Let me share some thoughts with you. Let me be a source of encouragement and support. May you never forget your dreams and remember miracles happen every day. Let us laugh, have fun, and inspire one another.
Why are there seven days in a week? – Henry E., age 8, Somerville, Massachusetts
Waiting for the weekend can often seem unbearable, a whole six days between Saturdays. Having seven days in a week has been the case for a very long time, and so people don’t often stop to ask why.
Most of our time reckoning is due to the movements of the planets, Moon and stars. Our day is equal to one full rotation of the Earth around its axis. Our year is a revolution of the Earth around the Sun, which takes 365 and ¼ days, which is why we add an extra day in February every four years, for a leap year.
But the week and the month are a bit trickier. The phases of the Moon do not exactly coincide with the solar calendar. The Moon cycle is 27 days and seven hours long, and there are 13 phases of the Moon in each solar year.
Some of the earliest civilizations observed the cosmos and recorded the movements of planets, the Sun and Moon. The Babylonians, who lived in modern-day Iraq, were astute observers and interpreters of the heavens, and it is largely thanks to them that our weeks are seven days long.
The reason they adopted the number seven was that they observed seven celestial bodies – the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. So, that number held particular significance to them.
Other civilizations chose other numbers – like the Egyptians, whose week was 10 days long; or the Romans, whose week lasted eight.
Some of the earliest civilizations recorded the movements of planets, the Sun and Moon.Andrey Prokhorov/Shutterstock.com
The Babylonians divided their lunar months into seven-day weeks, with the final day of the week holding particular religious significance. The 28-day month, or a complete cycle of the Moon, is a bit too large a period of time to manage effectively, and so the Babylonians divided their months into four equal parts of seven.
The number seven is not especially well-suited to coincide with the solar year, or even the months, so it did create a few inconsistencies.
However, the Babylonians were such a dominant culture in the Near East, especially in the sixth and seventh centuries B.C., that this, and many of their other notions of time – such as a 60-minute hour – persisted.
The seven-day week spread throughout the Near East. It was adopted by the Jews, who had been captives of the Babylonians at the height of that civilization’s power. Other cultures in the surrounding areas got on board with the seven-day week, including the Persian empire and the Greeks.
Centuries later, when Alexander the Great began to spread Greek culture throughout the Near East as far as India, the concept of the seven-day week spread as well. Scholars think that perhaps India later introduced the seven-day week to China.
Finally, once the Romans began to conquer the territory influenced by Alexander the Great, they too eventually shifted to the seven-day week. It was Emperor Constantine who decreed that the seven-day week was the official Roman week and made Sunday a public holiday in A.D. 321.
The weekend was not adopted until modern times in the 20th century. Although there have been some recent attempts to change the seven-day week, it has been around for so long that it seems like it is here to stay.
Does God exist?
Michael Peligro, CC BY-ND Note from Editor of The Conversation US: This is a revised version of the original piece. We have done so to make explicit the author’s expertise with regard to the subject of this article. We have also incorporated important context that was missing in the original version.
The question of whether a god exists is heating up in the 21st century. According to a Pew survey, the percent of Americans having no religious affiliation reached 23 percent in 2014. Among such “nones,” 33 percent said that they do not believe in God – an 11 percent increase since only 2007.
Such trends have ironically been taking place even as, I would argue, the probability for the existence of a supernatural god have been rising. In my 2015 book, “God? Very Probably: Five Rational Ways to Think about the Question of a God,” I look at physics, the philosophy of human consciousness, evolutionary biology, mathematics, the history of religion and theology to explore whether such a god exists. I should say that I am trained originally as an economist, but have been working at the intersection of economics, environmentalism and theology since the 1990s.
Laws of math
In 1960 the Princeton physicist – and subsequent Nobel Prize winner – Eugene Wigner raised a fundamental question: Why did the natural world always – so far as we know – obey laws of mathematics?
As argued by scholars such as Philip Davis and Reuben Hersh, mathematics exists independent of physical reality. It is the job of mathematicians to discover the realities of this separate world of mathematical laws and concepts. Physicists then put the mathematics to use according to the rules of prediction and confirmed observation of the scientific method.
