If you lay out all the veins in a human body you can cover an entire football field. The smallest veins are just big enough for red blood cells. How can the human heart pump blood through that much resistance? My guess is the heart enlist local help, by sending out signals through the veins which cause them to contract, like the bowels push out food.
Perhaps Plato meant the veins by "nerves", and if so, he was certainly right that they originate or terminate in the heart.
@thinking-turtle, in a talk given to the Rising Tide Foundation yesterday, Prof. Gerald Pollack explicitly mentioned this problem. Please watch the entire talk, but the focus on this particular point begins at 48min, 50sec.
@thinking-turtle, the answer to your question about blood flow might be in this paper by Zheng Li and Gerald Pollack of the University of Washington: On the Driver of Blood Circulation Beyond the Heart.
Thanks a lot! That is so interesting. "External electromagnetic radiation fuels [exclusion zone] formation, with [infrared] being the most effective wavelength." An exclusion zone might also explain why blood cells don't get damaged by wall collision. Slow reading this week, I hope to finish this and the video by the weekend!
I wrote the post about Aristotle's followers in the early seventeenth century C.E. They would all have known about the work of the Greek anatomist Herophilus (355-235 B.C.E.), who "is believed to be one of the first to differentiate nerves from blood vessels and tendons" (Noel Si-Yang Bay and Boon-Huat Bay, Greek anatomist Herophilus: The father of anatomy, Anat Cell Biol., 2010 Dec; 43(4): 280–283, Dec 2010, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3026179/).
It is well known that Aristotle supported the cardiocentric hypothesis, which supposes the heart to be the center of thought. The cephalocentric hypothesis, which supposes the brain to be the center of thought, was supported by Pythagoras, Plato, Hippocrates and Galen. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiocentric_hypothesis
Why assume that the truth is either cardiocentric or cephalocentric? It is said that heart transplant recipients assume personality characteristics of the donor. This suggests that part of what we think of as personality resides in the heart.
What's your opinion about whether the heart is strong enough to pump blood through a football field of veins?
Thanks for the link! I've visited Midwesterndoctor and Dr Mercola (which the article you link comes from) before. I doubt I can tell truth from falsehood in medical websites :)
For the heart pump, it seems obvious that a human cannot pump water through a football field laid out with small pipes, let alone 24/7, including when asleep. This would require an impossibly low flow resistance.
Recently I read Human Heart, Cosmic Heart by Tom Cowan. Among other things, he writes the smallest blood vessels are so small that you might say they are not vessels at all. Instead of circulation, a better model is that arteries deliver blood to tissue, and veins pick it up again. Here's a quote:
"What’s amazing is that blood actually stops moving in the capillaries, which is necessary for the efficient exchange of gases, nutrients, and waste products. After the blood stops moving, it oscillates slightly, and then begins to flow again as it enters the veins. But if the blood stops moving at the midpoint of its circular flow through blood vessels, only then to start moving again, what is the force that drives this movement of the blood from its motionless state before it leaves the capillaries and begins its journey back to the heart? Is it possible that this force is the “pumping” of the heart? Wouldn’t there have to be some pump located in the capillaries propelling the blood forward and upward? Is there some “vital” force located in the capillaries that does this pumping? These are the questions we must grapple with if we’re going to understand how the blood circulates in the body. But one thing is clear: If the blood has stopped moving inside the capillaries, then the force cannot come from the heart. It must arise in the capillaries."
maybe they were called peripatetics because they always 'walked around' the question, without giving a direct answer.
If you lay out all the veins in a human body you can cover an entire football field. The smallest veins are just big enough for red blood cells. How can the human heart pump blood through that much resistance? My guess is the heart enlist local help, by sending out signals through the veins which cause them to contract, like the bowels push out food.
Perhaps Plato meant the veins by "nerves", and if so, he was certainly right that they originate or terminate in the heart.
@thinking-turtle, in a talk given to the Rising Tide Foundation yesterday, Prof. Gerald Pollack explicitly mentioned this problem. Please watch the entire talk, but the focus on this particular point begins at 48min, 50sec.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qqyCA9vz_s
Just watched the video! Fascinating. I liked the idea that cloud float above the earth because they are negatively charged.
@thinking-turtle, the answer to your question about blood flow might be in this paper by Zheng Li and Gerald Pollack of the University of Washington: On the Driver of Blood Circulation Beyond the Heart.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.19.440300v1.full.pdf
Thanks a lot! That is so interesting. "External electromagnetic radiation fuels [exclusion zone] formation, with [infrared] being the most effective wavelength." An exclusion zone might also explain why blood cells don't get damaged by wall collision. Slow reading this week, I hope to finish this and the video by the weekend!
I wrote the post about Aristotle's followers in the early seventeenth century C.E. They would all have known about the work of the Greek anatomist Herophilus (355-235 B.C.E.), who "is believed to be one of the first to differentiate nerves from blood vessels and tendons" (Noel Si-Yang Bay and Boon-Huat Bay, Greek anatomist Herophilus: The father of anatomy, Anat Cell Biol., 2010 Dec; 43(4): 280–283, Dec 2010, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3026179/).
It is well known that Aristotle supported the cardiocentric hypothesis, which supposes the heart to be the center of thought. The cephalocentric hypothesis, which supposes the brain to be the center of thought, was supported by Pythagoras, Plato, Hippocrates and Galen. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiocentric_hypothesis
And thanks for your interesting post!
Why assume that the truth is either cardiocentric or cephalocentric? It is said that heart transplant recipients assume personality characteristics of the donor. This suggests that part of what we think of as personality resides in the heart.
What's your opinion about whether the heart is strong enough to pump blood through a football field of veins?
@thinking-turtle, here is a very interesting article on the personality characteristics of the donor:
https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/do-organs-have-a-mind-of-their-own
Thanks for the link! I've visited Midwesterndoctor and Dr Mercola (which the article you link comes from) before. I doubt I can tell truth from falsehood in medical websites :)
@thinking-turtle, do you have references for these two questions?
- Do heart-transplant recipients assume personality characteristics of the donor?
- Is the heart strong enough to pump blood through a football field of veins?
I have intuitions, but I would like to read more. Thanks.
Sorry to disappoint, no references here. No experience as a scientist.
A search for "heart transplant personality change" produces some results: https://kagi.com/search?q=heart+transplant+personality+change
For the heart pump, it seems obvious that a human cannot pump water through a football field laid out with small pipes, let alone 24/7, including when asleep. This would require an impossibly low flow resistance.
Recently I read Human Heart, Cosmic Heart by Tom Cowan. Among other things, he writes the smallest blood vessels are so small that you might say they are not vessels at all. Instead of circulation, a better model is that arteries deliver blood to tissue, and veins pick it up again. Here's a quote:
"What’s amazing is that blood actually stops moving in the capillaries, which is necessary for the efficient exchange of gases, nutrients, and waste products. After the blood stops moving, it oscillates slightly, and then begins to flow again as it enters the veins. But if the blood stops moving at the midpoint of its circular flow through blood vessels, only then to start moving again, what is the force that drives this movement of the blood from its motionless state before it leaves the capillaries and begins its journey back to the heart? Is it possible that this force is the “pumping” of the heart? Wouldn’t there have to be some pump located in the capillaries propelling the blood forward and upward? Is there some “vital” force located in the capillaries that does this pumping? These are the questions we must grapple with if we’re going to understand how the blood circulates in the body. But one thing is clear: If the blood has stopped moving inside the capillaries, then the force cannot come from the heart. It must arise in the capillaries."
Very interesting questions. I will think about them, and try to find out more.