Wednesday Bible Study: Now for something completely different

Scholars think the Gospel of John was written around 90 BCE, which means that like the other Gospels, the writer cannot possibly have been an eyewitness to any of the events it describes.* In any event, while the events it describe overlap broadly with those of the other Gospels -- you have John the Baptist, recruitment of disciples most of whose names match (not all), miracles, crucifixion, resurrection, all the basics -- there is no shared language except for some minor overlap with Luke. The chronology is also different in many respects and, as always, there are numerous other discrepancies among the accounts.

John is also different because there's a lot of editorializing by the writer -- he doesn't put all his ideas in the mouth of Jesus. But, like much of what is attributed to Jesus, a lot of it is hard or even impossible to understand. What's all this about the "word" in the beginning? You can decide for yourself what you think it's supposed to mean. 

For now, just one more reminder. This is stuck in the middle of the Book of Luke. The second half of Luke is the Acts of the Apostles, which is placed after this in the canonical New Testament.

 

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³ Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. ⁴ In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome^[a] it.

⁶ There was a man sent from God whose name was John. ⁷ He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. ⁸ He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

⁹ The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. ¹⁰ He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. ¹¹ He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. ¹² Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— ¹³ children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

¹⁴ The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

¹⁵ (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”) ¹⁶ Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. ¹⁷ For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸ No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and^[b] is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.

John the Baptist Denies Being the Messiah

¹⁹ Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders^[c] in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. ²⁰ He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”

²¹ They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”

He said, “I am not.”

“Are you the Prophet?”

He answered, “No.”

²² Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

²³ John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’”^[d]

²⁴ Now the Pharisees who had been sent ²⁵ questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”

²⁶ “I baptize with^[e] water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. ²⁷ He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”

²⁸ This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

John Testifies About Jesus

²⁹ The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! ³⁰ This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ ³¹ I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”

³² Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. ³³ And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ ³⁴ I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.”^[f]

John’s Disciples Follow Jesus

³⁵ The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. ³⁶ When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”

³⁷ When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. ³⁸ Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”

They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”

³⁹ “Come,” he replied, “and you will see.”

So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon.

⁴⁰ Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. ⁴¹ The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ). ⁴² And he brought him to Jesus.

Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter^[g]).

Jesus Calls Philip and Nathanael

⁴³ The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, “Follow me.”

⁴⁴ Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. ⁴⁵ Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

⁴⁶ “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked.

“Come and see,” said Philip.

⁴⁷ When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”

⁴⁸ “How do you know me?” Nathanael asked.

Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

⁴⁹ Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”

⁵⁰ Jesus said, “You believe^[h] because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” ⁵¹ He then added, “Very truly I tell you,^[i] you^[j] will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’^[k] the Son of Man.”

Footnotes

1. John 1:5 Or understood
2. John 1:18 Some manuscripts but the only Son, who
3. John 1:19 The Greek term traditionally translated the Jews (hoi Ioudaioi) refers here and elsewhere in John’s Gospel to those Jewish leaders who opposed Jesus; also in 5:10, 15, 16; 7:1, 11, 13; 9:22; 18:14, 28, 36; 19:7, 12, 31, 38; 20:19.
4. John 1:23 Isaiah 40:3
5. John 1:26 Or in; also in verses 31 and 33 (twice)
6. John 1:34 See Isaiah 42:1; many manuscripts is the Son of God.
7. John 1:42 Cephas (Aramaic) and Peter (Greek) both mean rock.
8. John 1:50 Or Do you believe … ?
9. John 1:51 The Greek is plural.
10. John 1:51 The Greek is plural.
11. John 1:51 Gen. 28:12

 

 

 

 

 

 

* Some believe that Mark planted a brief description of a personal experience in Ch. 14: "⁵¹ A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, ⁵² he fled naked, leaving his garment behind." I agree it's hard to explain why this is here otherwise, but I don't think that's definitive evidence of anything. 

 

Inference in biomedicine

Okay, we're making progress. The next step in a standard treatment development process is called a Phase Two trial. These normally have about 100 to 300 participants, and yes, they're normally randomized controlled trials. Everybody in a Phase Two trial is diagnosed with the disease, so we're looking for preliminary evidence of efficacy. Half (normally) of the people will actually get the treatment, and half will get either a fake treatment (i.e. a placebo) or a standard treatment against which the new drug is being compared. The latter will often be necessary for ethical reasons if an effective treatment already exists, certainly so if the condition is dangerous if untreated.

