Waves

I recently read a book called 'At the Existentialist Cafe' by Sarah Bakewell which I highly recommend, one of the best books I have read in years. It is an exquisite overview of an intellectual movement giving both a biographical narrative of the main thinkers and the development of the main ideas. I have tried to infuse some of the main themes into my daily life and writing; I try at least once a week to take a step back from daily life's chatter, find a nice cafe and stop and see what is in front of me. To write about what I am surrounded by and in the process of observing, reflect.

Today, the clouds are whipping overhead as I sit outside a Swedish cafe at the head of the Union Canal in Edinburgh. I can see water glistening in the early evening light. Plants flow in the wind, people bustle, children chatter, pigeons coo and here I sit and write. As I sit in the evening light and drink my coffee I don't want to get comfortable, I want to get raw and thoughtful.

I look over my scrawled notes from my last cafe outing, I had managed to get out of bed early and get to an open day of the Edinburgh University Anatomy Museum. It was one of those easy to miss one off outings that left me with some lasting impressions. The waves on the water on the canal reminded me of other, much more important waves.

The museum display was a glorious pokey mix of comparative anatomy, the story of how the study of anatomy has developed at the University of Edinburgh and wider social and medical history. It showed a grappling for greater understanding amongst all of the all too human dramas, misunderstandings and skulduggery of the 19th century. From executing people with mental health problems and then dissecting them to going round the world and shooting whatever rare exotic wildlife took an explorer's fancy and pickling it. There were death masks and skeletons of famous people, some good like Robert Owen and some infamous like Burke & Hare. There were also the cadavers of various beasts and fowl including those of human ancestors and our various primate cousins.

I was struck by how much we have learned, amongst all the curios was an urge for greater understanding, our understanding of phenomena rolling in like waves, one crashing in over the next. One such early medical example of which was the discipline of phrenology; it was an honest first attempt to understand human personality without ascribing the cause to supernatural causes. As knowledge developed of the nature of the human body and mind the lack of evidence for its assertions became clear and it was superseded and denounced as pseudoscience.

The development and change in the nature of institutions and the material conditions in which people live has been as profound as the advances in the nature of our understanding of biology. Edinburgh University started off as an institution that received patronage and validation from royalty and aristocracy, it of course in turn helped to preserve the status of such institutions with its prestige as a centre of learning but it has become so much more than that, a worldwide research institute, which, like so many other universities, has greatly added to our understanding of the world.

One of the most beautiful descriptions in 'At the Existentialist Cafe' was that of consciousness as being like a furl in a rug, a fold in reality. We have a much more accurate understanding of the details of how the systems of life operate but we still have many unanswered questions about the nature of life and consciousness. There is something transcendentally beautiful about the reality of being in the world, that we are, and then we are not.

Human skulls were laid out in cabinets in the exhibits, from otherworldly foetal skulls to the wizened fragile face of old age. I got a palpable sense of the sheer suffering and hardship of the lives of our ancestors, from the skull of a 14 year old boy who had been executed to stooped little skeletons of adults aged before their time. There was also a memorial book dedicated to all those who had donated their bodies to anatomy which I found truly moving. A humanistic show of thanks to the gift of others to enable the greater understanding of all.

I subscribe to the worthy goals of humanism to improve human knowledge and well-being though I think people make an unfortunate intellectual error when they assume progress is some sort of natural law, an inevitable, unstoppable wave. History may well have its own cycles and waves that may mean much of what we have discovered over the past few centuries goes the way of the Library of Alexandria, licked clean of memory by flames.

This is, however, not to denigrate or dismiss the valiant efforts or suffering of our ancestors making it possible for us to live our modern lives of comparative luxury, quite the opposite. Life is a wave that can roll slowly up the beach and dissipate its energy or hit a rock almost immediately but what I am most moved by is that there are waves at all. Coming from an existentialist perspective has helped me to appreciate each day, to learn, live, love and be kind. I will do my little bit to try and make the world a better place, and if that is only for its own sake, all the better.