But modern mathematics generally is formulated before any natural observations are made, and many mathematical laws today have no known existing physical analogues.
Einstein Memorial, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.Wally Gobetz, CC BY-ND
Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity, for example, was based on theoretical mathematics developed 50 years earlier by the great German mathematician Bernhard Riemann that did not have any known practical applications at the time of its intellectual creation.
In some cases the physicist also discovers the mathematics. Isaac Newton was considered among the greatest mathematicians as well as physicists of the 17th century. Other physicists sought his help in finding a mathematics that would predict the workings of the solar system. He found it in the mathematical law of gravity, based in part on his discovery of calculus.
At the time, however, many people initially resisted Newton’s conclusions because they seemed to be “occult.” How could two distant objects in the solar system be drawn toward one another, acting according to a precise mathematical law? Indeed, Newton made strenuous efforts over his lifetime to find a natural explanation, but in the end he could say only that it is the will of God.
Despite the many other enormous advances of modern physics, little has changed in this regard. As Wigner wrote, “the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation for it.”
In other words, as I argue in my book, it takes the existence of some kind of a god to make the mathematical underpinnings of the universe comprehensible.
Math and other worlds
In 2004 the great British physicist Roger Penrose put forward a vision of a universe composed of three independently existing worlds – mathematics, the material world and human consciousness. As Penrose acknowledged, it was a complete puzzle to him how the three interacted with one another outside the ability of any scientific or other conventionally rational model.
How can physical atoms and molecules, for example, create something that exists in a separate domain that has no physical existence: human consciousness?
It is a mystery that lies beyond science.
Plato.Elizabethe, CC BY-NC-ND
This mystery is the same one that existed in the Greek worldview of Plato, who believed that abstract ideas (above all mathematical) first existed outside any physical reality. The material world that we experience as part of our human existence is an imperfect reflection of these prior formal ideals. As the scholar of ancient Greek philosophy, Ian Mueller, writes in “Mathematics And The Divine,” the realm of such ideals is that of God.
Indeed, in 2014 the MIT physicist Max Tegmark argues in “Our Mathematical Universe” that mathematics is the fundamental world reality that drives the universe. As I would say, mathematics is operating in a god-like fashion.
The mystery of human consciousness
The workings of human consciousness are similarly miraculous. Like the laws of mathematics, consciousness has no physical presence in the world; the images and thoughts in our consciousness have no measurable dimensions.
Yet, our nonphysical thoughts somehow mysteriously guide the actions of our physical human bodies. This is no more scientifically explicable than the mysterious ability of nonphysical mathematical constructions to determine the workings of a separate physical world.
Until recently, the scientifically unfathomable quality of human consciousness inhibited the very scholarly discussion of the subject. Since the 1970s, however, it has become a leading area of inquiry among philosophers.
Recognizing that he could not reconcile his own scientific materialism with the existence of a nonphysical world of human consciousness, a leading atheist, Daniel Dennett, in 1991 took the radical step of denying that consciousness even exists.
Finding this altogether implausible, as most people do, another leading philosopher, Thomas Nagel, wrote in 2012 that, given the scientifically inexplicable – the “intractable” – character of human consciousness, “we will have to leave [scientific] materialism behind” as a complete basis for understanding the world of human existence.
As an atheist, Nagel does not offer religious belief as an alternative, but I would argue that the supernatural character of the workings of human consciousness adds grounds for raising the probability of the existence of a supernatural god.
Evolution and faith
Evolution is a contentious subject in American public life. According to Pew, 98 percent of scientists connected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science “believe humans evolved over time” while only a minority of Americans “fully accept evolution through natural selection.”
As I say in my book, I should emphasize that I am not questioning the reality of natural biological evolution. What is interesting to me, however, are the fierce arguments that have taken place between professional evolutionary biologists. A number of developments in evolutionary theory have challengedtraditional Darwinist – and later neo-Darwinist – views that emphasize random genetic mutations and gradual evolutionary selection by the process of survival of the fittest.
From the 1970s onwards, the Harvard evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould created controversy by positing a different view, “punctuated equilibrium,” to the slow and gradual evolution of species as theorized by Darwin.