Now here we run into a whole lot of problems that chemists aren't trained to think about. The first is establishing the eligibility standards for the trial. Every atom of iodine and every molecule of hyaluronic acid is identical, but every person with Creeping Crud is different. Different ages, different sexes, different ages, height, weight, other diseases and overall state of health, different health-related habits, different severity of Creeping Crud. In fact, we might not be 100% sure that all of them actually have Creeping Crud since diagnosis is not 100% reliable. Obviously, these could all affect how people respond to the treatment. 

This is a mathematical problem. The more variables to consider in addition to the intervention you're trying to evaluat, e, the less your power to establish the effect. For this reason, investigators might want to limit the participants to, say, people with greater severity of disease, good health otherwise, under age 55, and so on. Once you've done that, you can divide the people at random into your treatment and control arms. This doesn't guarantee by any means that the various potentially "confounding" factors will be evenly distributed between the two groups, but at least it's better than intentionally assigning them in some way that could skew the results.

But you still have more problems. For most diseases, people have good days and bad days. There are periods where the symptoms are worse and periods where they remit. Some conditions, of course, can be entirely time limited and just get better. If you've limited your sample to people with a certain level of severity, some of them are going to be better off the next time you measure them even without treatment. That's one reason for the placebo control. But even so, it could just be a coincidence that more people in the treatment group improve. (And it could go the other way -- maybe the placebo will end up looking more effective. That does happen.) 

Another reason for placebo control is that measures of efficacy often depend, in part or in whole, on participant self-reports. How much pain are they feeling, how much energy do they have, are they depressed? We know that if people think they're doing something that might be effective, they will report feeling better. If they're in a clinical trial, they're also getting a lot of extra attention from doctors and nurses, which not only might make them feel better but also means that whatever other health problems that may arise will get a quick response, which might make them healthier. (Or not, but that's another story.) 

Again, for any of these effects, there's at least a 50/50 chance it will be more powerful in the treatment arm than in the control arm. Also, if the people who are measuring the effect know who is in the treatment and who is in the control arm, they might be unconsciously biased to favor the treatment. (This has been proven to be true.) So the practice is to blind both participants and assessors to who is in which group ("double blind"), but this often fails in practice -- there are ways to tell. I'm not going to get into a deep philosophical discussion of the concept of statistical significance, at least not today, but the bottom line is that in a trial with 300 or fewer participants, the chance that you will get really compelling evidence of effectiveness is small. That's okay -- you're not looking to get FDA approval from this trial, that requires another step, which I'll get to. (Actually only about 1/3 of treatments go on to Phase 3 trials.)

But if you're wanting to sell a "supplement" that doesn't need FDA approval, like Linus Pauling, you're never going to do a Phase Three style trial, which typically has thousands of participants, can take several years, and costs millions of dollars. And the trials you actually do and publicize aren't going to have nearly the rigor of the Phase Two trials done by drug companies seeking FDA approval. What's more, you can do more than one. As I say, it's very easy for a trial to come out positive by coincidence, so you just publicize the ones that make your snake oil look good and bury the ones that don't. (Drug companies used to do this as well, but now they have to register their trials in advance so they can't.)

I'll have a good deal more to say about clinical trials, pharmaceuticals and snake oil, but I hope this is sufficient background for that discussion to continue. 

 

 

Continuing up the epistemological ladder

I guess I should have made myself clearer. Chemistry is absolutely an essential component of biological science. In saying that biology has emergent properties that can't be fully explained through chemistry, at least not in practice, I'm not saying that biologists abandon chemistry just as chemists don't abandon physics. They're still there, they just aren't enough. Life is all about chemistry. Cells are little chemical factories of astonishing complexity. However, multicellular organisms like you are about more than the chemistry that animates your cells. That means that studying them requires methods and expertise that you don't learn getting your chemistry Ph.D. On the other hand, getting your biology Ph.D. does require learning a lot of chemistry.

 

Of course there is a whole lot more to biological science than biomedicine, but for the sake of brevity I'm focusing on biomedicine and specifically drug development, because we're making an example of Linus Pauling and that's where he got into trouble. (Don't worry about his feelings, he's dead.) As I've said, before beginning to investigate a potential treatment in humans, it's highly desirable to have a biologically plausible hypothesis about how it will work. That isn't always absolutely essential -- some drugs have been investigated because there is strong anecdotal evidence that they seem to work. But contemporary ethical standards do require that there be a reasonable determination of safety in animal models before giving substances to humans.

Companies that hawk "supplements" without FDA approval often tout clinical trials, but they are typically of low quality and don't meet the standards for acceptance by the medical community, let alone FDA licensing. What I'm going to offer now is an outline of the standard process for investigational drugs. 

