Life/mind principle

Very much a member of your own generation, you re a natural visionary and a humanitarian of the first order — at least in theory. You have high-minded principles, and you try to live by them. Altruistic and issue-oriented, you believe in the equality of all human beings, and you re interested in everyone, regardless of class, race, age, sexual orientation, or any of the other concerns that shape life today. Exquisitely aware of the impact that those factors can have, you possess the ability (when you so choose) to set them aside and connect with the real human being. The terrible things that happen in the world appall you, the issues of the day animate you, and you aren t one to follow a party line just because that s what your friends believe. You have a capacious brain, and you think for yourself. 

Sometime around 1800 there came over the European mind a shadow of uncase about Newtonian science. Beauty, life, and mystery were all expiring in a desert of atoms and forces and soulless mechanisms—so the poets held, but not only they. Science also, many people felt, must seek higher themes, broader principles, deeper foundations—... 

Whi comk to chemistry You are about to embark on an extraordinary voyage that will take you to the center of science. Looking in one direction, toward physics, you will see how the principles of chemistry are based on the behavior of atoms and molecules. Looking in another direction, toward biology, you will see how chemists contribute to an understanding of that most awesome property of matter, life. You will be able to look at an everyday object, see in your mind s eye its composition in terms of atoms, and understand how that composition determines its properties. 

Eric R. Kandel, a professor at Columbia University, is one of the world leaders in the science of the central nervous system, which he prefers to call the science of mind. A winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 2000, together with Arvid Carlsson and Paul Greengard, for his studies on the mechanism of learning, he has written the history of his life in science in an elegant book In Search of Memory. In this book, Kandel defines five principles of the science of mind. Here they are (and I quote directly) ... 

Whenever you start a car, use a battery-powered device, apply a rust inhibitor to a piece of metal, or use bleach to whiten your clothes, you deal with some aspect of electrochemistry. Electrochemistry is that branch of science that involves the interaction of electrical energy and chemistry. Many of our daily activities use some form of electrochemistry. Just imagine how your life would be in a world without batteries. What immediately comes to mind is the loss of power for our portable electronic devices. While this would certainly be an inconvenience, consider the more critical needs of those with battery-powered wheelchairs, hearing aids, or heart pacemakers. In this chapter, we examine the basic principles of electrochemistry and some of their applications in our lives. 

An effective and compliant stability program will ensure that drug products developed for human use are safe, efficacious, and will meet a certain standard of quality (i.e., remain within its approved shelf life specification when exposed to various storage conditions). As the product may experience extreme temperatures and/or humidity as it moves through the supply chain from manufacturer to pharmacy to consumer, it is imperative to determine what effect these conditions will have on product quality. A number of systems are implemented to guarantee that the stability program is carried out with these principles in mind. The elements of an effective stability program include ... 

The body is by itself a principle of death, analogous to that formless, cold and dark mass, from which God formed the World. It represents shadows. The mind is derived from and participates in this matter, animated by the spirit of God, which in the beginning moved upon the waters, and which by its diffused light, infused into the mass that heat, producer of movement and life in all nature, and that fertilizing virtue, principle of generation, which furnishes to each individual the means of multiplying its species. 

One sees clearly in this chapter the distinction between mind and soul. The former is an igneous vapour, a spark, a fire, which gives animal life and movement to bodies, and vanishes in the air when the organs are destroyed. The Soul is the principle of the actions of the will and of reason, and survives the destmction of the body and the dissolution of the mind. 

Our denial of the truth of what is issuing from the pharmaceutical and chemical companies will perhaps bury our race for not only are they sucking the health out of people but they are polluting the environment to the point where the ice will melt and the temperatures will sore. Denial is the principle weapon of evil and is essentially the attitude that takes us away from life. On all levels denial works powerfully in our minds and the cost is usually high in personal terms but in social terms it spells disaster. There have already been many revelations and scandals about the darker side of medical science that should have seriously damaged our trust in scientists and government institutions. It is my hope that the information provided herein will destroy all trust and... 

On reflection we are at a loss as to why it is tradition for life and health science students not to be introduced to the bioanalytical tools of their trade from the outset of their course. To us this is like teaching students the principles of computer science without actually introducing them to a computer and what it can do. With this in mind, we purposely chose to take an applied approach to chemistry, with an introduction to relevant methods and technologies up front, in order to familiarize students with these tools before they encounter and study them in more detail later in their courses. 

In his early disputations Boerhaave defined the soul as the principle of life in man, as well as the beginning of thinking, conscience and wiU. The soul is a thinking entity and although it is closely connected to the body, it is distinct from the body. It is the principle which makes man a reasonable animal. Boerhaave seems to use the words soul (inimd) and mind i ens) arbitrarily. Yet, he must have had a clear understanding of a difference between the two. Soul... 

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