Vyacheslav Ivanov: the universe looks at itself through the eyes of people

photo © Mikhail Goldenkov

Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov — Professor, Russian state University for Humanities, cultural historian, philosopher, linguist and anthropologist, who own dozens of languages and wrote hundreds of scientific papers. One of those scientists, the scale of the individual which allows the use of terms such as "great" or "outstanding". During his speech in the framework of the project "Open lecture", he outlined his humanitarian Manifesto — the history of the creation of the world and of human origin — such what it is currently science in the light of recent discoveries. "Theory and practice" are the main theses of his speech. One of the most advanced in the last century of science is physics. Physics has come to conclusions that are important for each of us: its opening concern the origin of all mankind. We live in what in Russian we call "the universe", and a more modest peoples of the same concept indicate by the English term of Latin origin — Universe. Note that in the uni, meaning "one": the one world, one universe. From the point of view of modern mathematical physics in those universes is likely that many — there are many different worlds, but it is not quite clear whether it is possible, even theoretically, the relationship between them. In any case, we got this world in which we exist.

Imagine that this world has not always existed — at least in this form, as it is now. The world is absent — at that brief moment in time it is difficult to call instantly, because it did not exist at the time. And then time begins to exist.

From its very beginning, our universe was designed so that it was possible the emergence and development of man. You can read a fairly popular book of our contemporary Martin Rice — "Just six numbers" is a symbol of those values that make possible the existence of man. This is due to the temperature arising of the Universe, how it has changed — that is, with very specific physical properties.

Cosmologist and astrophysicist Martin Rees in his book "Just six numbers" made a courageous attempt to show how just six numbers can explain the structure of the entire physical world. These numbers are "constants that describe and define everything from ways of connection of atoms to each other up to the quantity of matter in our Universe." I will allow myself to ask a question to which no universally accepted answer. If all this is true, it is understandable why the universe needs all of us — we need it as a comfortable apartment, a room, which had been prepared in advance for us. And what the Universe needed me to see in her a dweller? What is the meaning of the existence of man from the point of view of the outside world?

Without man the Universe would not have the necessary funds to look at ourselves, think: what is our art, our literature, poetry, music, anything we can do? All it takes to show how wonderful the external world as a harmonious nature. In order to see your beauty, the Universe, we need to look at yourself through the eyes of people. This is only a hypothesis, but a lot can say in favor of this hypothesis.

Two words about evolution. First of all the preconditions that could lead to the creation of man, but evolution was very slow. Nebulae arise from different types of stars, then planets, which, as you know, was very much. On some planets, like the Earth, were life is possible. Life gradually began to develop in the direction of reasonable.

I will allow myself to digress: human cognition is very strange. We pretty well know that from us as far as possible. We know quite well the history of the Universe — all these billions of years, and know quite well the next galaxy. Worse know those planets that are closer to us — like Mars. Really bad to know what is happening on the Ground, know too little about themselves. This is an amazing feature of man — his eyes always turned away.

"Science is afraid to articulate: if you find that the part of the humanoids is a part of humanity, then we will have a host of new challenges and commitments" We are still only slightly aware of the mind closely associated with us animals. Bees science has recently learned a lot, and what science has learned is amazing. Bee is a small creature (if you look at it through the eyes of a biologist and physiologist), and the opportunities it very little — she has very few nerve cells. However, this little creature not only finds its way from the hive to flowers, but also measures this way, remembers it, reports their movements, the distance you have to fly when returning to the hive. The bee behaves as a rational creature. Her mind is limited — she is only interested in sources of food and creates something like nectar, but it's pretty similar to many people!

The beginning of animal intelligence in the animal world, appears very early. Gradually develop very complex forms of mental activity. A remarkable discovery made mostly by American biologists — that apes can be taught some basics of our language — the language spoken by the American deaf. It turned out that you can teach a chimpanzee to correctly use the order of several hundred words, and chimpanzees can speak as a three year old and four year old children. I would say more: since we are talking about the enormous similarity of genes and proteins that comprise the entire body, the bonobos — bonobos — are almost identical to the man on the set of proteins. That is almost people. Science is afraid to articulate: if you find that the part of the humanoids is a part of humanity, then we will have a host of new challenges and commitments.

Recently, an American family took the little female Bonobo on education. This bonobos wears a decent suit, sitting with everyone at the table and eat Breakfast. She already has a child, but nobody paid attention to him. All turned their attention on her — she has been trained by gestures to interpret. But instead someone of the family members said that he bought the day before good oranges — bought and put in the refrigerator. A tiny little Bonobo by the name of kanze — he has now become famous, runs to the refrigerator and grabs the orange. He heard words he understood her! He learned English just because a lot of time sat at the table and hear the English speech. Of course, he never learned to speak — simply because of the differences of the vocal apparatus of humans and nonhuman — but he understands something. It turned out that it was necessary to teach him that it was very important to teach him from an early age — how to teach people. This means that we learn a lot about a person, because we can see our relatives.

And now about the relatives. Open one amazing feature monkeys, which people always knew, but didn't know how important this is. If one monkey in the presence of the other begins to wave his hands, the other immediately repeats these gestures. It has long been noted — and in many languages there is a term "APE". Just discovered why this is possible: all primates and all humans have a mirror neuron system. If one monkey has stepped up his own mirror neuron, then another monkey aktiviziruyutsya the same neuron: one monkey is reflected in the mirror of the movements of another monkey. Then this ability was discovered in humans — a mirror to reflect the emotions and movements of other people. But this system works a little differently: it does not necessarily follows the movements of another person. The fact that a person begins to develop from animals of this type, endowed with mirror neurons, it is no coincidence — this seems to be very important for our evolution.

