19. The Beautiful Brain

I contributed a short essay to a new website about the relationship between art and science, The Beautiful Brain.  It's called "Interdisciplinary Relations: On Consilience" and addresses the new theory of literature called "Literary Darwinism."  I evaluate the currently debated question of whether art is an adaptive trait or an evolutionary by-product.  I may write more pieces for the site in the future.

18. Quotes & Quotes

Lately I've been using Spanish Google because I can often track down word definitions that are hiding somewhere on the Web.  In this alternate, Iberian universe I found a great resource: a website commemorating Cajal's 150th birthday.  It even has an English translation!

Anyway, this site cited two other sites that got me excited.  They are quotation databases.  And who doesn't love a good quotation?  Many of these are from books that I have, but it's taking me a long time to work through them.  I thought I'd share:

"Remove yourself gradually, without violent breaks, from the friend for whom you represent a means instead of an end."

"You don't have enemies?  Is it that you never told the truth or never loved justice?"

"It is not worse to commit an error, but to try to justify it, instead of taking advantage of it as providential notice of our lightness or ignorance."

"Of all the possible reactions before injury, the most skilled and economical is silence."

"We scorn or hate ourselves because we do not understand because we do not take on the task of studying ourselves."

"The art of living a lot is to resign yourself to living little by little."

"Sympathy is very frequently a sentimental prejudice based on the idea that the face is the mirror of the soul.  Unfortunately, the face is almost always a mask."

"Ideas do not last long.  One must do something with them."

"Glory, in truth, is nothing other than a postponed obscurity."

"The weak succumb not for being weak, but for ignoring that they are it."

"Only the madman incapable of choosing his dreams and the sick man whom pain prevents from sleeping.


Here's to insomia . . .

17. Ochenta años and La mujer

I'm polishing my translation of "El quijote," which I think is a really interesting essay.  Cajal was undoubtedly a lover of literature, and he had an important relationship with reading.  Cajal has a few important concepts in the essay.  One is tipo de humano or "type of human."  The closest critical term that we have might be Jung's archetype.  But I decided not to use that word in translation because it would be anachronistic and it's spoiled with connotations.  I simply use "type" and think of it as a more poetic "Type-A/Type-B."  Don Quixote's type is idealist.  Cajal was himself quite quixotic and it shows in his passionate language.  Sancho Panza is Don Quixote's emotional counterweight.  In a different book, Cajal agrees with Charles Richet that "the idealism of Don Quixote is combined with the good sense of Sancho in men of genius."

Cajal acknowledges that Don Quixote is insane, disturbed.  What is the diagnosis?  Some sort of obligada abnormalidad mental "compulsory mental abnormality."  But Cajal's tone is not medical.  He successfully weaves a narrative that includes biographical information about Cervantes.

In the section titled "Cervantes, Incorrigible Quixote" Cajal credits other critics, "Cervantists," for their revelation of Cervantes' own story.  Cervantes was well-off and had high aspirations.  Then, as a soldier, he was imprisoned in Seville, where Cajal believes the genius of Cervantes was sculpted.  The last section of the essay is called "The Whip of Emotions," where Cajal argues that pain is an "awakener of souls and instigator of energies."  His last image is a strangely beautiful one:

"Comparable to swarms of marine noctilucas, whose phorsphorescence excites itself upon impact of the propeller of a ship, the lazy brain cells only ignite their low light with the whip of painful emotions.  Perhaps the privileged brain of Cervantes needed, likewise, to arrive at the tone and boiling of sublime inspiration, of the sharp sword of pain and the spectacular grieving of misery."

It is interesting to note that Cajal was educated in a school system whose motto could be described with the idiom "La letra con sangre entra."  (in other words, corporal punishment).  Cajal himself was literally imprisoned, locked in the basement in school, and so there is parallelism to Cervantes.

These are very powerful words and it's a wonderful essay and I'm still doing my best to do it justice.

I received two more Cajal books this week: El mundo vista a los 80 años" and "La mujer."  More on that later.

