I suspect Miller has googled Leher to find reviews that are critical of that author's book. How quaint! Wouldn't it be at least honorable and honest to read the damned book first? Leher is advancing the thesis that some geniuses who did not have the apparatus or methodology available today did anticipate, intuit, guess, presume, foresee, some of what is being measured in today's neuroscience. Note my word "measured". I use the word to emphasize the importance of new imaging technology to examine the brain and how it functions and to measure what is seen. That exemplifies a rather mechanical process. What is so odd about that? It little different from the development of anatomical knowledge in the early 15C which was done by measurement, dissection, and gradually improved as the technology for doing so progressed. Frankly, I think it's plain stupid (and I rarely use that word) to think that knowledge about the world and how we regard it (to value it variously) can be obtained without some mixing of measurement and self-reflection.
As for art subverting art, yes, I loudly agree with the statement. All creativity is a revision of some sort and thus is a subversion of some presumed ideal, even when it appears to be nothing but refinement. I'll go further: all acts are subversive. All remembrances are subversive. Every breath and beat of the heat is a subversion of the previous breaths and beats because they replace them, consciously intentional or unconsciously automatic. I believe there are two questions continually in paradoxical tension: What is the art of nature? What is the nature of art? Both mingle the objectively scientific or measurable) with the subjectively felt or personal. WC --- On Fri, 11/14/08, Chris Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > From: Chris Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: Scientific View > To: [email protected] > Date: Friday, November 14, 2008, 8:15 AM > "I just don't see how a methodology which is > supposedly value-free can > pronounce on the value of artifacts." > > > Some artifacts serve as better scientific evidence than > others -- that's > how. > > So an archaic torso of Apollo might be worthless to an > archaeologist, even if > it inspires a poet to write "You must change your > life" > > The subjugation of the humanities to the sciences is an old > story of the 20th > Century -- and yet it continues full-steam -- as we find a > new, popular > journalist, like Lehrer, proclaiming that the canonical > artists of modernism > really did make important contributions to science. (so now > we can admire them > even more!) > > It's so pathetic. > > ____________________________________________________________ > Are you a homeowner in debt? Need cash now? Click here to > refinance your > mortgage. > http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2231/fc/Ioyw6ijmOaf1UmOrwS5SiZUK9Z0Vz2 > PkJSKUKb42OizRQSqocu90t2/
