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Ralph Windle’s Blog on Science & The Arts

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Arts and Science: The Surfeit of Neuros…

Neuroscience and CVN

Neuroscience is about the scientific study of the nervous system (Wikipedia); its task, “to try to explain behaviour in terms of the activities of the brain”. It is of serious importance in medical and related behavioural fields.

The equivalent task of CVN, and of this site, is - as you know- to explore ways of narrowing the cultural gaps between our ‘science’ and ‘arts’ communities as a stimulus to more interactivity and heightened creativity.

So there are some obvious overlaps of interest and much common ground for learning between the two. Given the institutional inertia and other impediments to progress, a soundly-based, neuroscience-linked, dialogue is an important element in our mission.

Sensible moves towards action, however, are once again being confused and delayed by what a distinguished, practising scientist ( Professor Raymond Tallis, emeritus professor of geriatric medicine at Manchester University ) has recently named ‘the neuroscience delusion’.

The Neuroscience Delusion

We are now suffering from a worldwide surfeit of neuros! The main one specifically targeted by Tallis is ‘neuroaesthetics’, one of a line of heavily-hyped, ‘interdisciplinary’ progeny of the more ‘arty’ neurosciences; each apparently fully-equipped at birth with retinues of articulate professors, faculties, journals, global conferences and media camp-followers.

With a few apt coinages of his own (neurospeculation, neuromythology, neuro-lit-crit etc) Tallis conducts a convincing and overdue demolition of much pretentious twiddle-twaddle which has seduced some unexpected victims ( like successful writer AS Byatt ); is undermining the quality of the arts/literature dialogue; and, if we are not careful, the credibility and more urgent priorities of the serious mainstream ‘neurosciences’.

Professor Tallis’s charges are authoritive and clear. “ You would not guess how little we know or understand from the hyping of popular neuroscience in which some quite reputable neuroscientists seem to collude. We hear daily of how ‘brain science’ is ‘explaining’ happiness, love, moral judgement and so on.” The “neuroaestheticians fail to realise that their approach is, at the very least, a little premature”.

The Myth of the Brain Science ‘Explain All’

He points out that the hype has increased since functional neuro-imaging arrived, enabling scientists to observe directly activity in the brains of conscious subjects; but questions what, precisely, is actually being ‘observed’? “ The appeal to brain science as an ‘explain all’ has at its heart a myth …. under normal circumstances, experiences are had by a ‘person’, not a stand-alone ‘brain’.” And so on.

The Tallis intervention will, hopefully, trigger both some professional reassessment of the current scientific realities of the neurosciences; and some sobering down of the more absurd claims being made, or at least badly articulated, by the devotees of neuroaesthetics.

Aristophanes and the 5th Century Sophists

The problem is not new. The Financial Times ( 2 March 2002 ) lent its pages to an article by Marilia Duffles headlined “ Secrets of Human Thinking” . It reads like a PR blurb for the Institute of Neuroaesthetics and its “ first international conference, held recently in Berkeley, California, (which) brought together scholars and scientists from all parts of the globe …”

Even in 2002, its founder Semir Zeki, professor of neurobiology at UCL, and his equally distinguished Tokyo colleague, Hideo Sakata, are reported to claim “ to have provided art historians with a precise tool for accurately interpreting the techniques and intentions of old masters and art movements.”

Meanwhile, Professor Jean-Pierre Changeux, at the Pasteur Institute in France “ aims to identify the molecules in the brain that lie behind its emotional contemplation of art”.

“Neuroaesthetics”, the panegyric modestly concludes “is science’s growth area: Berkeley now has a department of neuroaesthetics while the European Union is keen to invest in understanding human nature …” ( http://www.neuroaesthetics.com/ )

There is much more. It would take an Aristophanes, who routed an earlier brand of sophists in his ‘Clouds’ (423 BCE ) to do proper justice to these hyperboles.

Even the effervescent Vilayanur Ramachandran, himself no stranger to the creative hypothesis, suggested a little restraint in his 2003 BBC Reith Lectures. “ Let’s assume that 90% (!) of the variance you see in art is driven by cultural diversity, and only 10%(!) common to all brains. The culturally driven 90% is what most people already study – it’s called art history. As a scientist, what I am interested in is the 10% that is universal ….Are there such things as artistic universals?” His neuroaesthetic friends seem to propagate very different ideas on both arithmetic and measures of proof.

Some Serious Common Sense

Among these disappointing complexities, much the clearest and level-headed exposition of where things stand, where to look and what to read was supplied by Martin Skov (Brain Ethics, September 2006) in his article “A short bibliographic guide to the emerging field of bioaesthetics”. At least, he sorts out the expanding vocabulary in a common-sense and understandable way.

“First of all, at the moment neuroaesthetics is not so much a coherent field ( with text books etc) as a collection of researchers with an individual interest in illuminating the neural underpinnings of art behaviour – and what these researchers take ‘neuroaesthetics’ to mean differs rather widely.”

“Neuroaesthetics can be thought of as part of the more general study of art and aesthetics as a biological phenomenon – Bioaesthetics – which is attempting to answer three basic biological questions about aesthetic behaviour in humans. They are :-

1 WHAT is art and aesthetics?
2 HOW does art and aesthetics relate to the brain?
3 WHY did this cognitive ability evolve in humans?

Neuroaesthetics is mainly concerned with question 2.

Martin Skov then proceeds, in a refreshing, hype-less way, to set out the most informative, non-specialist, sources of reading. Excellent. Thanks.

Moving On

Clearly some fascinating possibilities and (embryonic) hypotheses are emerging from these fields; but they are in danger of swamping common-sense and broader judgements. Meanwhile, on the authority of Professor Tallis, “Neuroaesthetics is wrong about the current state of neuroscience…. It is wrong about our experience of literature … and it is wrong about humanity ”.

These are serious statements. Could we please have a moratorium on the neuro-hype and some more sober assessment of where we should be drawing the current line between science and conjecture? Important arts/science issues are at stake.  CVN will be pushing to dissipate the fog. Watch this space!