Once we've gotten past the rats and guinea pigs, the first step in humans is Phase One trials. These are not intended to provide evidence of efficacy, but only address safety and better understanding of what happens to the chemical in the body. They typically use from 20 to 100 "volunteers," but they aren't really volunteers because they are paid. They're usually healthy -- they don't even have the target disease, although sometimes they are seriously or terminally ill. In the latter case, if it really is a miracle cure, you might see evidence of efficacy. (That did happen with some HIV drugs, and a cancer drug called Gleevec.) 

The purpose of a phase one trial is, first, to establish a safe dosage. This means starting with very small doses and gradually increasing to see when and if people experience adverse effects. The second purpose is to determine "pharmacokinetics" -- how the drug is metabolized, how quickly it is eliminated (usually by enzyme systems in the liver) and what the breakdown products are, as these may be harmful to some people and not others. 

Commenter CP wonders whether prisoners might be offered a chance to "volunteer" for such studies in return for credit. That has been done in the past, but is now considered to be ethically highly dubious at best. It's questionable whether prisoners, who by definition are already under duress, can really be considered to be freely volunteering. Historically, many experiments on prisoners were clearly unethical and took far too little consideration of their safety and welfare. Currently, experiments using prisoners are unlikely to be approved by the Institutional Review Boards that oversee the ethics of human subjects research. That can be debated, but it's where things stand now.

Next time, Phase Two trials and the challenges of making inferences about efficacy.

 

Sunday Sermonette: Synopticon

Luke 24 is the final chapter of the canonical Gospel. However, the document originally consisted of what is now called the Gospel of Luke, and what is now called Acts. The early church authorities who compiled the New Testament inserted the Gospel of John between the two halves of Luke's book, presumably so the narratives of the life of Jesus would all be completed before they got to the post-crucifixion stories. 

Most of this material is similar to material in Matthew and Mark, with, as always, innumerable small discrepancies. However, 33 through 49 overlaps with John rather than the synoptic Gospels. Scholars waste a lot of time and ink arguing about the origin of these documents and who borrowed what from whom, all of which is completely feckless and pointless. They also waste time, ink and mutual hostility on the question of whether Jesus even existed.

This question is also pointless. Was there a guy named Yshua or similar in Judea around the year we designate CE 30, who claimed to be the Messiah and/or King of the Jews, who the Roman authorities crucified? Maybe. If so, he did not perform miracles and was not resurrected from death. A body of myth grew up around him in the ensuing decades, which is recorded in the Gospels. If he did not exist, and the body of myth grew up around a fictitious character, so what? I don't see why it matters in the least. 

 

24 On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. ² They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, ³ but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. ⁴ While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. ⁵ In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? ⁶ He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ⁷ ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” ⁸ Then they remembered his words.

⁹ When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. ¹⁰ It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. ¹¹ But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. ¹² Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.

On the Road to Emmaus

¹³ Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles^[a] from Jerusalem. ¹⁴ They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. ¹⁵ As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; ¹⁶ but they were kept from recognizing him.

¹⁷ He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?”

They stood still, their faces downcast. ¹⁸ One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”

¹⁹ “What things?” he asked.

“About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. ²⁰ The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; ²¹ but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. ²² In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning ²³ but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. ²⁴ Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.”

²⁵ He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! ²⁶ Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” ²⁷ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

²⁸ As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. ²⁹ But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.

³⁰ When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. ³¹ Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. ³² They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

³³ They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together ³⁴ and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.” ³⁵ Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread.

Jesus Appears to the Disciples

³⁶ While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

³⁷ They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. ³⁸ He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? ³⁹ Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”

⁴⁰ When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. ⁴¹ And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” ⁴² They gave him a piece of broiled fish, ⁴³ and he took it and ate it in their presence.

⁴⁴ He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”

⁴⁵ Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. ⁴⁶ He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, ⁴⁷ and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. ⁴⁸ You are witnesses of these things. ⁴⁹ I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

The Ascension of Jesus

⁵⁰ When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. ⁵¹ While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. ⁵² Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. ⁵³ And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.

Footnotes

1. Luke 24:13 Or about 11 kilometers

 

Cross of Gold?

Now I'm going to show how Linus Pauling got into trouble. It's a complicated subject but I'll try to keep it reasonably simple. The process for discovering and evaluating potential disease treatments or preventive measures begins with basic research. What are the mechanisms of disease? That is called the etiology, the process that produces the undesirable state of health. 

Our ability to experiment on humans to explore such questions is obviously very limited. We can observe people with a condition, certainly, and in the 20th Century our ability to do that expanded immensely with X rays and then more sophisticated imaging techniques; and the ability to do things like count the various kinds of blood cells, measure hormone levels, and do many other sorts of tests. But establishing causation is difficult without experimentation. No, it isn't always impossible, contrary to some people's claims, but randomized controlled trials are usually the best and most compelling way to do it. That's why they're called the "Gold Standard" for clinical research, hence the title of this post. But as the title implies, maybe that's too limiting. We'll see.