In 2011, the University of Chicago evolutionary biologist James Shapiro argued that, remarkably enough, many micro-evolutionary processes worked as though guided by a purposeful “sentience” of the evolving plant and animal organisms themselves. “The capacity of living organisms to alter their own heredity is undeniable,” he wrote. “Our current ideas about evolution have to incorporate this basic fact of life.”
A number of scientists, such as Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, “see no conflict between believing in God and accepting the contemporary theory of evolution,” as the American Association for the Advancement of Science points out.
For my part, the most recent developments in evolutionary biology have increased the probability of a god.
Miraculous ideas at the same time?
For the past 10,000 years at a minimum, the most important changes in human existence have been driven by cultural developments occurring in the realm of human ideas.
In the Axial Age (commonly dated from 800 to 200 B.C.), world-transforming ideas such as Buddhism, Confucianism, the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, and the Hebrew Old Testament almost miraculously appeared at about the same time in India, China, ancient Greece and among the Jews in the Middle East, groups having little interaction with one another.
Many world-transforming ideas, such as Buddhism, appeared in the world around the same time.Karyn Christner, CC BY
The development of the scientific method in the 17th century in Europe and its modern further advances have had at least as great a set of world-transforming consequences. There have been many historical theories, but none capable, I would argue, of explaining as fundamentally transformational a set of events as the rise of the modern world. It was a revolution in human thought, operating outside any explanations grounded in scientific materialism, that drove the process.
That all these astonishing things happened within the conscious workings of human minds, functioning outside physical reality, offers further rational evidence, in my view, for the conclusion that human beings may well be made “in the image of [a] God.”
Different forms of worship
In his commencement address to Kenyon College in 2005, the American novelist and essayist David Foster Wallace said that: “Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.”
In several of my books, I have explored how Marxism and other such “economic religions” were characteristic of much of the modern age. So Christianity, I would argue, did not disappear as much as it reappeared in many such disguised forms of “secular religion.”
That the Christian essence, as arose out of Judaism, showed such great staying power amidst the extraordinary political, economic, intellectual and other radical changes of the modern age is another reason I offer for thinking that the existence of a god is very probable.
Historically, the body and movement have been widely disregarded within psychotherapy. But times are changing, as a growing movement of somatic and dance therapies are gaining scientific credibility.
(Shutterstock)
“When a body moves, it’s the most revealing thing. Dance for me a minute, and I’ll tell you who you are.” Mikhail Baryshnikov
Why do we stop dancing when we grow up? Why do we disconnect and alienate ourselves from the body? It is surprising to me that dance/movement therapy (DMT) is not more popular within the fields of psychology and psychotherapy globally.
For a couple of decades, I devoted my attention as a researcher in behavioural neurobiology and psychiatry almost exclusively to the brain and mental health, neglecting the rest of the body.
I was trained in the late 1990s, the decade of the brain. I have been mesmerized by the complexity of the brain, completely forgetting that it is part of the entire organism, intimately connected and reciprocally interacting with the entire body.
Interestingly, in my personal life my body has played a central role. My way to deal with any mental health problems has been through long walks, dancing and yoga.
An introduction to dance/movement therapy from the American Dance Therapy Association.
This is partly why in the past few years, as a professor in psychology at Bishop’s University, I have started incorporating bodywork in my teaching and research, and why I entered a dance/movement therapy training program in Canada this summer.
Understanding the body in motion
Dance/movement therapy goes beyond simply dancing. DMT uses dance and movement to promote insight, integration and well-being, as well as to diminish undesirable symptoms in various clinical populations.
Unlike mainstream talk therapies, DMT uses the entire body to approach the client primarily on a non-verbal and creative level. The body in motion is both the medium and the message. DMT recognizes the moving body as the centre of the human experience, and that body and mind are in constant reciprocal interaction.
Just like with more traditional psychotherapies, DMT can be applied in a wide range of ways. It may involve talking, different types of music or no music at all. It can be done in groups, with individuals or with couples. Therapists sometimes dance with their clients and at other times observe.
A group therapy session may involve a warm-up and check-in as to where we are at emotionally, mentally and physically. It may be followed by the development of a theme, which emerges spontaneously or has been prepared by a therapist (for example, working with difficult emotions). It ends with grounding (reconnecting with our bodies and our selves in the present moment) and closure (for example, a gesture, a sound, a word).
