One Hand Clapping review: Provocative book sets out to solve the hard problem of consciousness

One hand clapping
Nikolay Kukushkin

Swift Press (UK);
Prometheus Books (USA)

“If two hands come together and make a sound, what is the sound of one hand clapping?”

Meditate on this Zen Buddhist koan (a paradox used to teach Zen Buddhist monks) long enough, neuroscientist Nikolai Kukushkin promises at the beginning of his book, and the origins of the mind and perhaps even human experience will become clear.

But as many Buddhists know, the path to enlightenment is long and difficult, even if it is ultimately rewarding. One hand clapping no different.

First published in Russian, the book has been translated into English by its author, now at New York University. In it, Kukushkin explores the origins of life and its evolution along surprisingly diverse branches. He encourages us to think about origin stories not in some crudely reductionist way, but in terms of what he calls the ideas or essences of nature.

Understanding the nuances of such words, Kukushkin makes it clear: “Don’t call it idea if you think it's too creepy or unscientific, call it essencethe idea of ​​nature: the rational fruit of selection.” He connects this with Plato, who called the idea of ​​nature eidosor essence.

Using this filter, hydrothermal vents (his favorite birthplace of life) become not just porous rocks and flowing liquids, but patterns of activity that occur in nature. For example, there is a tendency for creatures to become more complex by consuming more energy—a dynamic shared by deep-sea vents, photosynthetic cells, and humans burning fossil fuels.

Other entities emphasize movement and freedom or the difference between desire and sympathy. But I found that Kukushkin's research on the sea slug Aplysia californica provided the clearest example of their power, exploring how a humble slug created an abstract idea vital to its survival.

The book is a few pages long but includes the interactions of sensory and motor neurons, muscles and the siphon, a key respiratory organ on the slug's back. The activity of each of the neurons has “different meanings,” Kukushkin writes, like “touching the tail” or “touching the body, regardless of location.” As the slug learns where danger might come from (and given that the siphon must always be protected), it uses the abstraction of “dangerous touch regardless of location” to make the right choice.

Kukushkin believes that although the human mind is more complex, our thinking is based on a similar search for patterns and abstraction. On top of these simple abstractions we layer even more that govern every aspect of our experience, from vision to language.

One hand clapping covers a lot of ground, which can feel like a series of entertaining lectures with funny sketches. To some, Kukushkin's playfulness may seem unnecessary. But stay with it.

Modern scientists tend to shy away from attributing rationality or creativity to biological or chemical systems, or from ideas about influence or direction in life. Kukushkin recalls that the ancients did not have such problems. And recently, among some biologists, the idea has been revived that evolution happens in a sense “intentionally”.

Scientists may worry that this sounds like pseudoscience or “intelligent design” by religious groups. But we may have to return to concepts that make us uncomfortable by association—especially when dealing with existential questions such as the origins of life and mind.

We are made of the same stuff as the physical world, but there is something completely different about subjective experience – the “hard problem” of consciousness.

For Kukushkin, the answer lies in a long arc eidosfrom atoms to cells and brains, objective in the sense that they are “out there”. However, we tend to think of abstractions as internal and subjective. “What if,” he asks, “the subjective is just a complex form of the objective? What if all ideas… are entities?”

This is a neat attempt to prove that the objective and the subjective are two sides of the same coin. If you think about it long enough, Kukushkin assures us, the difficult problem will dissolve. Personally, I don't buy it: the phenomenal quality of conscious experience that binds together our feelings, emotions and thoughts makes more sense when reformulated in this way, but I struggle to understand how it can completely bridge the gap between subject and object.

We may never solve this problem. But for now at least One hand clapping is a desirable koan in which “the process of achieving meaning matters more than the meaning itself.”