If we're studying the etiology of disease, that usually means we have to experiment on non-human animals, since we can't ethically expose humans to our suspected causal agent. Generally, this has to mean mammals, because they're the only creatures who are enough like us that we can draw inferences about humans with some confidence. Even so, what we observe in rats and guinea pigs and even chimpanzees often turns out not to apply to H. sapiens. 

But at least it's a start. Once we think we have a good idea of the etiology of a disease, we can develop some biologically plausible ideas about how we might prevent or treat it. Unfortunately, as I have emphasized, chemistry cannot predict biology. We may think we understand the biochemical mechanism of disease, and come up with an idea of how introducing a new chemical (i.e. a drug or medication) might interfere with that mechanism, but I can tell you with complete confidence, based on the long and bitter experience of biomedical research, that idea will either be wrong, or the adverse effects of the intervention aren't worth the benefits.

So, given that our brilliant ideas are likely to fail, and even harm people, how can we ethically proceed? First, we need an "animal model" of our human disease. We have to believe that our disease maps onto something in rats or monkeys, and have a way of giving the animals the disease (unless we're lucky enough to find some who have it naturally, which is highly unlikely), and then try the treatment on them. PETA is not at all happy, obviously, but right now I'm not discussing the ethics of experimenting on animals, just describing the process of developing treatments.

Anyhow, let's say the treatment looks promising in the animal models and any adverse effects seem tolerable. But we can't know if that will be true in humans until we try it. The first thing we need to do is establish enough confidence in the safety of the treatment that we can proceed without committing a felony. That's what's called a Phase One trial. So we'll start there next time.

Emergent properties

Biological research in the United States, since World War II, has been heavily funded by the federal government, mostly through the National Institutes of Health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does fund some public health research, though it's more social science than biology, i.e. evaluating the effect of public health interventions. The Defense Department and VA also fund some biomedical research, as does the more recently established Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute.  

Most of this is applied, as opposed to basic research. The NIH funds some basic research, and the National Science Foundation exclusively funds basic research. Basic research asks how organisms function, without immediately worrying about what use we might make of that information. Applied research is aimed directly at a useful outcome -- curing or preventing disease, alleviating symptoms. Going back down a level, it's worth noting that the basics of chemistry are now quite well understood, and most chemical research is applied -- creating useful new materials and manufacturing processes. That means industry funds a lot of it because it can lead to patentable products and profits.

In biomedicine, the pharmaceutical and medical device industries fund a lot of applied research, for the same reason. However, their products are much more stringently regulated than those of the chemical industry. Basically, you can sell chemicals until they're proven to be harmful, and even then whether restrictions on their use or outright bans don't necessarily happen right away, if ever. Industries usually try to suppress findings that their products are harmful, and lobby against regulation. 

That's why the entire U.S. population was exposed to the highly dangerous neurotoxin lead for generations, causing all sorts of behavioral problems and probably largely accounting for the crime wave of the late 20th Century. There are still all sorts of food additives and pesticides and emanations from plastic and God knows what else that's harming and killing us. The EPA was way behind on all this and now it's out of business entirely.

This is something of a digression but it's necessary context. I'll put all this context to use next time.

Wednesday Bible Study: More false prophecy

Luke 23 overlaps substantially with Matthew and Mark, although as always there are innumerable small discrepancies. E.g., Herod's soldiers put the robe on Jesus here, whereas it's Pilate's soldiers in the other Gospels. In fact, the entire trial before Herod only appears here. Here, the soldiers give Jesus vinegar to drink, but in Mark it's wine and Myrrh. I won't bother to go on. Also, somewhat mysteriously, the chapter overlaps a bit with John (verses 13-17). 

That aside, there are two major problems with this. The first is that the entire world goes dark for three hours when Jesus dies. One might think there would be a record of this extraordinary occurrence somewhere other than the Gospels, but there is not. The second, and most problematic, is verse 43. "⁴³Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Uhm, no. Jesus is not resurrected for 3 days, and then it's a while longer before he ascends to heaven. Viz. John 20:17. "Jesus saith unto her, [i.e. Mary Magdelen] Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God."

An additional problem is that many Christians believe that nobody will go to heaven until the final judgment, which hasn't happened yet, 2,000 years later.  Maybe they haven't read this.

 

23 Then the whole assembly rose and led him off to Pilate. ² And they began to accuse him, saying, “We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Messiah, a king.”

³ So Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

“You have said so,” Jesus replied.