All of this is done with our bodies in motion or stillness, but some verbal sharing, journaling, drawing and other elements may be added.
Exploring new movements can help people see a wider range of possibilities in a given situation.(Shutterstock)
Dance/movement therapy has been around for several decades but it has never become widely popular, possibly due to a lack of well-designed research studies. This has changed and I would like to highlight here a few recent studies supporting the benefits of dance and DMT on emotional regulation, cognitive function and neural plasticity.
A positive effect on depression
One of the main reasons people dance is to modify their emotional state; typically, they strive to feel more joy and happiness and to reduce stress and anxiety. Since its inception dance therapy, similar to somatic psychotherapies, has emphasized the reciprocal interaction between body and mind, and the ability to regulate emotions via changes in body postures and movements.
The exploration of new movements can evoke novel perceptions and feelings. It may also facilitate seeing a wider range of possibilities in a given situation. Some new or old movement patterns may evoke repressed material and enhance better understanding of oneself and one’s environment and history.
A new report from WHO/Europe provides evidence of the benefits of the arts for mental and physical health.
A recent systematic review of research on dance/movement therapy specifically found it to be effective in the treatment of adults with depression.
Improvements in Parkinson’s disease
Dance typically involves learning sequences of steps and movements in space, in coordination with music. In other words, it requires substantial physical and cognitive engagement and, as such, it should improve not only muscle tone, strength, balance and coordination, but also memory, attention and visuospatial processing.
In addition, a recent meta-analysis of seven randomized controlled trials comparing the effects of dance therapy to non-dance interventions in Parkinson’s disease found that dance was especially beneficial for executive function, the processes that help us plan, organize and regulate our actions.
New ways of moving can produce new ways of feeling and perceiving the world.(Shutterstock)
Overall, these studies are compatible with the idea of using dance and DMT in various neurological and psychiatric disorders — such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and mood disorders — as well as in the general population.
New possibilities for feeling and perceiving
It is clear that dance has a powerful effect on the human body and psyche.
DMT from its inception emphasized that the body is inseparable from, and in constant reciprocal interaction with, the mind. As such, sensations, perceptions, emotions and thinking affect our body and the way we move. By observing the body we can deduce mental states.
Conversely, our posture and our movements have the power to transform our mental states, to evoke repressed memories, to release spontaneity and creativity, to reorganize our brains. New ways of moving and dancing may produce new ways of feeling and perceiving the world.
This is one of the most exciting and profound aspects of DMT and it is shocking that the body, movement and dance have been almost entirely ignored by mainstream psychotherapy. It is time to change that!
Giardia is an example of a parasite you don’t want to catch. Symptoms can include diarrhoea, abdominal cramps, fatigue, weakness and weight loss.
From shutterstock.com
A parasite is an organism that lives in or on an organism of another species.
Three main classes of parasites can cause disease in humans: protozoa, helminths, and ectoparasites. Protozoa and helminths largely affect the gut, while ectoparasites include lice and mites that can attach to or burrow into the skin, staying there for long periods of time.
The majority of protozoa and helminths tend to be non-pathogenic (meaning they don’t cause disease) or result in very mild illness. Some, however, can cause severe disease in humans.
Read more:
Health check: the low-down on 'worms' and how to get rid of them Faecal-oral transmission, where parasites found in the stool of one person end up being swallowed by another person, is the most common mode of transmission of parasitic protozoa and helminths.
The initial symptoms tend to be gastrointestinal symptoms like diarrhoea. When parasites invade the red blood cells or organs, the consequences can become more serious.
Protozoa
Protozoa are tiny single-celled organisms that multiply inside the human body.
The protozoa giardia, for example, has a classic two-stage life cycle. In the first stage, called trophozoite, the parasite swims around and consumes nutrients from the small bowel. In the second stage it develops into a non-moving cyst.
Cysts excreted in faeces can contaminate the water supply, and ingesting contaminated food or water results in transmission. Close human to human contact and unsanitary living conditions can promote transmission.
Symptoms of giardia can include severe or chronic diarrhoea, abdominal cramps, fatigue, weakness and weight loss.
