Comments on: Art, Science & Truth: Jonah Lehrer

By: Rational_G

Rational_G — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 22:11:10 +0000

The future of science……..is more science. Why must we declare, a priori, that the nature of consciousness for example is beyond scientific analysis? This is an intellectual retreat. To tackle these issues does nothing to diminish, beauty, awe, and wonder. That is just silly. And to characterize Dawkins et al as cold reductionists is inaccurate. Please see for example Dawkins’ Unweaving The Rainbow where he addresses these very issues.

By: McFawn

McFawn — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:29:29 +0000

Lehrer’s newest article: “The Future of Science…is Art?” (at SEED magazine) is a fascinating extension of his Proust argument. The only problem is that he begins to tread into the realm of language philosophies…Wittgenstein etc…when he talks about the importance of metaphor to science. The metaphors used to describe scientific discoveries (I.e. string theory’s garden hose) are alternatively described by Lehrer as translations of scientific truths and the very substance of that truth. Does the metaphor describe or constitute a truth? I responded to this point, and Lehrer’s article, at litandart.com .

By: dud

dud — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 20:10:10 +0000

Although reductionism is the working tool of science there are many aspects of brain neuroscience which elude analysis by looking for the bits and pieces. Seeking the NCC, the neural correlates of consciousness, by the many painstaking lab techniques has been enormously fruitful even though they fail to answer deep questions: the nature of Qualia, the redness of red, the blueness of blue, the awesomeness of awe (vide Longinus on the Sublime), possibly the umaminess of umami. These seem to be gestalt problems. Proust’s brain may have established dendritic flow of channel and halorhodopsin in recollecting the madelaine but his pleasure in eating it may lie beyond the amygdala or limbic system or cortical binding; just so with Cezanne’s apples, and the I ness of me.

By: Rational_G

Rational_G — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 04:20:11 +0000

Sorry to differ, but I think the arguments of Jonah Lehrer are weak and a bit of a stretch. Consider these reviews:

http://www.slate.com/id/2178584/

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2007/11/20/proust_neuroscientist/

I’m all for integrating art & science but I smell cultural relativism here. “Other ways of describing reality and defining truth”? Sounds sloppy to me.

By: armadillo

armadillo — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 10:12:15 +0000

Oliver Sacks is “squeamish” about issues of soul and transcendence? Perhaps “polite” would be more accurate.

By: OliverCranglesParrot

OliverCranglesParrot — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 22:42:18 +0000

If you compartmentalize your life, you may live a largely fragmented, yet comfortable life. If you don’t compartmentalize your life, you may live a defragmented, yet comfortable life. Specializations inform the market place, a contemporary metaphor for social organization, and at times specializations are a sensible response to personal needs, but it is not required to serve one approach for every aspect of being. There is an element of choice here, IMO.

For the inquisitive spirit, for the healthy skeptic, for the naturally curious seeker, questions often inform answers, often leading to ever more questions. But one reply, what informs this necessity? Moreover, why does this little tango inform the cultural manifestation of specializations? It would be agreeable to suggest, the efficacy and successful application of this method over a wide and deep swatch of terrain. But perhaps, it’s also belief and its favorite handmaiden, hegemony. And this becomes a crossroad where the inquisitive spirit meets up with the unencumbered, non-curious, non-skeptical being; a duality which may implode upon self-recognition. Belief and hegemony quarry coherence and the eternal when netting either the second law of thermodynamics or the apocalyptic, revelatory condition. The unprovable assertion, the convenient, inherited axioms, the perpetually sustainable agreeable propositions, the conventional or unconventional truths, are the merest oxygen, the meager sustenance required for the conviction of certainty, even in a description about the inherently uncertain, or inherently unknowable.

Cezanne’s ideas and expressions are beautiful bubbling around inside my cranial mass and apparently to all the optical means I possess, as are the quantum description or the ponderings of the infinite from Georg Cantor to Rumi, but no more or no less beautiful than the reality from which they came, for which they share, mutually serve, and co-create. Perhaps these reflections are a passing glimpse at a kind of unity, a completeness, a wholeness in the ever becoming variation. My pantheon, my sacrificial alter of belief, my gods and goddesses of hegemonic necessity, which I impose most fervently upon this being, the cage I manifest as myself.

Thank you Chris and guest Jonah, for another pearl of wonder.

By: Zeke

Zeke — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 18:56:52 +0000

Can these arguments be seen as another iteration of the Transcendentalists’ response to Lokean “sensuality,” the notion that everything “true’ is percieved by one of our five senses?