What is clear and what remains mysterious about the evolution of man himself? There are some very important new discoveries. Open the gene is one of many genes — which regulates the teaching language, the structure of language, the movement of the speech organs, specifically the upper lip. Apparently, people like anthropoids, in ancient times was due to the gestures. It is very important faces — and the faces are very easy to get if you move the upper lip. Imagine, in one English family was discovered such a defect — all members of this family have difficulty in this movement. It turned out that they do not learn their native English. This is called the FOXP2 gene and its violation leads to the difficulties of learning a human language. It was found that the gene exists in different stages of evolution, it is found even among the songbirds. It varies in chimpanzees, varies Neanderthals — and, since this phase does not change and remains approximately the same as in humans. All of us came from European families, there is a small admixture of Neanderthals, and both of our ancestors — ordinary people and the Neanderthals already possessed this gene out of the question. This means that the language appears very early. Also appears before system of the brain associated with language, this requires a complex system of large clusters of neurons.

"Long ago, the question arose: how people can quite happily live in Tibet at high altitude? It turned out that the present-day Tibetans bear the traces of an early crossing with the Denisova" Over the past few years made several startling discoveries. One of them made by our archaeologists in the cave of the South Altai. The cave is called the Denisov — on behalf of a person who, not going to hide from you, was something of a criminal, hiding in this cave. The criminal is irrelevant to this scientific problem — but what the scientific terms sometimes have a funny origin. Denisovsky man or prehistoric man, such as lived in the Altai mountains 40,000 years ago. At this time, in Europe the Neanderthals lived, as a reasonable man lived throughout Africa and began its spread to South Asia. What happened then in Central Asia? If you look at the map, South of the Altai mountains located in the Himalayas and Tibet. Long ago, the question arose: how people can quite happily live in Tibet at high altitude? It turned out that the present-day inhabitants of Tibet are evidence of the earliest scissors with Denisova. Apparently, the old legends about Bigfoot was something right: some part prelude could live at high altitude.

Genetics is the science of our age. The science that we, humanists, was forced to move forward. It poses problems and asks: why is it important to deal with Tibet and the people of Altai? Who else on Earth from the point of view of heredity similar to Denisovskoe people? Imagine that the Papuans of New Guinea. It's a big island, which has been preserved, when destroyed most of the land. Here there is a special branch of humanity. As you probably know, some animals in Australia is very different from other animals. Imagine something like this openly in anthropology. The population of New Guinea and the initial population of Australia has kept certain characteristics that are different from the rest of the heritage of man.

Many tens of thousands of years ago in the world there was not one mythology, and several basic types. One part of humanity had myths, which are well known to us all — we all know how the creation of the world described in the Book of Genesis in the old Testament. There is a Creator who created the earth, the sky, the sea — these stories are the ancient inhabitants of Africa and people from Africa settled in the southern part of Asia. Myths of this kind have no of Australia and New Guinea. There are so many other differences is the overall culture of the two branches of humanity.

One of them we can reconstruct the oldest population of South Africa, the fact that earlier in Russian were called Bushmen. They call themselves "kausani". Another branch of mankind is the Papuans of New Guinea. These two cultures have very big difference. Imagine that in the languages of New Guinea are no separate numerals. A resident of New Guinea can count how many items in front of him. But how will he do that? The little finger of his right hand will point in this part of the body on the left side. Thus he counted about 15 items, and will reach parts of the body in the middle of a man — nose or mouth — and continue through with the little finger of the other hand pointing to the opposite side of the body. This method can be called from about thirty to seventy different numbers. Imagine that all humanity today is divided into those who can call different numbers and count on my fingers — and those who can consider on the shoulder, ear, and so on. It can only do some Papuans and Australians.

How to develop our humanity? Then humanity will be given the test. Our culture and technology has reached a level of achievements when they became dangerous to humans. We live in difficult times — but life in Russia has never been particularly easy. This applies to the whole of Europe. In Europe there was a big ice age, and it is in this period, human ancestors created cave paintings — it happened when people were faced with the greatest difficulties. I had this idea that big leaps forward in the development of art and science requires great difficulties. The proof of this Kondratiev developed the theory of crises around the world, this theory is very widely accepted. He says that the biggest discoveries were made during the periods of greatest crisis. Russia has made a lot of discoveries — the trouble with Russia is that in normal development, the opening immediately implement. We have it done and implemented in another country.

"Humanity will remain and will live on Earth. Perhaps gradually it will win some planets. This is part of some overall plan of everything that takes place in the Universe," presumably the basis for the optimistic Outlook for the future is the concept of the noosphere. Geologists study the structure of rocks, of which there is geological environment of the Earth. Biologists study animals that live in this shell. And the next level is the study of everything that creates the human mind and human CRF, including science and technology. We are all part of this giant of the noosphere. With the help of mirror neurons, as well as a number of features of the human body, due to which we are best suited to participate in this joint cooperation for the sake of the mind.

Humanity will remain and will live on Earth. Perhaps gradually it will win some planets. This is part of some overall plan of everything that takes place in the Universe. It is obvious that evolution is subject to some detailed plan. The challenge facing humankind, the plan of creation of the noosphere — sufficient. If the creation of the Universe was indeed taken into account, that we should arise, it is very unlikely that the madness of one crazy dictator or of a whole country may lead to the death of all mankind. My mind protests such predictions. I consider it my duty to warn you about them, but I believe that humanity will be able to fulfill its ambitious goal, which we are only beginning to guess.published

P. S. And remember, just changing your mind — together we change the world! ©

Source: theoryandpractice.ru/posts/9584-vselennaya-ivanova%20