Once the parasite has been diagnosed, it can usually be treated effectively.From shutterstock.com
Other important protozoa are the plasmodium species. Plasmodium develop in mosquitoes, and infected mosquitoes transmit the parasite to humans by biting them. Plasmodium destroys red blood cells which impacts organ function and causes a disease in humans known as malaria.
Helminths, often called worms, are large multicellular organisms usually visible to the naked eye in their adult stages. As a general rule, helminths cannot multiply inside the human body.
One major group of helminths are flatworms. Flatworms literally have flattened soft bodies. Their digestive cavity has only one opening for both the ingestion and removal of food. It’s thought 80% of flatworms are parasitic.
Tapeworms are one type of flatworm. The most common human tapeworm in Australia is the dwarf tapeworm. The prevalence of dwarf tapeworm in isolated communities in northwest Australia is estimated to be around 55%.
Infestation in humans comes from ingesting dwarf tapeworm eggs. Transmission from person to person occurs via the faecal-oral route. As with other parasites, the major risk factors are poor sanitation and shared living quarters. Symptoms include diarrhoea, abdominal pain, weight loss and weakness.
Some parasites, like plasmodium, which causes malaria, are transmitted to humans via mosquito bites.From shutterstock.com
Another major group of helminths are nematodes, commonly known as roundworms. Nematodes are the most numerous multicellular animals on earth and can be found in almost every environment.
Unlike flatworms, they do have a digestive system that extends from the mouth to the anus.
More than 50% of the world’s population are thought to be affected at one point during their life by at least one of six main classes of nematodes.
The eggs or larvae of these nematodes usually develop in soil before being transmitted to the human host. For this reason these nematodes are often called soil-transmitted helminths. A good example are hookworms which infest humans by penetrating the skin from contaminated soil. So wearing appropriate footwear is an important way to prevent hookworm transmission.
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A parasite attack on Darwin's finches means they're losing their lovesong
The pinworm Enterobius vermicularis has a different life cycle to the other nematodes. Pinworm larvae develop in eggs on the skin near the anus or under the fingernails.
Pinworm, also known as threadworm, is the most common helminth parasite in Australia. Itching around the anus is a major symptom of pinworm. Pinworms are easily passed from one person to another and it’s common for entire families to be infested.
Ectoparasites
The term ectoparasites generally refers to organisms such as ticks, fleas, lice and mites that can attach or burrow into the skin and remain there for long periods of time.
Scabies, for example, a contagious skin disease marked by itching and small raised red spots, is caused by the human itch mite. Scabies usually is spread by direct, prolonged, skin-to-skin contact. Head lice are small, wingless insects that live and breed in human hair and feed by sucking blood from the scalp.
Head lice, a type of ectoparasite, are common in children.From shutterstock.com
Prevention and treatment
Some parasites can lie dormant for extended periods of time. This can make the diagnosis of parasitic infestation challenging as there may be no symptoms, or symptoms can be vague and non-specific.
The good news is we have very good medications to treat many different kinds of parasites once they’ve been diagnosed. These medications do have side effects but on the whole are very effective.
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Six human parasites you definitely don't want to host
Treatment of parasites should be accompanied by preventative strategies such as improving sanitation and ensuring the availability of appropriate clothing and footwear in affected areas.
The World Health Organisation has recommended periodic medical treatment (deworming) to all at-risk people living in endemic areas, but widespread implementation remains challenging.
With the awakening in society of the importance of mental health, combined with advances in neuroscience and psychiatry, much needed attention to trauma and childhood trauma is slowly forming.
In a recent interview with Anderson Cooper and in his latest book published May 14, Howard Stern discussed childhood adversity and trauma. The two men also discussed their exposure to their parents’ stress and how their reactions as children formed their adult behavior.
As a trauma psychiatrist, I am glad that men with such celebrity are willing to talk about their experiences, because it can help bring awareness to the public and reduce stigma.
Childhood: Learning about the world and the self
A child’s brain is a sponge for learning about how the world works and who they themselves are. We humans have an evolutionary advantage in having the ability to trust the older and learn from them about the world. That leads to cumulative knowledge and protection against adversity, about which only the experienced know. A child absorbs the patterns of perceiving the world, relating to others and to the self by learning from adults.