16. La psicología de los artistas & the Art of Translation

The other day I received a small package from Spain. It was the third edition of a work titled La psicología de los artistas, by Santiago Ramón y Cajal. It includes a number of pieces, including an account of Cajal's childhood as told by his brother [and fellow neuroscientist] Pedro, letters written by Cajal himself, and a literary essay concerning Cervantes's Don Quixote. To my knowledge, the content has never been translated into English. Therefore I am endeavoring to do so, starting with that essay titled "El quijote y el quijotismo," written in 1905 in commemoration of the publication of "the immortal book" [to use Cajal's words].

So far I have translated [roughly] roughly all of the first half: "El quijote." It is a fascinating piece from a refreshingly extra-disciplinary perspective written in the romantic style that captured Cajal's heart at a young age. Here is the first paragraph:

"Universally admired is the eminent moral figure of the noble la Manchan don Alonso Quijano el Bueno; converted to knight-errantry by suggestion of silly chivalresque books, he represents, as it has been said a thousand times, the most perfect symbol of honor and altruism. Ever Anglo-Saxon in nature, so given to imagining energetic and original characters, he invented a most exquisite persona of indomitable individualism and sublime self-denial."

Cajal considers "el Quijote," literally "the Do-Gooder," an archetype. In fact, one of the sections of the essay's second part is called "Representative Men. Men of the Species." A key word in the above paragraph is "suggestion" [sugestión], which is a most powerful notion. Cajal was fascinated by the popular pseudo-science of hypnotism—he even conducted his own investigative experiments on the topic—because of its apparent influence on the mind. Suggestion, then, is a weapon of falsity. Golgi and other proponents of the reticular theory were given to such convincing aspects of un-reality as ego and convention. Moreover, I love the phrase "sublime self-denial." Although it refers to Quixote's insane ignorance, it also has serious spiritual implications.

Now, what is most interesting about this essay in my opinion is that it is implicitly personal. Cervantes's classic was one of the treasures the teenage Cajal found in his neighbor's stash of romantic materials. But, then, Cajal objected to the author's treatment of his hero. Cajal was himself quite quixotic, and that quality would never truly leave him. In his autobiography, he refers at least twice to the famous character. By the time he wrote Advice for a Young Investigator, Cajal agreed that a combination of the temperaments of don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Indeed, Cajal calls one of the essay's sections "Salute to Sancho Panza," "prodigious incarnation of the tranquility and goodness of the soul." Though naturally an idealist, like his sympathetic literary hero, Cajal understood the necessary balance of healthy character. One must control "el Quijote."

This critical essay, which relies on a biographical and psychological reading, is an extremely insightful one in my opinion. So far, I think it is definitely worthwhile given the genius of its author. We'll see what happens when I finish translating and polishing.

Happy Thanksgiving!

15. Vision & the Brain

There has been a considerable gap between posts. I finished Recollections of My Life a while ago, but have been unable to write about the final part. As the author advanced his narrative to the time of his writing, old age, I was moved by his grace and humility:

"I have aimed that my life should be, so far as possible, in accordance with the counsel of the philosopher, a living poem of intense action and of secret heroism on behalf of scientific culture. Poor is my work, but it has been as intense and original as my slender talents permitted"[595].

Thereupon, I was motivated yet again to try to one day illuminate this man's life and work. Cajal's narrative is weak and at times boring; he would admit as much. But he is not a literary man. Perhaps a different treatment of the material would yield a different result. Scientifically, there is a staining method called the Ehrlich method. In Chicago, a man jokingly said "How wonderful, we have been graced by the illustrious Dr. Ehrlich!" A funny coincidence.

I will be reading Cajal's final two non-scientific books: Charlas de café [Café Conversations] and El mundo visto a los 80 años [The World Seen from 80-Years-Old]. They must be ordered from Spain and I am broke, but traveling for a freelance job next week. Patience is a virtue.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been using a great resource that my father found for me. In a set of DVDs called "Understanding the Brain," from the series "The Great Courses," Vanderbilt University professor and neuroscientist Dr. Jeanette Norden teaches neuroscience. I am a third of the way through the course and feel that I have already learned a great deal about the anatomy and physiology of the brain. The last two "lectures" have dealt with the vision system. I was struck by this axiom:

"Vision is a construct of the brain."

