Stories of Dharma - 1: The heart

Usually (among my Indian readers) while growing up, we would have heard bedtime stories from our parents or grandparents, explaining the concept of dharma. Most of these stories would have involved some form of social dilemma, which is ultimately resolved by a wise person who understands dharma.

Given that we were also taught to think "scientifically" at school, it is hence natural that we would have interpreted dharma as some form of a divine code of ethics, that defines our "religion". And sometimes, when someone would have asked us which scripture spells out the codes of dharma, we would have had no answer.

Sometimes, some of our bedtime stories would have involved celestial bodies like the sun and the moon. Later on, as adults our "scientifically" trained minds would have told us that if ethical concepts like dharma were applied to the sun and the moon, it means that our ancestors had a primitive, anthropomorphic model of the universe.

In reality, the concept of dharma is way more fundamental, and way more profound. It is by no means, a divinely revealed code of ethics. It is a natural phenomenon that can be experimentally verified in a repeatable manner, and is resilient against attempts at falsification.

So, to revive genuine scientific curiosity about this concept, let me start a series of posts featuring bedtime stories related to dharma. Except, these stories are not about social dilemma leading to ethical questions. Instead, these are stories that perhaps Sheldon Cooper would like to hear during bedtime!

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Today's dharma story is about the human (or any animal's) heart. The heart is a critical organ in our body, which powers our blood circulation system. It is because of the heart that our body is able to assimilate nutrients and oxygen, and discard carbon dioxide and waste. 

Image source Wikipedia: By DrJanaOfficial - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50477765

But if we look at how the heart functions, it seems rather strange. The heart pumps blood using recipocatory motion that continuously keeps the organ expanding and contracting. Any mechanical engineer would agree that this is an extremely inefficient way to build a pump. An alternating motion creates fatigue in the material, leading to wear and tear. None of our pumps for instance, use such a technique. Instead, we use motors involving rotary motion that is much more efficient. 

So why didn't nature evolve a motor for the heart? Why did it settle down for such a crude implementation of a pump? 

It is dharma in action! Let me explain. 

Firstly, let us bust the myth that the human heart is somehow inefficient. Our heart has been beating continuously, at an approximate rate of 70 beats to a minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, ever since we were born! It has not taken a single break, and has not been shutdown for maintenance. If it were, we wouldn't be here, reading this blog. 

No "efficient" motor-based pump designed by humans, has known to perform for 80-100 years at a stretch, continuously, without a break. So clearly, nature has different ideas about what is "efficient". 

What we call as living beings is essentially a vast colony of even smaller beings called cells, that are trying to sustain themselves. In order to sustain themselves, they have come together to form a large system -- a metropolis of sorts -- where they are cooperating and complementing one another and helping each other sustain. 

Our heart is no monolithic entity. It comprises of several thousands of cells that are in a cooperative setup, and are contracting and expanding autonomously to result in the overall heart beat. Cells do experience wear and tear, and die away. But they are quickly replaced by newer cells that are born in the system. Indeed, every few years, we are biologically not the same creature anymore! 

So why does the heart pump blood using contractions? Why did the cells not evolve to collectively form a motor, so that they can work more efficiently? 

The answer to this is that, a motor is actually less efficient when it comes to sustainability, than a pump based on contractions. A motor is adharma, compared to a contractions based pump! (Imagine interpreting this as "a motor is unethical or immoral!" 😀)

A motor requires its blades to be so finely organised, and the system of blades to be synchronised so well that it creates a neat, rotary motion. Get a set of people to form a circle and run in a circle, and you'll know what I mean. It is very hard to maintain a circular motion with a group of agents acting autonomously! 

For a motor, the circular motion is extremely critical to maintain the flow. Even a little loss of synchrony in the circular motion can effectively shut down the pump. 

In contrast, it is much more simpler to organise a collection of autonomous agents to contract and expand together. The contractions need not be tightly synchronised. Indeed, the rate at which the heart beats, keeps varying throughout the day. The rate at which individual cells contract and expand also keeps varying. But within a fairly large interval, these variations do not disrupt the overall operation of the pump. 

Sometimes our heart does go out of synchrony. Such phenomena are called fibrillations, where the heart cells become uncoordinated. Fibrillations would be far more commonplace, if the heart cells were to have evolved into a motor, rather than in their current form. 

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There you go. Hope you enjoyed today's bedtime story of dharma. Express your gratitude to dharma, and have a good night's sleep while your heart beats on!