Why “Neuro”science?

O’ neuroscience, wherefore art thou neuroscience?

Adam Fitchett
Aug 22, 2017 · 4 min read

It’s quite rare that people who study a subject ask the question “why does my discipline even exist?”. Perhaps at first glance it seems like a silly question. Neuroscience is the study of the nervous system; why study the nervous system? “Because it’s there” seems like an obvious response, “I mean. Humans study everything! There are people who study the history of windmills, for god’s sake” (yes, there are) “so why not the nervous system?”

Fair point, but, an entire science just for the nervous system? When’s the last time you heard somebody talking about “skeletoscience” or “respiroscience” or “myoscience”? There’s immunology, sure. But immunology is a mere branch of biology; it hasn’t been put up on a pedestal like neuroscience. Neuroscience is not a mere branch of anything; it has acquired the same status as it’s big siblings chemistry, physics and biology. Millions of students take their bachelor’s in neuroscience; how many take their bachelor’s in gastroenterology?

Big-headed apes that study themselves

I am a big-headed ape that studies itself, and that’s pretty astounding. In some aspects of course, human beings are “just animals”; but with respect to most of things we care about in our daily lives, there is a huge chasm between humanity and everything-else. Human beings build skyscrapers, fly aeroplanes, compose symphonies, treat cancer, devise complex ideological systems, program software, write books and discover the laws of quantum mechanics. Chimpanzees can barely use a tool. We have no wings, and yet we fly.

How do we do all this stuff? What allows us to be so different? It’s not our skeleton or our lungs. Not mostly anyway. It’s that three pound lump of convoluted meat that sits inside our skulls. Something about the human brain is very special, and neuroscientists want to know what it is. Because really, neuroscience is about the brain; it may be defined as “the study of the nervous system”, but no-one goes into neuroscience with dreams of discovering the ultimate truth about the sciatic nerve. V.S. Ramachran wrote a book called The Telltale Brain; no-one expected The Telltale Dorsal Root Ganglion to follow.

The mind as its own prison

We give the name “science” to the systematic study of reality (whatever “reality” may be). Science however, is riven down the middle, into the natural and the social (or human) sciences. The natural sciences, which study things like birds, quarks, chemicals and volcanoes, have acquired a significantly better reputation than the social sciences, which study things like economic exchange, cognitive bias, suicide rates and kyriarchal hegemony.

Why the difference in reputation? Why the perennial failure of the social sciences to live up to the achievements of their cousins? It has something to do with the difference between the “inside” and the “outside”. The natural sciences study the products of “nature” which, in a bizarre turn of events, has come to mean “anything not made by humans”. By contrast, the social or human sciences study the product of the human mind. Hence: the big-headed ape that studies itself.

At this point, a serious problem arises. It’s all well and good when the human cognitive machinery is facing outwards, studying the water buffalo and the vortices of a hurricane. But when the question of itself and its own product arises, the human mind is called upon to engage in a strange act of contortion, bending back upon itself. Like a dog running in circles as it chases its own tail, the human mind can never quite manage to catch up with itself.

Objectivity, that pose of “looking outward” which allows science to be science in the first place, requires a subject and an object. Things get tricky when the two attempt to become one. When we study nature, we stand on the inside looking out. When we study ourselves, we want to be on the outside looking in – but that’s not possible: we are forever trapped on the inside. We cannot step out of our brain to examine it objectively; we can only see it through itself. It seems we are like a mental patient, studying the padded wall of his cell with a magnifying glass, convinced he can find the ultimate truth somewhere in the fabric.

The brain as the ultimate nexus

This is where neuroscience comes in. Given we accept the exceedingly likely proposition that the mind and brain are the same thing, the study of the brain should give us a nice little wedge between the inside and the outside. The wellspring of all human phenomena, everything that keeps slipping through the fingers of the social scientists, from the meaning of Mona Lisa’s smile to the social purpose of tribal dancing, lies somewhere in that great tangle of axons and synapses that sits between your ears. Let’s not say “the truth is out there”, but rather: the truth is in there.

Cybertrop(h)ic

A critical eye on brains, machines and the narrowing chasm between.

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Adam Fitchett

Written by

Cybertrop(h)ic

A critical eye on brains, machines and the narrowing chasm between.

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