Melanin, Conduction and the Science of Soul

Melanin is quite a notable substance. A biopolymer and neuropeptide, it is found not only in the skin, but also in the inner ear and the “substantia nigra” of the brain. It also has some very interesting properties. In the 1960s, scientists showed a high electrical conductivity in iodine-doped and oxidised polypyrrole “Black”, a certain type of melanin. Ten years later another research team showed similar properties in another melanin. These findings were largely forgotten over time, until in 2000, when the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three scientists who rediscovered melanin’s properties. Melanin also shows negative resistance, electroluminescence (emitting a flash of light when a charge is put through it) and is the best sound-absorbing material known to science. Currently it is the subject of intense interest in biotechnology. In the brain, neural activity is mediated by melanin, and the substance is also a good conductor of radiation, light, heat and kinetic energy, opening possibilities for application in “plastic electronics” and nanotechnology.All this makes melanin ripe for adoption into bad science. I am talking here of the little-known pseudoscience of Melanin Theory. In a nutshell, black supremacists claim that the higher levels of melanin in dark skin are responsible for enhanced intelligence and physical ability, as well as increased emotional, psychic and spiritual sensitivity. In addition, melanin’s activity as a neuropeptide means that nerve impulses are transmitted faster through the body, resulting in increased athletic prowess.

Wade Nobles even went as far to invent a secondary nervous system, the Essential Melanic System, arguing that without this, a person could not be described as human. Writer and psychiatrist Francis Cress Welsing asserts that melanin exchanges “black photons” with other electrons, picking up the negative energy vibrations from white people. This, he claims, is the root cause of the prevalence of high blood pressure among African Americans. He also states, “Melanin gives humans the ability to FEEL because it is the absorber of all frequencies of energy.”

All of which leads us to perhaps the most wonderful paragraph in the whole of Wikipedia:

Believers in melanin theory claim that the greater concentration of cutaneous melanin functions as a superconductor of sound and heat energy. Some assert that it can absorb electromagnetic radiation, others that it can convert light and magnetic fields to sound; that it can process information without reporting to the brain; and, further, that it is the chemical basis for what is commonly called “soul”.

So there you have it - the science of soul.

4 comments January 23rd, 2007