[Fis] What is Art?

[JOHN TORDAY]

Dear FIS, I am of the opinion that art is an expression of consciousness,
raising the question as to what consciousness is? I fell down this 'rabbit
hole' twenty years ago, having performed a series of experiments to
understand how and why Parathyroid Hormone-related Protein (PTHrP) is
necessary for the formation of alveoli in the lung (Rubin LP, Kovacs CS, De
Paepe ME, Tsai SW, Torday JS, Kronenberg HM. Arrested pulmonary alveolar
cytodifferentiation and defective surfactant synthesis in mice missing the
gene for parathyroid hormone-related protein. Dev Dyn. 2004
Jun;230(2):278-89)? The duplication of the PTHrP Receptor gene during the
water-land transition amplified all of the vertebrate physiologic
adaptations to land- lungs, kidneys, skeleton, skin- and since PTHrP is a
stretch-sensitive gene, I tested the hypothesis that PTHrP mediated the
vertebrate adaptation to the force of gravity. If cells are exposed to zero
gravity they lose their differentiated phenotypes (i.e. they devolve), and
when yeast are exposed to zero gravity they cannot conduct a calcium flux,
meaning that they are unconscious. Moreover, human consciousness has been
driven by bipedalism (Torday JS. A central theory of biology. Med
Hypotheses. 2015 Jul;85(1):49-57), freeing our forelimbs for tool making,
including language as a tool, and locomotion. Importantly, both language
and locomotion are under control by the FoxP2 gene, so that positive
selection pressure for FoxP2 would have coordinately stimulated language
and locomotion, expressed through our hands and minds as art of all kinds-
literature, painting, sculpture, music- in other words, art is a
manifestation of our need to communicate with our environment and with
other humans.

Furthermore, all of the above is due to the evolution of homeostatic
control of energy due to Symbiogenesis (Sagan, 1967), or the assimilation
of factors in the environment that threaten homeostasis, including the
elements in the Cosmos, the latter being an exaptation (Gould and Vrba,
1982) of Stellar Nucleosynthesis (Hoyle, 1946), or the serial chemical
reaction of hydrogen and helium to form the stars, the elements being their
byproducts in the exact order of their atomic masses as the 'logic' of the
Cosmos. Symbiogenesis is the mechanism by which life has acquired the logic
of the Cosmos. In other words there is a continuum from the foundations of
the Cosmos to life that is expressed in art.

Your comments and criticisms are welcomed.

Best, John
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