⁴ Then Pilate announced to the chief priests and the crowd, “I find no basis for a charge against this man.”

⁵ But they insisted, “He stirs up the people all over Judea by his teaching. He started in Galilee and has come all the way here.”

⁶ On hearing this, Pilate asked if the man was a Galilean. ⁷ When he learned that Jesus was under Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who was also in Jerusalem at that time.

⁸ When Herod saw Jesus, he was greatly pleased, because for a long time he had been wanting to see him. From what he had heard about him, he hoped to see him perform a sign of some sort. ⁹ He plied him with many questions, but Jesus gave him no answer. ¹⁰ The chief priests and the teachers of the law were standing there, vehemently accusing him. ¹¹ Then Herod and his soldiers ridiculed and mocked him. Dressing him in an elegant robe, they sent him back to Pilate. ¹² That day Herod and Pilate became friends—before this they had been enemies.

¹³ Pilate called together the chief priests, the rulers and the people, ¹⁴ and said to them, “You brought me this man as one who was inciting the people to rebellion. I have examined him in your presence and have found no basis for your charges against him. ¹⁵ Neither has Herod, for he sent him back to us; as you can see, he has done nothing to deserve death. ¹⁶ Therefore, I will punish him and then release him.” ^[17] [a]

¹⁸ But the whole crowd shouted, “Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us!” ¹⁹ (Barabbas had been thrown into prison for an insurrection in the city, and for murder.)

²⁰ Wanting to release Jesus, Pilate appealed to them again. ²¹ But they kept shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

²² For the third time he spoke to them: “Why? What crime has this man committed? I have found in him no grounds for the death penalty. Therefore I will have him punished and then release him.”

²³ But with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified, and their shouts prevailed. ²⁴ So Pilate decided to grant their demand. ²⁵ He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, the one they asked for, and surrendered Jesus to their will.

The Crucifixion of Jesus

²⁶ As the soldiers led him away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. ²⁷ A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. ²⁸ Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. ²⁹ For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ ³⁰ Then

“‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!”
    and to the hills, “Cover us!”’^[b]

³¹ For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”

³² Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. ³³ When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. ³⁴ Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”^[c] And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

³⁵ The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.”

³⁶ The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar ³⁷ and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”

³⁸ There was a written notice above him, which read: this is the king of the jews.

³⁹ One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

⁴⁰ But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? ⁴¹ We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

⁴² Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.^[d]”

⁴³ Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

The Death of Jesus

⁴⁴ It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, ⁴⁵ for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. ⁴⁶ Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”^[e] When he had said this, he breathed his last.

⁴⁷ The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, “Surely this was a righteous man.” ⁴⁸ When all the people who had gathered to witness this sight saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away. ⁴⁹ But all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.

The Burial of Jesus

⁵⁰ Now there was a man named Joseph, a member of the Council, a good and upright man, ⁵¹ who had not consented to their decision and action. He came from the Judean town of Arimathea, and he himself was waiting for the kingdom of God. ⁵² Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus’ body. ⁵³ Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen cloth and placed it in a tomb cut in the rock, one in which no one had yet been laid. ⁵⁴ It was Preparation Day, and the Sabbath was about to begin.

⁵⁵ The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. ⁵⁶ Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.

Footnotes

1. Luke 23:17 Some manuscripts include here words similar to Matt. 27:15 and Mark 15:6.
2. Luke 23:30 Hosea 10:8
3. Luke 23:34 Some early manuscripts do not have this sentence.
4. Luke 23:42 Some manuscripts come with your kingly power
5. Luke 23:46 Psalm 31:5

 

Climbing the stairs

Now that we've laid the foundation and finished the basement, it's time to build the next story in our edifice of science, biology.  Biology depends on chemistry -- life, we now know, consists of chemical processes. However, while chemistry may be predictable in principle, biology is not predictable from chemistry. Life on earth came to be what it is through billions of years of evolution, i.e. the pruning of stochastic events by selection. There is no reason why the genetic code has to consist of three letter units built out of adenine, cytosine, guanine and uracil, and certainly no reason why thymine has to be replaced by uracil in messenger RNA. And there is no reason why anything else about life has to be the way it is.

 

However, biology obviously has to be consistent with chemistry and physics, and it is possible to specialize in studying the linkages between them as a biochemist or biophysicist. (Biophysics, at least so far, operates at the macro level and Newtonian physical theory is perfectly good for it.) However, biological science depends on theoretical constructs, experimental and observational techniques that are distinct to it, and that chemists and physicists are not trained to use. Once again, life has emergent properties that operate at the level of life and which cannot practicably be understood through physics and chemistry.

