John F. DeCarlo recently presented “A nexus of intellectual-cultural philosophies of cancer treatment” at the Conference of the Association of Interdisciplinary Studies, hosted by the University of Amsterdam.
A post by John F. DeCarlo.
Synthesizing the Enlightenment and the countercurrents of Romanticism, Lou Andreas Salome, the Russian free thinker who stirred the affection and admiration of Nietzsche, Freud, and Rilke, astutely defined poetry as: “somewhere between the dream and its interpretation”.[i] Correspondingly, I will explore the unique and significant functions that the poetic imagination plays relative to scientific brain-mind models, advancing the view that the poetic imagination is both a reflection of – and reflection on – the processes of brain-mind-world.
Via our long tradition of naming things, our verbal visual cortex is virtually omnipresent. Even that which is far away and out of sight can be clearly localized in a specific and detailed manner. The biblical Adam, via Mark Twain, gives this a humorous and chauvinistic twist: "I get no chance to name anything myself. The new creature names everything that comes along, before I can get in a protest."[ii] In a serious vein, the poet pushes the world away from themselves, for objectivity is derived from detachment, and she/he then pulls the world close to them “…and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name..."[iii]
Pribram was the first scientist to verify how the human brain does not necessarily experience sense perceptions directly, even of the automatic nervous system. Kandel also documented that perception is a hypothesis which is remarkably accurate, in that our perception of the world is a relative fantasy that coincides with reality. Barrett qualifies that an emotion is your brain's creation of what your bodily sensations mean, in relation to what is going on around you in the world, and that concepts give meaning to the chemicals that create tastes and smell. This is done invisibly and automatically so that your senses seem like reflexes rather than simulated constructions.[iv] Hence, while the macro structure of the brain is largely genetically predetermined, along with some basic concepts that help the brain to make sense of incoming sensory data, micro construction extends to the cellular level.[v]
This constructive view implies that brain-mind is inherently as Aristotle defined a poet, as one with “an eye for resemblances.”[vi] In fact, just as Frost noted that metaphor is not just a feature of language but a means of understanding the world, so too the neurological, psychological, and social construction of emotions, which is a spontaneous simulation based on resemblance, is found in perception, language, understanding, feeling, empathy, remembering, imagining, and dreaming, Hence, the plasticity of perception is not only embodied in Blake's declaration: "man can make a heaven of a hell, and hell of a heaven"[vii] – but in Eliot's musing: “In a moment there is time for visions, and revisions, which in a moment, will be reversed."[viii] Such is the shifting texture of consciousness.
Brain science is determining the structure and function of neural circuits, how those circuits gives rise to computations that underlie thought and behavior, and how they vary between individuals and change during developmental stages and aging. The Lieber lab has developed neuron-like electronics that integrate brain circuitry and record neural spiking activity and the Lichtman lab maps neural connections at nanometer resolution, revealing neural circuit motifs. But this is tricky enterprise, for as Barrett's research indicates, there is no particular brain region dedicated to any single emotion. While the amygdala is important to emotions, it is neither necessary nor sufficient for them. Rather, many different brain areas are capable of producing the same outcome. The same neurons can also participate in creating different mental states; and instances of a single emotion, such as fear, are handled by different brain patterns at different times….”[ix] In this respect, while a 'road map' is laid out, the interactive 'traffic flows' vary on conditions. Yet poetry is well suited to the task of illuminating "how each instance of emotion is a whole brain state to be studied and understood"[x]; and how neuromodulation diffuses emotion, for poetry "is movement of mind and emotion"[xi]. In fact, in haiku, where fleeting moments of inner and/or outer nature are concisely captured, Soseki laments: "Over the wintry/forest, winds howl in rage/ with no leaves to blow."
One might wonder: if the inner life of the mind is so elusive and transient, how does one make decisions for the short or long term? The proverbial advice is to sleep on the issue before making an important decision, but current brain science reveals that the default mode of open-ended wandering is operative as both dream logic and associative day-dreaming. There is also the issue of the paradoxical nature of mind, for "consciousness is not an all-or-nothing affair."[xii] People in trances, sleepwalking, and who are heavily medicated can respond to linguistic prompts without being fully conscious. On the flip side, a conscious state can become so focused and hypnotic that a car driver does not recall any of the driving experience.
