Biochemical Soul Musings on Nature, Science, Evolution, Biology, and Education

The Origins of Biochemicalsoul.com

Is my soul supposed to burn like this?

I’ve had several people recently ask me about the reason for the name of this website and domain.

Let me first state that, no, I do not believe in any form of incorporeal, spiritual, immortal, or otherwise supernatural “soul.” There are many reasons that I disbelieve in a soul, but you can find a sufficient, if simple and unsophisticated, explanation of my own reasoning in this previous post.

Before I explain exactly why I call this site “biochemicalsoul,” I’d like to quote one of my favorite lines concerning the soul. These words come from Lisa Simpson – yes, that’s the yellow, animated, fictitious Lisa Simpson of Matt Groening’s creation:

“Whether or not the soul is physically real…it’s the symbol of everything fine inside us.” - Lisa Simpson

I think that quote perfectly summarizes my own usage of the word soul in my blog title. Originally, I had a website at “mychemicalsoul.com.” It was read by about five people – that’s five people that read it once, not five regular visitors. In it, I basically had compiled everything that I have produced. All my writings and rantings (most hilariously stupid and awkward – everything you can still find here pre-2008, which isn’t a far cry from what I still have going on here), all my art – ranging from sketches from junior high, to clay sculptures and wood carvings, watercolor paintings, and digital artwork and animation, and my photography. After a short while I decided “mychemicalsoul” was exceedingly lame, so I came up with the moderately less lame “biochemicalsoul.”

In essence, it was everything from my head that could be put in digital interwebbed ((yes it is a word - look it up)), ((oh, you did look it up and couldn't find it? That's what you get for relying on the internets)) form. Being the science/biology dork that I am, I wanted something pithy that embodied the above Lisa Simpson version of the soul and my own understanding of consciousness – namely that from a reductionist perspective, everything about who we are breaks down to complex synaptic networks and, ultimately, biochemistry.

Yeah yeah, I know – really it can be reduced to lower levels ending in quantum physics. But I couldn’t call it “neurobiochemisynapticquantumsoul.com.”

So my thoughts, interests, art, photography, and everything else in this site is about as good of a public display of my “soul” that I can put forth.

Hence: biochemicalsoul.com.

Note: I'm still migrating my art and photography, but some of it is available on the "art" tab.

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