain.

Another neurotransmitter is serotonin. Serotonin is linked with mood and emotion. Too much stress can lead to low levels of serotonin and low levels are associated with anxiety and depression. What happens when we take an antidepressant drug? The drug increases the amount of serotonin in our brain. The drug mimics the structure of serotonin. Antidepressants don’t make us happy; they just treat the state of unhappiness. Observe that even if neurotransmitters and the drugs that affect them alter our mental functions, they are part of a complicated system of interactions between molecules, cells, synapses, and other systems, including life experiences and environmental factors.

So far we know that the brain is a chemical system, and that neurons communicate with each other through the release of neurotransmitters (chemicals that carry messages between neurons). What we think and feel depends on chemical reactions. And these chemical reactions are a function of how our neurons connect.

What determines how these neurons connect and their patterns? Our genes and life experiences, situational or environmental conditions, and a degree of randomness.

Genes control brain chemistry but are turned on and off by the environment

What is a gene? What does it do?

Genes are what makes an individual, for example, to be built with two blue eyes, two arms, one nose, and a brain with certain architecture.

Our body is made up of different types of interconnected cells functioning together. Each cell has 46 chromosomes or a chain of genes. 23 chromosomes come from each parent. Every chromosome is made up of the chemical DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA is our inheritance; half is from our father and half from our mother. Genes are segments of our DNA and the units of our inheritance. A gene consists of four chemical molecules: adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine or A, C, G and T joined together in a chain. The short chemical name for a chain of any number of these molecules, in any order, is DNA. The order of these molecules provides coded instructions for everything a cell does.

The job of genes is to make proteins - the building blocks of life. Proteins are molecules that carry out most of our biological functions and are made up of amino acids. There are twenty kinds of amino acids that can be used to make our skin, hair, muscles, etc. Some proteins called enzymes cause certain chemical reactions. One example is neurotransmitters. Proteins are also hormones that act as messengers between our cells.

Sometimes a gene is"switched off" and can’t make proteins. Messenger RNA is a genetic material that translates DNA into specific proteins. The Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Medicine, 2006, discovered a mechanism called RNA interference that could"switch off" a gene by blocking this process. RNA interference plays a key role in our defenses against viral infections.

Recent studies also suggest that genes do more than make proteins. For example, there is a gene in yeast that turns on and off another protein-producing gene without making any protein itself.

Every living thing uses the same genetic code - from cats to humans. This means we can transfer a single human gene into a cat and the cat"can read it" and follow its instructions. But no individual has the same DNA or the same versions of genes (except for identical twins). Not all things are"spelled" alike. That’s why people differ in eye color, height, etc. The closer related one living thing is to another, the fewer spelling differences. But even if the differences are small, gene expression - where and when they are turned on or off and for how long - is the key. As an example take our closest relative - the chimpanzee. Genetic studies show that humans and chimpanzees share at least 94% of their DNA sequences. This means that less than 6% of our DNA is responsible for the traits that make us different from chimpanzees. What causes the large difference in behaviour? Studies show that the human brain shows strikingly different patterns of gene expression compared to the chimpanzee’s brain.

Since we inherit all of our genes from our parents, why don’t we look like a mixture of them?

In most organisms, genes come in pairs. We inherit two versions of each gene for a particular trait (for example one version for blue eyes and one for brown eyes) from each parent....

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 24.5.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften
• ISBN-10: 0-00-081373-7 / 0000813737
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-081373-2 / 9780000813732