12. Recollections [III] and Philosophy

The first part of Cajal's Recuerdas de mi vida is essentially the aubiographical bildüngsroman of a young romantic. Think of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, very much a mocking indictment of idealism. But unlike Stephen Dedalus, Joyce's pretentious protagonist, Cajal reaches the full potential of maturity. Though his name signifies the mythological artificer of wings, Stephen Dedalus fails to fly, whereas Cajal stays grounded all the while, with his eyes turned down to the earth. In this post, I will focus on Chapter II of Part II of Cajal's book: "The Story of My Scientific Work." Notice that Cajal believes the story of his life to be his work concerning nature, and not his personal development.
            During the years from 1884 to 1885, Cajal published a collection of scientific articles called "The marvels of histology" in a professional weekly in Zaragoza that was edited by a classmate and friend. Rather popular, these writings were re-printed in a journal in Valencia, where Cajal then lived and worked. Cajal reveals that these outputs were "overflowing with fantasy and ingenuous lyricism"[293], and seems embarrassed by them. Thus, he detached himself, signing the pieces Doctor Bacteria, a name that he "used for [his] philosophic-scientific temerities and [his] semiserious critiques"[293]. Also, we know, for his fiction: Vacation Stories. It is clear that Cajal, ever self-aware in his maturity, neatly separated the functions of his mind. On the one hand, Santiago Ramón y Cajal was a gifted scientific scholar; on the other hand, Doctor Bacteria was a mediocre literary artist. This duality, emergent from his childhood and youth, defined his intellectual existence.

            But Cajal had an undeniable flare for the philosophical. In my last post, I vowed that I would silence my own ideas in favor of Cajal's. In Chapter II of his autobiography he presents some beautiful and honest ideas from his early career. One concerns our composition:

"'This uniformity in the composition of organic tissues, liquid as well as solid, in the muscle as well as in the nerve, in the stem as well as in the flower; this precise repetition of the same melodic theme forms the primordial truth of histology'"[295].

Then, acknowledging the threat that this internal multiplicity poses to individual unity, Cajal consoles with a powerful appeal:

"'Can it be that within our organic edifice there dwell innumerable inhabitants which palpitate feverishly, with impulses of spontaneous activity, without our taking any notice of them? And our much talked of psychological unity? What has become of thought and consciousness in this audacious transformation of man into a colony of polyps? It is certain that millions of autonomous organisms populate our bodies, the eternal and faithful companions of glories and of toils, of which the joys and sorrows are our own; and certain also that the existence of entities so close to us passes unperceived by the ego; but this phenomenon has an easy and obvious explanation if we consider that man feels and thinks by means of his nerve cells and the not I, the true external world, already begins for him at the frontiers of the cerebral convolutions'"[295].

In other words: I am my brain.

Next, he discusses competition using the example of spermatozoa, only one of which can succeed. He calls this a "depressing truth (the universal struggle):"

"Thus, as in every civilized nation the vital competition is done away with or greatly attenuated by the division of labour which makes the citizens have common interests and aspirations, so also in the organic state, thanks to the foresight of the nerve cells, to the allotment of function rôles, and finally to the suppression of idleness and of excessive individual liberty, etc., the struggle disappears or is moderated, appearing only when the communal nourishmen (of organs or cells) is seriously threatened from either internal or external causes"[297].

Politically, Cajal was a socialist. Here we see why; he would like government to operate like healthy nerve cells. It should be noted that all of his intellectual positions were formed from under a microscope.

Cajal also addresses individual death in a world where nature is concerned only with the life of the species:

"'A single life, however great it may be, even though ennobled by the fires of genius, signifies nothing in the eyes of Nature. That a whole town should succumb; that entire races should be annihilated in the struggle for existence; that zoological species formerly powerful should be sacrificed in the barbarous battle matters little to the controlling principle of the organic world. --The essential thing is thing is to win the conflict, to reach the goal which is the final objective of organic evolution'"[298].

Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act V, Scene Five:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing"

The latter never looked through a microscope, but there is more than one way to find at truth. Cajal's material observations are especially convincing, though.

Lastly, I will transcribe Cajal's biggest idea. It is for those who have made it to the end of the blog. Enjoy:

"'Let us console ourselves with the consideration that if the cell and the individual succumb, the human species, and above all the protoplasm, are imperishable. The accident dies, but the essential, that is the life lives on. Comparing the organic world with a tree of which the trunk is the original protoplasm, of which the branches and leaves represent all the species produced later by differentiation and improvement, what does it matter that some twigs are broken off by the storm if the trunk and the basic protoplasm persist with unabated vigor, giving promise of shoots of ever greater beauty and luxuriance? Critically speaking, there are no independent individuals, alive or dead, but only one single substance, protoplasm, which fills the world with its creations, which grows and ramifies and moulds itself temporarily into ephemeral individuals, but which never dies. In our being there moves still that ancient protoplasm of the archiplast (that is to say, the first cell which appeared in the cosmos), the point of departure, perhaps, of the whole of organic evolution.

. . .

This protoplasm filled both space and time with its creations; it crawled in the caterpillar, dressed itself with rainbow colours in the plant, adorned itself with the crown of intelligence in the mammal. It began unconscious and ended conscious. It was the slave and plaything of the cosmic forces and it ended as the driver of nature and the autocrat of creation.

. . .

Has it reached its limit and exhausted its fecundity in the human organism or is it keeping in its portfolio plans for still higher organisms, for beings infinitely more intelligent and understanding, who are destined to rend the veil which covers first causes and to do away with all the laborious polemic of scientists and philosophers?

. . .

Who knows? Perhaps this demigod, protoplasm, will also died on that sad, apocalyptic day when the torch of the sun is quenched, when the embers in the heart of our globe become cold and there remain upon its crust only funerary debris and barren ashes! Day of horror, solitude filled with anguish, night of utter darkness, that in which, with the light of the Universe, the light of thought is extinguished! But no! This is impossible! When our miserable planet is worn out and frigid old age has consumed the fire at its heart, and the earth becomes a glacial and unproductive desert, and the red and dying sun threatens to overwhelm us with everlasting darkness—organic protoplasm will have attained the culmination of its work. Then the king of Creation will abandon forever the humble cradle which rocked his infancy, will boldly attack other worlds, and will solemnly take possession of the Universe!'"

Have a good night.