Robert Hooke's Micrographia

In the seventeenth century, Robert Hooke, the Polymath English Natural Philosopher who has been referred to as England's Leonardo da Vinci, brilliantly opened the eyes of the world to aspects of our universe that had before been invisible. He made some of the first detailed drawings of microscopic life. He coined the term 'cell' to describer the small segments he discovered when looking at a slice of cork . An Engineer of Microscopes, he documented what he saw in his inventions by means of written descriptions and beautiful drawing. Some of these were published in 1964 in a beautiful book entitle Micrographia. His achievements in Micrographia were balanced by his discoveries in Cosmology, measuring the distances between planets and describing the rings around Saturn, amongst other marvels.

Science, Art, Evolution and imagining life: Alexander Semenov, Ernst Haeckel and Darwin

I first saw the image bellow posted on facebook by the eminent neurologist Oliver Sacks. 

Photograph of a Sea Angle by Alexander Semenov

'What a great digital artwork,' I thought to myself, as it reminded me of characters from Japanese cartoons I’d seen; like an aquatic Pokemon. But no, it is a photograph of a living creature called a sea angel taken by Alexander Semenov. It is one of the many beautiful images he has captured of bizarre, wonderful creatures that exist below the surfaces of our seas. Semenov is a brilliant photographer as well as a marine biologist. He is just one of many scientist who delve into artistic endeavours to elucidate the marvels of his discoveries. Throughout history science and art have merged to create a bigger picture of our reality. In many circumstances, it has been by means of this merging that our fascination is drawn more deeply into the nature of life. 

The images of the Hubbell telescope, rendered in artistic detail play no small part in broadening our interest and understanding of what is beyond our planet.

In the 19th and 20th centuries Ernst Haeckel created magnificent drawings of a rarely seen diversity of life under the seas and above land are. As well as a brilliant artist Haeckel was a biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician and Darwinist. His detailed representations of living organisms are a testament to the importance of image in understanding. They, furthermore, stand alone as breathtakingly beautiful pictures to feast the eye upon. If, at the same time, we recognise that they are representations of life on our planet I, for one, am thrown into awe: they inspire me to imagination.

Drawings of microscopic life 

by Ernst Haeckel

Darwin also used drawings to illustrate his ideas. Not as an accomplished artists as Haeckel but still capable. Through his drawings the fundamental concepts of evolution become more clear. By looking at the work of Haeckel and Semenov we can see to what extent evolution is capable of reaching. 

Charles Darwin's drawing of finches, 

illustrating the evolutionary links between different types

It is becoming less and less questionable whether life exists beyond Earth. The overwhelming consensus is that it must. Still we are, seemingly,  barely aware of the extent of diversity of life we share this planet with. Still, not knowing what all exists on our own planet, we are capable of imagining life that may exist beyond; or that we may even play a hand in creating. As our societies change and technology develops, evolution may be shifting away from natural selection’s survival of the fittest to new kinds of life specialised by human inclinations. But we mustn't forget that as much as we affect nature, it will affect us.

Drawing by Timothy B Layden of imagine life 

- inspired in the work of Ernst Haeckel

Lifetime: What is a lifetime; how long could it be?

In a documentary called Lifetime,  Michio Kaku asks us, if given the chance,  whether we would drink of the elixir of eternal youth and live forever, or not? Kaku explores memory and the always-present awareness of each of our inevitable deaths.  Time defines the way we live and how we live defines how we experience time. “What would it mean to be immortal?” Kaku asks us.

Time is incessantly changing us. When we are young many of us feel immortal but as we get older we become more and more aware of how time is leading us towards the exit door; time will run out for us. “But why does time have to run out, why can’t we just go on forever?” enquires Kaku. The great gods who have been envisioned in our form by almost every culture are immortal; we have always dreamed of acquiring immortality for ourselves.  A fundamental aspect of the way that we exist today, however, is that we will only exist for a short time. We know that others have existed before us and hope still more will follow. We live much longer than many other creatures and most animals seem to have a set, programmed lifespans.  But, it appears, that not even our species is immortal. We have not been around for that long in the greater scheme of things and we have witnessed the extinctions of many great  species.  We suspect that the human race itself will one day cease to exist, as will our beloved Earth.  The longest living organism known to man is the great basin bristlcone pine tree, over 5000 years old; about the age of written human history. The oldest humans alive barely make it over 100. Humans have always looked up at the stars with aspirations to explore beyond. But we now know that anything we could get to within our current human lifespan would be inhospitable. It seems quite clear that our solar system has no other hospitable environments for human life beyond Earth, unless we can figure out how to terraform Mars. The nearest stars that may have hospitable environments for our kind of life are more than a thousand light years away.  One solution to this problem is that generation after generation of people live, procreate and die in space whilst pioneering towards where we might discover something. Another is to live longer.

At the Buck Institute for Aging in San Francisco  California, Gordon Lithgo has extended the lives of worms that normally only live around twenty days to over 100 days by manipulating their genes. At Cambridge, theoretical scientist Aubrey de Grey, at the Sens Research Foundation,   believes that we could beat the aging process even reversing it, making old age a much less common cause of death, possibly allowing humans to live for thousands of years.  Obviously there is more than living for a very long time to exploring the universe beyond Earth but having more time could definitely help. I imagine that Parliament Funkadelic’s Starchild, who travelled the universe delivery holy funk, must have had to live for thousands of years to get from place to place.