As it turns out, the eye provides very little information to the brain. Although it has about 100 million photoreceptors, only one million neurons transmit to a place called the lateral geniculate nucleus [LGN], which projects to the visual cortex at Brodmann's area 17. [Blah blah, but writing helps me cement the knowledge]. There, and at other higher-order places, the brain begins to form a percept that we experience as "sight." What's more, I was amazed to learn that we technically have a constant blind spot, a gap in the macula [neural sheet at the back of the eye] where the optic nerve exits. The brain merely fills in that blank. Therefore, vision is an entirely personal and subjective experience.

I have said that one of my main questions about Cajal concerns his vision. How did he look at tissue from the brain and see neurons, whereas the rest of the field saw a reticulum? Well, the neuron was always there. He merely [merely, ha!] had developed a brain that could construct the proper percept. How did he develop that brain? I have ideas, but I will save those. Remember, though, that "man can be the sculptor of his own brain." And:

"A persevering and deliberate effort is capable of moulding and organizing everything, from the muscle to the brain, making up the deficiencies of nature and even overcoming the mischances of character--the most difficult thing in life"[4].

Finally, Dr. Norden discussed our perception of color. She said that there are no blue cones in the fovea, our main visual part [we are "foveate" animals, with high visual acuity] at the center of the macula. When we look directly at something "blue," it is our brain that creates the color. Blue, therefore, is a state of mind. But of course, Picasso and the jazz men understood this . . .



Thanks! And special thanks to DW [and AH] for helping to guide me through an eclipse. Literally, it can be quite formative, as Cajal explains of 1860. Metaphorically/creatively, the same.

14. Cajal & Goethe [Briefly, Again]

The two diverge at the end of the road:

"And it is useless to affirm, with Goethe and many modern thinkers, that the search for final causes has no sense; that our task is to determine the how and not the why"[456].

[See: the beginning of Faust I]

Although he admired the German genius, Cajal was a completely classical thinker. I believe he belongs to the school of thought, the Western branch of which was founded by Heraclitus. Lao-Tzu provides a relevant Eastern reflection, in my opinion. I will trace this swerving path of influence somewhere else. There is a distinct philosophical mode, nearly perfected in the intellectual practice of these great men.

I am meeting with an extremely talented artist tonight, Pablo García, to discuss ideas. With a grant from Spain, he is preparing a Cajal-inspired visual art exhibit while studying at the School of Visual Arts. I had the pleasure of seeing a few slides of his work in Chicago; it is wonderful. I look forward to talking to somebody who shares my passion for this material.

13. Confucius vs. Kerouac: A Brief Interlude

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!'" -Jack Kerouac, On the Road

"The Master said, 'If you cannot manage to find a person of perfectly balanced character to associate with, I suppose you must settle for the wild or the fastidious. In their pursuit of the Way, the wild plunge right in, while the fastidious are always careful not to get their hands dirty.'"
-Confucius, Analects, 13.21

I find this juxtaposition to be perfectly hilarious. Next to Confucius, the wise grandfather, does not Kerouac seem the child? But the question is: childlike or childish, to use Friedrich Schiller's brilliant distinction from his essay called "On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry?" Here are lines from Schiller's famously inspirational poem, "Ode to Joy:"

45 Joyful as His suns are flying
46 Across the Firmament's splendid design
47 Run, brothers, run your race
48 Joyful, as a hero going to conquest.
49 As truth's fiery reflection
50 It smiles at the scientist

Cajal, the scientist, had a fiercely romantic heart, yet he succeeded in cultivating a more or less balanced mind. From Recollections: "ideas, like the white water-lily, flourish only in tranquil waters"[404]. I am finishing up that book, and will then post on the final section. I close with Confucius, on joy:

"The Master said, 'One who knows it is not equal of one who loves it, and one who loves it is not the equal of one who takes joy in it.'"
-Analects, 6.20