This duality pervades the social sciences: the concept of free will is essential to political science, developmental psychology emphasizes a theory of intention, cognitive psychology posits memory at the seat of conscious awareness, and classical economics stands on the premise of the rational agent; and yet, behavioral economics undermines classical assumptions with heuristics, framing and market inefficiencies, linguistics conceives of language as both active and product tradition, and goal pursuit, executive function and flexibility are psychologically conceived of as both conscious and non-conscious. In these respects, Barrett cautions against conceiving of what Kahneman metaphorically calls System I and System 2 with their respective serial and parallel thinking "as blobs in the brain."[xiii] Minsky also critiques artificial neural nets for lacking a balance between serial and parallel processing.[xiv] Yet poetry synthetically embraces such ambiguity, contradiction, and paradox; in fact, Whitman celebrates such states of mind: "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."[xv]
Still, how does the individual decision maker arrive at a decision? While neuro brain scans can now recognize one’s momentary mood or emotional reaction to a particular name, face, person, or object, as well as read one’s thoughts relative to verbal prompts and activities, and while deep learning AI can be somewhat predictive in reading words and ideas[xvi], the type of second-to-second free slotting that a quarterback performs at the line of scrimmage, and the nonlinear brainstorming of the creative mind cannot be fully accessed, understood, or replicated. This is particularly true as it pertains to moral, aesthetic and spiritual decision making, complete with a position and reasons for holding said position. Even a cerebroscope, a device capable of reading all neural activity, both at the level of the neuron and at the level of systemic groupings of neuronal activity, only measures brain states and does not infer beyond them to their particular mental-linguistic content. And so, while Dickinson rejoices in the wonders of human sensibilities: "the brain is wider than the sky"[xvii], the celestial vista of the syntactical world is wider than the brain.
This leads to the global scope of the brain and its related experiences. Theories of criticality suggest that the brain oscillates between "avalanches" of chaos and structural unity. In this way, the brain remains open-ended to change and variety, maximizing its adaptability, and yet, keeps a certain level of stability intact; or as Lord Byron notes: "Poetry is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake." More specifically, proper brain function depends on the balance of the activity of excitatory and inhibitor neurons. Ideally, there is a harmonious synchronistic rhythm between excitation and inhibition. Touching on this cycle, Shakespeare notes: "The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to Earth, Earth to heaven."[xviii] Here again, we also see that the poetic vision transcends its creator's brain. In fact, Goethe emphasizes the type of reification that results from the creative process: "the poet writes the poem, and the poem, in turn, writes the poet." All these global tasks require a powerful and yet efficient brain, and this is attained through concise precision. Likewise, a perennial hallmark of the poetic is its compression, as found in the 17 syllables of haiku, and in exact wording, or as Coleridge noted during literary conversation: "the best words in the best order."
When well executed, poetic imagination, in our era of unprecedented brain-mind sciences, not only accurately reflects complex and intricate inner dynamics, but offers wise reflections on the brain’s cultural milieu, for its metaphorical power “bodies forth the forms of things unknown”[xix] and as such "...it is not a thing we see, it is, rather, a light by which we may see."[xx] Moreover, of what we do see, we are reminded that “There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the paths, that is, the poet.”[xxi]
[i] The Freud Journal of Lou Andreas-Salome. Translated and Introduced by Stanley A. Leavy, Basic Books, 1964, pg. 31.
[ii] Mark Twain, Adam and Eve
[iii] William Shakespeare, A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Vi
[iv] Barrett, Lisa Feldman. How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, First Mariner Books Edition, 2018. Pg. 29
[v] Barrett, pg. 43
[vi] Zapruder, Matthew. Why Poetry? 2019 pg. 130
[vii] Milton, Paradise Lost
[viii] Elliot, Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock
[ix] Barrett, pg. 35
[x] Barrett, pg. 36
[xi] Zapruder, 2019, pg. 130
[xii] Fallon, Francis. Good News from Neurology – But Don’t Get the Wrong Idea, 2013, pg. 6.
[xiii] Barrett, pg. 169
[xiv] Boden Margaret A., Artificial Intelligence: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2018, pg. 83
[xv] Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
[xvi] Boden, pg. 79
[xvii] Emily Dickinson, The Brain Is Wider than the Sky
[xviii] William Shakespeare, Midsummer’s Night Dream, Vi
[xix] William Shakespeare, Midsummer’s Night Dream, Vi
[xx] Robert Penn Warren, All The King’s Men, 1946
[xxi] Emerson, Nature and Man