Whenever one becomes aware that one is, and so can say: I am!, one can feel one’s own ‘I’ as a kind of summary of all his qualities – positive and negative -, fortune, opinions, images, judgements, temperament, everything that one has seen and heard in life, the paths one has gone, the plans for the future… All that, in a summarized feeling, together with one’s physical body and the sureness to really have a body that is one’s own, could be called ‘I’.
When one tries to relate this awareness of the ‘I’ to a biological, scientific theory of the human body, one could find that in fact in the depth of the physical body an algorithm – i.e. a program of this completeness, of this complicated organic, psychologic-spiritual entity that one is – can be found in the genes. More exact: in the structure of one’s DNA.
Therefore, it is good to know something about DNA. For that we have to contemplate on something that is present in the smallest part of our corporal reality. We can’t be aware in that area. When one says: I am, one refers to his body with that. But one only knows through science that this body consists of cells that are differentiated to certain organs, veins, bones, nerves etcetera, and these are not something that one feels oneself.
When one thinks about these small living entities in the body, the cells, one must consider that each cell has a core. That core has chromosomes. In the chromosomes lies the hereditary material. In the 20th and 21st century the research of molecular genetics has come so far, that one has well formulated concepts about how the hereditary material is composed and how it is transferred.
The DNA is inside the chromosomes. It is a big molecule, that is constituted by a chain of identical sugars –
Deoxyribose. These sugarmolecules are attached to each other by phosphate acid. In this way long chains origin.
Each sugar molecule, each deoxyribosemolecule has a free space for the connection with a base.
There are four different bases: adenin, guanin, thymin and cytosin.
The order of those bases determines the quality of the gene, determines which characteristics each gene has. The DNA consists of two of these strings, that are twisted like a helix, and where the bases are across each other in pairs: Adenin always lies across guanin, thymin always across cytosin.
In the course of time the genome of mankind became clear – no doubt that there are still many details unknown. As many as possible human qualities, physical as well as psychical, the structure of DNA is known and also that the DNA in its totality is absolutely unique in each person. Because of that one can use it more and more in the forensic medicine in identifying a criminal, by reasearch of traces of that criminal or victim. But also in historical research DNA plays a great role because one can retrieve DNA from long deceased persons and through that determine the origins of these people.
The question is: is this genome of mankind, given as unique structure of DNA, the program for the ‘I’? Do I observe with the I-awareness in vagueness, in a vague comprehensiveness as ‘I’, what is pre-omened with perfect precision in the DNA?
However, does not each person, who witnesses himself as ‘I’, knows for certain that there is another, more comprehensive, more creative world?
The ‘I’ and the DNA by Mieke Mosmuller
