The Boundaries of Our Bodies

In the book Notes of Complexity by professor of pathology, Neil Theise, the realization that the body is, on one hand, a single coherent entity and, on the other, not entirely self-contained brings up intriguing implications. One of these is that the boundary of the body becomes less clearly defined. At everyday scales, my boundary is my skin and yours is your skin. But at the microscopic level, the surface of the skin is far from sharp or distinct. Cells from the outer layer are constantly dying and shedding; much of the dust in our homes consists of these sloughed-off skin cells—our own and those of anyone with whom we share our spaces. In this sense, we are not truly bounded by the surface of our skin. Our “edges” stretch at least as far as the environments we inhabit.

If we consider our shared microbiomes, our boundaries blur even further. The limits of the self expand to include whatever and whomever we have touched throughout the day, and whoever has touched us in return. In this way, our spatial boundaries extend beyond our skin.

We can continue downward through successive levels of scale—from cells to molecules, from atoms to subatomic particles, and into the deepest quantum realms.

Seen across these many scales—from the dust of our shed cells to the quantum fields that underlie all matter—the body emerges not as a neatly bordered object but as a dynamic, porous process. Its boundaries shift with context, scale, time and interaction, linking us continuously with our surroundings and with one another. We are not isolated entities but part of an ever-interwoven web of material exchange, connection, and transformation.

Summary of ideas from
Notes on Complexity

Neil Theise

Copyright © 2023 by Neil Theise