Thursday, November 5, 2009Influenza, the greatest show on earth, and how big is a human being?

Sharry and I failed to get to France for Utopiales, due to health problems (i.e., the flu -- presumably not H1N1, however).  The upside is that we've been invited to that country next May instead, to coincide with the French launch of A Bridge of Years.  This might include a visit to the Imaginales conference in the town of Epinal, plus appearances in Paris.  Not confirmed yet, but watch this space.

Recuperative reading chez Wilson included the new Richard Dawkins book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.  Much of the material was already familiar, but a brush-up on evolutionary theory is always useful.  And some of it was new to me.  The chapter on embryology was especially fascinating: neurulation totally rules!

I've seen some perplexing reviews of the book.  More than a few reviewers called out Dawkins' alleged "stridency."  I can't see it, myself.  To me Dawkins seems like a perfectly amiable writer with a knack for explaining scientific matters and an endearingly avuncular prose style.  Then again, it's not my ox being gored.  But even in his most contentious book, The God Delusion, the thrust of his argument was that we shouldn't offer up supernatural explanations for natural phenomena, and that doing so is an intellectual dead end and an excuse for imposing theological dogma on real science and education.  And I can't argue with that.

When I wasn't reading Dawkins I was working on Vortex, the final book of the Spin sequence.  In the course of my research one question has come up that I can't easily answer: How big is a human being?

More specifically, if you draw a linear scale with the Planck length at the bottom and the perceptible limits of the universe at the top . . . where does a human being (or more specifically a human brain) fall on the scale?

I'm sure the question must already have been asked and answered -- somewhere. All I need is an approximation.  But I can't find an easy reference, and I'm way too mathematically challenged to work it out for myself.  Can any reader help?

If you have a good answer, let me know.  The best responder will get a mention in the acknowledgments in Vortex.  There's no second prize, apart from my eternal gratitude.

(UPDATE, November 11:  I've had a number of useful answers, so we can consider this closed -- thanks, everyone!)