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Philosophy
We Contain Multitudes
A human being is far more wondrous than we commonly recognize.
Posted August 3, 2024 Reviewed by Margaret Foley
Key points
- The complexity of cellular and subcellular life vastly exceeds our capacity to comprehend, let alone control.
- Every person is made up of countless atoms that were once part of everyone else.
- Recognizing both our commonality and uniqueness can help make us better persons.
It is good to pause from time to time and marvel at how wondrous each of us truly is. How many of us know, for example, that every adult human being consists of about 50 trillion cells—that’s 50 followed by 12 zeroes? By comparison, the average person has but a mere hundred thousand or so hairs on his or her head.
And each of those cells is incredibly complex. The average human cell is estimated to contain about 100 trillion atoms. Yet only one type of cell is even barely visible to the human eye—namely, a human egg, produced by the ovary. There are more atoms in an average human body—7 billion billion billion—than stars in the visible universe.
If our everyday experience took place at the level of molecules and atoms, the world would be, to borrow William James’s phrase, a blooming, buzzing confusion. For example, there is no color at such a scale, no liquids, solids, or gases, and electrons spin around nuclei at a rate of quadrillions of revolutions per second.
Even our very identity is less immutable than we commonly suppose. The atoms of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen of which we are composed are turning over all the time, and over the course of a year, at least 90 percent of them are replaced. For all intents and purposes, none of us is made up of the same atoms we were born with.
Likewise the distinctions between us. With every breath, we take in oxygen that is used to power cellular respiration. Each time we exhale, carbon dioxide and water go out into the air. These atoms of oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen are constantly being exchanged between us and between all living creatures and the earth’s atmosphere and oceans.
Each one of us contains hundreds of billions of atoms that were once in the body of every other person just a year ago, and the same could be said about the most famous figures in history—Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, William Shakespeare, and Abraham Lincoln. We may not be them, but we carry within us the stuff of which they were made.
The same goes for genetics.
If we could go back just a few thousand years in time, every person we meet would more likely than not be an ancestor of ours.
If we went as far back as 150,000 years, we could meet an ancestor—“mitochondrial Eve”—of every living person. Because the mitochondria, the “powerhouses” of our cells, come from our mothers, it can be shown that all human beings descend back along genetic lines that eventually converge on her.
Of course, humans are not composed merely of atoms, molecules, and genes. Our lives are also composed of words. We are, and we become, the stories we tell one another and ourselves about our lives. Where did we come from? Where are we going? And why are we here at all? By and large, good stories make for better lives.
When we tell such stories, we do so through a shared language. Consider English, the most widely studied second language throughout the world. The fact that we speak and think in English powerfully shapes the way we encounter and interpret the world every day. For example, English tends to attribute responsibility for events to persons.
And where did English come from? We know its roots, but it is impossible to say who invented the language, precisely because no single person did—not Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, or the translators of the King James Bible. English evolved over time, incorporating words from a wide variety of different languages.
And although we have much in common, there is also much that is utterly unique about each of us. Just as no two people, even identical twins, have exactly the same fingerprint or the same DNA, so no one has exactly the same experiences, memories, and story as anyone else. More even than snowflakes, each human being is utterly unique.
On the one hand, perhaps the vastness of our commonality can instill in us a deeper sense of fellowship, mindful of all we share. Yet on the other hand, perhaps our utter uniqueness can remind us of the preciousness of each human being. Every person we meet is both more a part of us and something far more special than we might suppose.
To be a particular person, to be a human being, and simply to be at all is a far more complex and beautiful thing than many of us commonly recognize. It seems the psalmist was on to something in writing, “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.”