 

This is where Linus Pauling went wrong. He didn't understand the methods of biology, and more specifically of biomedical science. Since we're very interested in what can go wrong with our own mortal organisms, a lot of effort and money goes into the applied biology of fixing humans. And here scientists definitively enter Habermas's Second World, of values and ethics. Pauling, who was highly distinguished as a humanitarian and champion of justice, actually went wrong here with his Vitamin C mishegos, because there are ethical considerations about the interpretation and uses of biomedical research, and how it should be publicly presented, that he violated. This brings us to a very timely discussion which will come next. 

continuing with the epistemological musings

The modern approach to Habermas's First World, what he analogizes to the Platonic ideal of The True, is science. That's our word for how we come to understand intersubjective reality, the world we live in. As I suggested before, science can be analogized to a building. It rests on a foundation and each successive story rests on all that is beneath, until we get to the roof.

 

So, the scientific analogy to the foundation is physics, i.e. the study of the fundamental properties of the universe. Actually physicists are in something of a state of angst right now because the discipline seems to have two layers and it isn't clear how they work together. At bottom is the realm of the very small, the quantum world of particles and forces. It is basically understood how the apparently random events at the quantum level get aggregated to the more predictable larger scale world that we inhabit. 

 However, the macro level phenomena of acceleration and gravity (which are equivalent) and their relationship with time and space, as explained by Einstein's theory, does not emerge from the quantum world. That these theoretical realms have not been reconciled bothers physicists, although personally I don't see why the explanations for the two classes of phenomena couldn't just be different. We don't know where the universe comes from in the first place or why it is the way it is.

In any case, moving on come from the foundation we come to what we might call the foundation, which is chemistry. In principle it might be possible to derive all of chemistry from physics -- the interactions among atoms that create molecules can be explained and predicted by quantum theory -- but it isn't possible in practice. Certainly it would be very inefficient. Chemists experiment with atoms and molecules. It's much easier to learn the properties of atoms and molecules by means of experiment rather than trying to predict them from physics, and once you know them, you can make predictions about how they will further interact and test these by experiment as well. 

One way of saying this is that chemistry has emergent properties, that can be understood and manipulated at the level of chemistry without reference to physics. On the other hand, chemistry has to be consistent with physics -- these emergent properties cannot contradict what underlies them -- and physics can be of some help informing chemistry. 

Nevertheless physics and chemistry are different disciplines, requiring different inventories of knowledge and using different methods of discovery. This seldom causes Dunning-Kruger type problems because the difference is very clear and the findings in both fields are rarely disputable. In other words physicists wouldn't get very far if they tried to make inaccurate claims about chemistry, and vice versa. However, problems do crop up when we get to the next level, which is biology, and that's why Linus Pauling got into trouble. That's for next time.

Sunday Sermonette: Plot Holes

Luke 22 is a version of material that also appears in Matthew and Mark. There are the usual minor discrepancies which I won't bother with. However, there are two big problems here, as in Matthew and Mark.

1) Jesus goes off and converses with God by himself, in secret, asking if he can be relieved of the burden of being tortured to death. God says no, sorry. How does the writer know this? Jesus presumably never told anyone.

2) Judas is evil and he's going to hell because he betrays Jesus. But he has to betray Jesus, that's  the plan! That's his job! If he doesn't do it, the whole thing that God intended from the beginning of time won't happen. So let's give thanks to Judas, who did the right thing.

 I'll be back soon with some legitimate blog posts.

22 Now the Festival of Unleavened Bread, called the Passover, was approaching, ² and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some way to get rid of Jesus, for they were afraid of the people. ³ Then Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot, one of the Twelve. ⁴ And Judas went to the chief priests and the officers of the temple guard and discussed with them how he might betray Jesus. ⁵ They were delighted and agreed to give him money. ⁶ He consented, and watched for an opportunity to hand Jesus over to them when no crowd was present.

The Last Supper

⁷ Then came the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. ⁸ Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover.”

⁹ “Where do you want us to prepare for it?” they asked.

¹⁰ He replied, “As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters, ¹¹ and say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ ¹² He will show you a large room upstairs, all furnished. Make preparations there.”

¹³ They left and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover.

¹⁴ When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. ¹⁵ And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. ¹⁶ For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.”

¹⁷ After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. ¹⁸ For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”

¹⁹ And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

²⁰ In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.^{[a] 21} But the hand of him who is going to betray me is with mine on the table. ²² The Son of Man will go as it has been decreed. But woe to that man who betrays him!” ²³ They began to question among themselves which of them it might be who would do this.

²⁴ A dispute also arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest. ²⁵ Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. ²⁶ But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. ²⁷ For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. ²⁸ You are those who have stood by me in my trials. ²⁹ And I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, ³⁰ so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

³¹ “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. ³² But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

³³ But he replied, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.”

