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 (US)

“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 train Zen Buddhist monks) long enough, promises neuroscientist Nikolay Kukushkin at the start of his book, and the origins of mind, and perhaps even human experience, will become clear.

But as many Buddhists also know, the path to enlightenment is long and difficult, even if it is ultimately rewarding, and One Hand Clapping is 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 wonderfully diverse branches. He encourages us to think about origin stories, not in any crudely reductionist manner, but in terms of what he calls nature’s ideas or essences.

Being savvy to the nuances of such words, Kukushkin is clear: “Don’t call it an idea if you think that’s too spooky or unscientific – call it an essence, nature’s idea: a rational fruit of selection.” He connects this to Plato, who called nature’s idea’s eidos, or essences.

Using this filter, hydrothermal vents (his favoured location for life’s origin) aren’t just porous rocks and flowing fluids, but also patterns of activity that pop up throughout nature. There is, for instance, a tendency for beings to become complex by tapping into more energy – a dynamic common in deep sea vents, photosynthesising cells and humans burning fossil fuels.

Other essences highlight motion and freedom, or the distinction between wanting and liking. But I found that Kukushkin’s research into the sea slug Aplysia californica provided the clearest example of their power, as he explored how the humble slug created an abstract idea vital for its survival.

This takes the book a few pages, but it involves the interaction of sensory and motor neurons, and muscles and the siphon, a key breathing organ on the slug’s back. Each of the neurons’ activities has “different meanings”, writes Kukushkin, like “touch to the tail” or “touch to the body regardless of location”. As the slug learns where danger is likely to come from (and given that the siphon must always be protected), it uses the abstraction of “dangerous touch regardless of location” to make good choices.

Kukushkin reasons that while human minds are more complex, similar pattern-finding and abstraction is the basis of our thinking. On top of these simple abstractions, we layer more that drive all aspects of our experience, from vision to language.

One Hand Clapping covers a lot of ground, which can make it seem like an entertaining lecture series, with amusing sketches. Some may find Kukushkin’s playfulness a bit much. But stay with it.

Modern scientists tend to shy away from attributing rationality or creativity to biological or chemical systems, and from notions of agency or direction in life. Kukushkin reminds us the ancients had no such issues. And recently, among some biologists, there has been a resurgence of the idea that evolution happens, in some sense, “on purpose”.

Scientists may fear this sounds like pseudoscience, or the “intelligent design” of religious groups. But we may need to revisit concepts we find uncomfortable by association – particularly when tackling existential questions like the origins of life and mind.

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

For Kukushkin, the answer lies in the long arc of eidos, from atoms to cells and brains, objective in that they are “out there”. We tend to think of abstractions, however, as internal and subjective. “What if,” he asks, “the subjective is just a complicated form of the objective? What if all ideas… are essences?”

This is a neat attempt to reason that objective and subjective are two sides of the same coin. If you think about it long enough, Kukushkin assures us, the hard problem dissolves. Personally, I don’t buy it: the phenomenal quality of conscious experience that binds together our senses, emotions and thoughts makes more sense when reframed this way, but I struggle to see how it can entirely bridge the gulf between subject and object.

Perhaps we will never resolve this. But for now, at least, One Hand Clapping is a welcome koan, in which “the process of getting to the meaning means more than the meaning itself”.