Cosmologies are Optional

Action is always possible, but understanding rests on knowledge. We act on feelings, but these do not invariably communicate knowledge. We give recurrent feelings names, but the names do not inherently explain the feelings. Let me proceed with an example: hunger. As one venerable Zen statement has it, When hungry, eat. When tired sleep. Hunger produces eating, but it will take many years before we’re old enough even to understand that eating sustains our bodies. And for most of us—unless we look it up—precisely what it is that causes hunger remains a mystery. In effect it has no practical bearing on anything. Most people live and die without understanding anything about hunger beyond the feeling, which produces the action of eating—indeed they live and die without thinking much about all of the many radiations of that simple, daily experience.

So now you’re curious. Well, let me tell you something. Your curiosity will not be satisfied—as your hunger easily is. It’s a long story. In the center of our brain resides the hypothalamus. It is a kind of regulator. It receives input from the nervous system and causes the endocrine system to take various actions. The endocrine system causes glands to release hormones. The liver signals glucose levels to the hypothalamus. When these levels are too low, that organ causes release of hormones that produce the feeling of hunger. There are some twelve such hormones involved, but the most important is one called ghrelin. When hungry, ghrelin levels rise. With food intake, fat cells generate leptin, and their presence inhibits ghrelin’s effectiveness in signaling a state of hunger. These two hormones, therefore rise and fall, one motivating the urge to eat, the other inhibiting it. And the shift from one state to the other is signaled by blood sugar levels examined by the hypothalamus.

But this is not the end of the story. Real understanding requires us to answer why appropriate blood sugar levels should be present. Very long story. Eventually we have to ask: Why are bodies necessary? How did they come about? What is life? Is it prior to or produced by bodies? Are we, who feel the hunger, just another name for a collective of hypothalami, nerves, glands, ghrelins, leptins, glucose, and all the rest? Or are we, who detect the hunger, and act on it—or refrain to maintain slender figures—something separate? And if so, did we originate when semen penetrated ovum? Did we come later? Or did we exist before? In either case, why?

Good heavens. I was thinking of breakfast, and here I am, committing cosmology. But cosmology is optional, isn’t it? It seems to be on another level entirely, in a different category. Action and feeling suffice me if that’s where I want to stay. But what organ, then, makes me long for understanding?