Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 429
CHIRALITY OR SIDEDNESS IN NATURE. Nevertheless, a successful experiment was conducted a few years ago for synthesizing sugar comprising only left spinning molecules. It was discovered that this artificially synthesized sugar, though exactly the same in taste, chemical properties and cooking behaviour, was totally rejected by the human digestive system. Not a molecule was assimilated. This gave rise to the bizarre idea of manufacturing sugar consisting of only left spinning molecules on a commercial scale, not only for the benefit of diabetics but also for the pleasure of gourmands and gluttons. They could consume mountains of sugar without the fear of accumulating even a molehill of fat. The only snag is that, at present, the cost of manufacturing left spinning synthetic sugar is prohibitive. A mountain of money would be needed to produce a mere molehill of such sugar. Perhaps only the royal highnesses of oil rich monarchies sitting upon mountains of oil wealth could afford this luxury. . The apparently arbitrary preference for right or left also manifests itself in many other ways. Most humans are right-handed and the arrangement of the heart and liver is universally left sided and right sided respectively, barring a few rare individual exceptions of course. Roger A. . Hegstrom and Dillip K. Kondepudi in their jointly authored article The Handedness of the Universe published in. Scientific American, January 1990, present many examples of handedness in nature without any apparent reason for preference. While observing that most people are righthanded, they fail to recognize any reason . . . why right- and left-handed persons are not born in equal numbers. "2. But it is not a prerogative of the human race alone to display definite trends with regards to handedness. 418 |