³⁴ Jesus answered, “I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.”

³⁵ Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?”

“Nothing,” they answered.

³⁶ He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. ³⁷ It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’^[b]; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”

³⁸ The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.”

“That’s enough!” he replied.

Jesus Prays on the Mount of Olives

³⁹ Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. ⁴⁰ On reaching the place, he said to them, “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.” ⁴¹ He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, ⁴² “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” ⁴³ An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. ⁴⁴ And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.^[c]

⁴⁵ When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. ⁴⁶ “Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. “Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.”

Jesus Arrested

⁴⁷ While he was still speaking a crowd came up, and the man who was called Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him, ⁴⁸ but Jesus asked him, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?”

⁴⁹ When Jesus’ followers saw what was going to happen, they said, “Lord, should we strike with our swords?” ⁵⁰ And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear.

⁵¹ But Jesus answered, “No more of this!” And he touched the man’s ear and healed him.

⁵² Then Jesus said to the chief priests, the officers of the temple guard, and the elders, who had come for him, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs? ⁵³ Every day I was with you in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour—when darkness reigns.”

Peter Disowns Jesus

⁵⁴ Then seizing him, they led him away and took him into the house of the high priest. Peter followed at a distance. ⁵⁵ And when some there had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and had sat down together, Peter sat down with them. ⁵⁶ A servant girl saw him seated there in the firelight. She looked closely at him and said, “This man was with him.”

⁵⁷ But he denied it. “Woman, I don’t know him,” he said.

⁵⁸ A little later someone else saw him and said, “You also are one of them.”

“Man, I am not!” Peter replied.

⁵⁹ About an hour later another asserted, “Certainly this fellow was with him, for he is a Galilean.”

⁶⁰ Peter replied, “Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed. ⁶¹ The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: “Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times.” ⁶² And he went outside and wept bitterly.

The Guards Mock Jesus

⁶³ The men who were guarding Jesus began mocking and beating him. ⁶⁴ They blindfolded him and demanded, “Prophesy! Who hit you?” ⁶⁵ And they said many other insulting things to him.

Jesus Before Pilate and Herod

⁶⁶ At daybreak the council of the elders of the people, both the chief priests and the teachers of the law, met together, and Jesus was led before them. ⁶⁷ “If you are the Messiah,” they said, “tell us.”

Jesus answered, “If I tell you, you will not believe me, ⁶⁸ and if I asked you, you would not answer. ⁶⁹ But from now on, the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the mighty God.”

⁷⁰ They all asked, “Are you then the Son of God?”

He replied, “You say that I am.”

⁷¹ Then they said, “Why do we need any more testimony? We have heard it from his own lips.”

Footnotes

1. Luke 22:20 Some manuscripts do not have given for you … poured out for you.
2. Luke 22:37 Isaiah 53:12
3. Luke 22:44 Many early manuscripts do not have verses 43 and 44.

 

More on when smart people go bonkers

I got a comment that I'm not going to publish. My decision is not because the commenter is wrong -- people can be wrong and we can discuss it -- but that the person is offensively strident. However, I will tell you that she or he believes that Linus Pauling was right about megadoses of vitamin C. He wasn't, and that provides a perfect illustration for what I was already planning to say next. I'll quote from Sarah Harrison, writing in the Science History Institute's magazine Distillations:

 

Pauling had conducted none of the studies his vitamin C theories were built on. Human drug trials are large and expensive to run. So instead, Pauling’s claims were based on the review of existing literature and the experiments of others. This invited problems, such as flawed data. The trials Pauling relied on had inconsistencies between study groups that made the placebo and the vitamin C groups nearly impossible to compare.

Despite his brilliance, Pauling was ill-equipped to catch these errors.

Pauling biographer Ted Goertzel points out that nutrition research isn’t quite like chemistry. There are many more variables to consider in a human trial than with isolated molecules in a lab. What is the dosage of the supplement? When and how is it administered? The study participants themselves add complications: their age, health, or the strength of their immune systems can all differ. Their lives and activities outside the lab can affect the results too.

“His vast knowledge was specialized,” says Goertzel. “He had tremendous knowledge on molecular structure and chemistry. But that doesn’t mean you have a tremendous knowledge about nutrition and vitamins and health.”

And Pauling’s interpretations were questionable. He emphasized the positive effects he saw while explaining away negative or weak results as flaws in study design. Pauling’s vitamin C research was full of cherry-picked data that he wove into a narrative that suited his hypothesis, a process Goertzel likens to the logic of conspiracy theories.

