Living Cells as School of Fish

Reading on the Association-Induction Hypothesis (AIH), I can't   help thinking that the idea goes beyond the electrostatic context in which Dr. Gilbert N. Ling envisioned it. AIH goes against some long held beliefs. Like charges repeal each other, right? Well not always. I do remember some time ago thinking about my Ph.D. thesis problem in a classical electrodynamics context. I studied the attraction, or repulsion, between two elementary electric charges. Electron-electron elastic scattering, is the name, in Quantum Electrodynamics.

In classical terms I imagined two spherical charged metal objects. There is one simple solution in the symmetric case. Just think of two point charges, and forget about the sphere's radius. If they are of the same sign, they repel. Nevertheless as you can read in  The Feynman Lectures on Physics,  the charges move near the surface of the spheres, negatives and positives attract, so one ends up with two dipoles, i.e., two objects where the charges are separated. Now the question is not so simple. It does happen, that some spheres can attract each other, even though, they may have charges of equal sign. A phrase has developed, like likes like. That phrase is nowhere in the books. I know because I have an electronic copy of the three volumes, and I searched for it without success. In any case, that is the idea, under some circumstances one can have association induction. Dr. Ling uses this fact to propose a new physical theory of the living cell. Unfortunately biologist in general do not know physics.

Poor Dr. Ling he has been misunderstood by the powers that be in the American Medical establishment.

Anyway, that is his problem, and he has done well for himself regardless.

One image I like, reading about his ideas; is that the parts of the cell are not tightly kept by some magical membrane, with properties almost like the physical ether of yore: Not needed. This membrane with special properties is not needed. The cell parts move like a school of fish, and keep the cell in an autopoetic way.

Neat.

Now, as always - maybe that is why some people keep coming back to my blog,; because of the outrageous ideas I post here - I apply these ideas to people.

Maureen Dowd - I read her religiously, ever since she wrote that book Bushworld - has a piece today in the NYT. There I found this thought: ``“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”''

I have seen this habit in Mexico also. Some towns require everybody to join the same political party, and the same church.

I guess according the AIH, they are just acting like the cells they are made of.

BTW, NYT's Frank Rich has also a nice piece on the Manhattan Mosque's imbroglio:  How Fox Betrayed Petraeus.