But when the initial environment is unusually tough and unfriendly, then a child’s perception of the world may form around violence, fear, lack of safety and sadness. Brains of adults who experience childhood adversity, or even poverty, are more prone to detecting danger, at the cost of ignoring the positive or neutral experiences.
Some who experience childhood adversity have to mature faster and become caretakers or provide emotional support for siblings or parents at an age they themselves need to be taken care of. They may end up carrying those patterns of relating to others throughout their adult life.
The child of trauma may also perceive himself or herself as unworthy of love, guilty or bad. The brain of an unknowing child may think: If they do this to me, there should be something wrong with me, I deserve it.
The little world people experience as children forms the way we perceive the real big world, its people and the people we are as adults. This will then form the way the world reacts to us based on our actions.
A world filled with trauma
An unidentified young person participating in therapy at a center for refugees in Detroit.David Dalton/Wayne State University, CC BY-SA
Childhood trauma is more common than one would think: Up to two-thirds of children experience at least one traumatic event. These include serious medical illness or injury, firsthand experience of violence or sexual abuse or witnessing them, neglect, bullying and the newest addition to the list: mass shootings.
Unfortunately, when it comes to domestic violence and sexual abuse, it is often chronic, repetitive exposure, which can be even more detrimental to the child’s mental and physical health and behavior.
Ongoing civil wars and refugee crises also expose millions of children to extremely high levels of trauma, which is often ignored.
How do children react to trauma?
To understand the child’s reaction to trauma, one has to keep in mind their developmental level of emotional and cognitive maturity. Most of the time, confusion is the reaction: The child does not know what is happening or why it is happening.
I hear frequently from my adult patients that when they were molested by a relative as a five-year-old, they did not know what was happening or why a supposedly trusting caregiver was doing it to them. Fear and terror, coupled with a sense of lack of control, are often companions of this confusion.
There is also guilt, as the child may believe they did something wrong to deserve the abuse, and often the perpetrating adults claim they did something wrong to deserve the abuse. Sadly when it comes to sexual abuse, sometimes when the parents are told about it, they choose to deny or ignore the incident. This makes the feelings of guilt and helplessness worse. When the trauma is happening to parents, such as frequent battering of a mother by an alcoholic father, children are stuck between two people they are supposed to love. They may be angry with the father for violence, or angry at the mother for not being able to protect herself and themselves.
They may try to rise to protect mom from father or from her sadness. They may feel guilty for not being able to save her, or have to raise their siblings when parents fail to do so. They learn the world is a brutal and unsafe place, a place where one is abused and one is violent.
Adulthood scars of childhood trauma
Children who are abused can be helped when adults take seriously their reports of abuse.BestPhotoStudio/Shutterstock.com
There is a growing body of research suggesting longstanding impact of childhood trauma: not only that such childhood experiences can form the way the person perceives and reacts to the world, but also that there are lifelong academic, occupational, mental and physical health consequences. These children may have lower intellectual and school performance, higher anxiety, depression, substance use and a variety of physical health problems including autoimmune disease.
Not all who are exposed to childhood adversity are permanently scarred, and a front line in research of childhood adversity is the predictors of risk and resilience. For instance, there are genetic variations which may make the person more or less vulnerable to impact of trauma. I often see those who were lucky enough to transform their trauma to a meaningful cause, and with the help of a good mentor, therapist, grandparent or positive experiences rise and develop more strength.
This, however, does not mean those who sustain long-term impacts were weaker or tried less. There are a multitude of genetic, neurobiological, family, support, socioeconomic and environmental factors, besides the severity and how chronic the trauma is, that can lead to breaking of the strongest of people when exposed to trauma.
How to deal with childhood trauma
We as a society can do a lot: reduce poverty; educate and provide less privileged parents with support needed for raising their children (although childhood trauma happens also in privileged homes); take seriously children’s report of abuse; remove the source of trauma or remove the child from the traumatic environment; psychotherapy. When necessary, medications can also help.
Fortunately for all of us, recent advances in neuroscience, psychotherapy and psychiatry have provided us with strong tools to prevent the negative impact in the child and reduce a lot of the negative impact in the adults, if we choose to use them.
