Is Life Really That Mysterious?
Recently submitted paper for my undergraduate Functional Anatomy class that covered non-specific low back pain. I wouldn't mind some peer review and constructive feedback.
Citation: Slone, J.C. (2019). A persistent puzzle: Non-specific low back pain. Unpublished.
If anyone wishes to reproduce my paper or is interested in publishing it (an undergrad can dream, right?) please contact me via email.
This was my response
Hi Joshua,
I should preface this by saying I used to lecture in critical thinking as well as other clinical subjects for a few years at a local university here in Australia. Almost started a PhD but I'm too old to begin that now.
My special area of interest was theory. Simple fact is that due to continual religious lobbying biology is taught without any detailed examination of the implication of natural selection. As socially confronting as that is it's a fact. Education is heavily politically influenced and none of the many religious lobbies likes the fact that the biological origin story doesn't include genesis, etc. But doing biology without natural selection is like doing maths without formula. Each new study usually becomes another perplexing investigation into the 'mystery' of things like NSCLBP.
But whilst the condition is difficult to pin down diagnostically and does seem to respond in a haphazard fashion to care we already understand why that is the case. It's because of the way natural selection works and therefore the manner in which neurology is built.
Now imagine doing maths without formula. It's guesswork. If you never met another person who used formula you'd be left thinking that mathematical problems were always confusing and the confusion was something we just had to deal with. We'd study maths like we study pain, by looking at prevalence or certain numbers or how numbers were utilized by the public, etc. That's what we see. If I try to explain to my colleagues that they will struggle to comprehend without first referring to theory they usually give me a bewildered look.
So here's how it goes - the thing with LBP is that the pain isn't like limb pain. It's not easy to discriminate. You can wiggle your fingers independently but try that with your spine... Try.. You can't. You don't even have any conscious idea of where the components of your spine are, really, not like your right big toe. Try it out. Notice that? If you think about it your back is kinda there but you don't have the same control as other parts of the body. Why? If we look inside we find that spine control is governed primarily by the much evolutionarily older lower brain which also handles quite unconscious other reflexive mechanisms. Your spine movement and sensation is a primitive thing. It has no large cortical representation. That's because natural selection 'picks' efficiency over complexity. (I'll add in here that efficiency doesn't mean you won't see anything complex, it means a great deal of the complexity is 'doubling up' like backup. No system is perfect so redundancy is an excellent evolutionary design)
If the brain mapped the spine (posture) cortically (which it mostly doesn't) it would also mean you had to be 'consciously reflexive' which isn't even a thing (reflexive is an antonym of voluntary). If we had to think each and every time how to hold our spine (which is never still anyway) in order to be stable AND move at the same time whilst reaching out with our hands we'd be inoperable. That simple task is already enormously complex. So evolution proceeds with a tendency to weed out a neurology that can't do that efficiently IE without even needing to 'ask for permission' (have any voluntary input) IE you don't know most of what is going on at any time because that's far more effective for survival. And the one thing evolution must have in order to proceed is a surviving procreator.
Technically we say that movement control is highly redundant and distributed (multiple pathways that overlap)., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
If you look at these articles the first natural reaction is to think 'No wonder no one can understand, I wonder if we ever will?' (it will just trigger our own belief that it's going to be a perpetual mystery) but despite the detail the framework (selection) IS robust. New data gets applied or compared or reflected off theory, just as we do in every other field of science. (that simple statement rather sums up the stupidity of the religious, political and secular interference into biology and the behavioural sciences neatly summed up here https://www.amazon.com/New-Know-Nothings-Political-Scientific-Nature/dp/1560003936
That type of build is more resilient but it also means that we do not have finely tuned conscious control of most of the body particularly the central part. Another random but obvious example (there are endless examples) - on Tuesdays, just for fun start doing digestion differently. Why not?! Because it's not controlled cortically (where the slightly conscious 'you' is). In effect we are very unaware of our own biology for a very good reason. Like your computer you don't have to deal with most of what it does so you can use it to do what you want. Bodies are the same, not computers, but they, like any vastly complex system, have to have hierarchies, most of it running independently, otherwise the system (you) is overwhelmed.
There. That won't make pain go away but it helps understand why spines (and their conditions) can be the way they are. It's biology with formula and like maths with formula there is the opportunity for solutions, not added (perpetual) mystery.
Perhaps you're religious yourself. That's a whole other fascinating area of biology because, ironically, natural selection also 'chose' a CNS that can make predictions. When we think we can imagine 'what if?' It allows us to plan and speculate and it also means we can invent entire mythologies and 'live inside them' - our own virtual reality is a naturally selected one. Anyway, there it is.
If you're interested I'm quite happy to field questions. I might even learn something. If you are indifferent or opposed to theory you'll struggle throughout your career (but at least you'll be unaware of it :))
Kind Regards
Douglas Scown
Chiropractor
B.App.Sci.,(Clinical), B.Chiro.Sci., B.Ed..
Level 5 / 243 Edward Street Brisbane
07 32292383
0418886718
Oh and by the way. Joshua's piece was an excellent summary of the prevalence and seeming mystery of the worlds number one leading cause of disability - chronic low back pain. Any foray into trying to alleviate the problem should be congratulated. I'll also add my opinion as to why people, even the well educated, need for their beliefs to remain 'mysterious' (I'm not by any stretch including Joshua). If we grow up being told that 'mystery' is akin to a type of knowing (personal knowledge of the mystery IE gods are not interesting mythology they are 'mysterious') it becomes merely absurd. Instead of admitting that we just don't know if certain ideas represent reality we grasp at platitudes as if that explained reality. It's why the 'spiritual literature' is so awash with sentimentalizing drivel, circularity and pious indignation. In my own profession the god concept is 'vitalism'. Same mystery, different label.
DS
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