Pliny the Elder

This morning Marilyn called me to look out of the bedroom window. A heron stood on the lawn with a large goldfish in its mouth. That goldfish was my friend. For years I fed it every day and watched it grow from a tiddler into a magnificent specimen. I loved the way that it rose to the wheatgerm pellets that I threw into the pond. The heron struggled to lift off from the lawn and sat on a rooftop working out how to gulp its huge prey down into its gullet. I could only watch in despair.
Pliny was a Roman general who put together as much of the existing knowledge of his day. He always travelled with a book or someone to read him a book. he claimed in his writings to have consulted 20,000 works of knowledge. In practice he had consulted 37,000 works including art, natural history and astronomy. Pliny saw nature as beneficent towards human beings but sometimes cruelly unaware of them. He saw nature as infinite, human beings as finite. For instance by examining the beauty of insects we could become aware of the majesty of nature. We were at the centre of nature but at times our curiosity to us beyond our boundaries. We always had to keep in mind that by exploiting natural resources we could damage the earth. He insisted that we had to be useful to nature. If we acted out of greed we were exploiting our resources.
How relevant to modern day are those views? The BP oil disaster and many tanker spillages show us how human greed goes way beyond human need. What a calling he gave us to live within our resources.

Early learning of new born babies

Having a grand daughter is a strange experience. You find yourself loving the baby as much as you love your own children. You see hints of behaviour and mannerisms that reflect your own family genes, a fraction of recognition there. When a man sees his own child it reassures him to see likenesses in her face. he will bond more deeply to the child if he sees something of himself in her. Carrying her around I have been telling her things in French and German. A friend called Rose who understands child development told me that she is not ready for that yet. According to one of Melvin Bragg's contributors a baby can hear 600 sounds when they are born. That number is selected down to about 60 sounds by 12 months. A baby will pick up any language but their ability to learn other languages will be enhanced if they have heard the rudiments of their own language first. When they start to show dominance of one hand over the other they are ready to start with the next language, and the next...That could be at about 18 months.

At first the baby will listen and cry in different tones. From working with many children in craniosacral therapy I have heard a baby growl or grizzle, (gurning in Scotland). We have all heard that shriek of real pain like colic, or felt them muzzling away to find a source of milk. Babies try out all kinds of facial expressions. After about 10 weeks the vocal chords stretch and the voice box descends into the larynx. They lose the ability to swim naturally under water. Indeed they would choke after that until they learn to swim properly.

It still amazes me that a new born baby is a fully grown human personality that has just dropped in on the world. They are blessed with a super computer for a brain. Computers as we know, run on solid state electronics. The human nervous system is far more adaptable because it runs in a fluid medium. Each nerve pathway has junctions called synapses. Electric currents shoot down a pathway, meet a synapse and jump the gap by means of neurotransmitters like acetyl choline. Each type of neurotransmitter can alter the way that the messages jump the gaps. Computers have a long way to go to match the human brain. Even our belief that we are either left brain logical thinkers or right brain intuitive thinkers is challenged by the brain. There are approximately 300 million connections between the left and right sides of the brain. You can alter your left or right dominance by training your other hand to perform tasks. Initially a baby will hold its hands in the centre, in its mid line. As it reaches out to grasp objects it brings them back to the mid line again. By doing this they are establishing their spacial map or proprioception. The cerebellum or 'little brain' co-ordinates where we are in space and how to balance our movements.