“You get selective evidence, and you throw something out and insist that other people disprove it, and if they can’t disprove it, it might be true,” he says.

Pauling’s approach to vitamin C had none of the rigor or peer review that characterizes good science. When other scientists criticized his articles in peer-reviewed journals, Pauling took his case straight to the public. In 1970 he published Vitamin C and the Common Cold. Written for general audience, the book extolled the virtues of megadoses of ascorbic acid using little more than anecdotal evidence.

 

That tees up the next post. Note the main point here: Pauling was a chemist, who started pontificating about human biology. That's where he went wrong. I'll get to the point in the next post. 

 

Wednesday Bible Study: False Prophet

 In Luke 21, as in the other synoptic Gospels, Jesus foretells the apocalypse. It's going to be really terrible! Only one problem. As with all his other predictions of the end times, it's going to happen within the lifetime of the people he is speaking to. It's been 2,000 years. We're still waiting.

³² “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. ³³ Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

³⁴ “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. ³⁵ For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth. ³⁶ Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”

 

 

21 As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. ² He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. ³ “Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. ⁴ All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”

The Destruction of the Temple and Signs of the End Times

⁵ Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. But Jesus said, ⁶ “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.”

⁷ “Teacher,” they asked, “when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?”

⁸ He replied: “Watch out that you are not deceived. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and, ‘The time is near.’ Do not follow them. ⁹ When you hear of wars and uprisings, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away.”

¹⁰ Then he said to them: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. ¹¹ There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.

¹² “But before all this, they will seize you and persecute you. They will hand you over to synagogues and put you in prison, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name. ¹³ And so you will bear testimony to me. ¹⁴ But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. ¹⁵ For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict. ¹⁶ You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. ¹⁷ Everyone will hate you because of me. ¹⁸ But not a hair of your head will perish. ¹⁹ Stand firm, and you will win life.

²⁰ “When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near. ²¹ Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those in the city get out, and let those in the country not enter the city. ²² For this is the time of punishment in fulfillment of all that has been written. ²³ How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! There will be great distress in the land and wrath against this people. ²⁴ They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

²⁵ “There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. ²⁶ People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. ²⁷ At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. ²⁸ When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

²⁹ He told them this parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees. ³⁰ When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. ³¹ Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near.

³² “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. ³³ Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

³⁴ “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. ³⁵ For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth. ³⁶ Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”

³⁷ Each day Jesus was teaching at the temple, and each evening he went out to spend the night on the hill called the Mount of Olives, ³⁸ and all the people came early in the morning to hear him at the temple.

 

More on the Nobel Disease

Yes, it is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, but I'd like to be more specific. As most people who read blogs know by now, the D-K effect is, essentially, that people with low competence or knowledge in a particular area tend to overrate their capability. People with high competence are generally more accurate, or even underrate their capability to some extent. Another way of putting it is that you don't know what you don't know, unless you know enough that you do know.

 

Nobel prize winners, and other highly accomplished people in a specific field, are told all the time that they're really smart, but they often don't know enough about areas outside their field of expertise to know what they don't know. Okay, that's obvious, but what we typically see is chemists or physicists making warped assertions about biology --  e.g. Linus Pauling and vitamin C, or William Shockley and James Watson and "scientific" racism, or Karry Mullis claiming that HIV is not the cause of AIDS -- or psychology -- e.g. Brian Josephson endorsing mental telepathy and the claim that transcendental meditation can recover suppressed traumatic memories. (The latter may not strike you as preposterous but the current view is that the idea of suppressed memories is a dangerous falsehood.) Richard Dawkins is not a Nobel winner but same idea -- he's a biologist who ventured ineptly into psychology and sociology.

 

There are a few ways of categorizing human knowledge, but the scientific revolution has created a fairly rigorous structure. I don't want to say hierarchical exactly, because the that could imply that some categories of knowledge are superior to others. Think of it more like the structure of a house. It has vertical layers, which rest one upon the other, but they are all equally necessary: Foundation, first story, second story, attic, roof. You have to build them from the ground up, but if you stop before you're finished, the entire structure is unsound and largely useless. 

 

There is another structure for categorizing what Jurgen Habermas calls "criticizeable validity claims," which is also relevant here though orthogonal to the first. The necessary requirements for a habitable and durable house are part of what he calls the "first world," the world of intersubjective reality, that which is testably true, the domain largely of the sciences. The second is the domain of morality, what is right. In this context, perhaps, who should have claim to own, or at least live in, quality housing? (I would say everybody but obviously most of society does not agree with me.) Is it right to build a house on this particular spot? (E.g. zoning regulations.) The third is aesthetics. What makes a house beautiful? 

 Next time, I'll take up the first categorization.