12. Recollections [III] and Philosophy

The first part of Cajal's Recuerdas de mi vida is essentially the aubiographical bildüngsroman of a young romantic. Think of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, very much a mocking indictment of idealism. But unlike Stephen Dedalus, Joyce's pretentious protagonist, Cajal reaches the full potential of maturity. Though his name signifies the mythological artificer of wings, Stephen Dedalus fails to fly, whereas Cajal stays grounded all the while, with his eyes turned down to the earth. In this post, I will focus on Chapter II of Part II of Cajal's book: "The Story of My Scientific Work." Notice that Cajal believes the story of his life to be his work concerning nature, and not his personal development.
            During the years from 1884 to 1885, Cajal published a collection of scientific articles called "The marvels of histology" in a professional weekly in Zaragoza that was edited by a classmate and friend. Rather popular, these writings were re-printed in a journal in Valencia, where Cajal then lived and worked. Cajal reveals that these outputs were "overflowing with fantasy and ingenuous lyricism"[293], and seems embarrassed by them. Thus, he detached himself, signing the pieces Doctor Bacteria, a name that he "used for [his] philosophic-scientific temerities and [his] semiserious critiques"[293]. Also, we know, for his fiction: Vacation Stories. It is clear that Cajal, ever self-aware in his maturity, neatly separated the functions of his mind. On the one hand, Santiago Ramón y Cajal was a gifted scientific scholar; on the other hand, Doctor Bacteria was a mediocre literary artist. This duality, emergent from his childhood and youth, defined his intellectual existence.

            But Cajal had an undeniable flare for the philosophical. In my last post, I vowed that I would silence my own ideas in favor of Cajal's. In Chapter II of his autobiography he presents some beautiful and honest ideas from his early career. One concerns our composition:

"'This uniformity in the composition of organic tissues, liquid as well as solid, in the muscle as well as in the nerve, in the stem as well as in the flower; this precise repetition of the same melodic theme forms the primordial truth of histology'"[295].

Then, acknowledging the threat that this internal multiplicity poses to individual unity, Cajal consoles with a powerful appeal:

"'Can it be that within our organic edifice there dwell innumerable inhabitants which palpitate feverishly, with impulses of spontaneous activity, without our taking any notice of them? And our much talked of psychological unity? What has become of thought and consciousness in this audacious transformation of man into a colony of polyps? It is certain that millions of autonomous organisms populate our bodies, the eternal and faithful companions of glories and of toils, of which the joys and sorrows are our own; and certain also that the existence of entities so close to us passes unperceived by the ego; but this phenomenon has an easy and obvious explanation if we consider that man feels and thinks by means of his nerve cells and the not I, the true external world, already begins for him at the frontiers of the cerebral convolutions'"[295].

In other words: I am my brain.

Next, he discusses competition using the example of spermatozoa, only one of which can succeed. He calls this a "depressing truth (the universal struggle):"

"Thus, as in every civilized nation the vital competition is done away with or greatly attenuated by the division of labour which makes the citizens have common interests and aspirations, so also in the organic state, thanks to the foresight of the nerve cells, to the allotment of function rôles, and finally to the suppression of idleness and of excessive individual liberty, etc., the struggle disappears or is moderated, appearing only when the communal nourishmen (of organs or cells) is seriously threatened from either internal or external causes"[297].

Politically, Cajal was a socialist. Here we see why; he would like government to operate like healthy nerve cells. It should be noted that all of his intellectual positions were formed from under a microscope.

Cajal also addresses individual death in a world where nature is concerned only with the life of the species:

"'A single life, however great it may be, even though ennobled by the fires of genius, signifies nothing in the eyes of Nature. That a whole town should succumb; that entire races should be annihilated in the struggle for existence; that zoological species formerly powerful should be sacrificed in the barbarous battle matters little to the controlling principle of the organic world. --The essential thing is thing is to win the conflict, to reach the goal which is the final objective of organic evolution'"[298].

Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act V, Scene Five:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing"

The latter never looked through a microscope, but there is more than one way to find at truth. Cajal's material observations are especially convincing, though.

Lastly, I will transcribe Cajal's biggest idea. It is for those who have made it to the end of the blog. Enjoy:

"'Let us console ourselves with the consideration that if the cell and the individual succumb, the human species, and above all the protoplasm, are imperishable. The accident dies, but the essential, that is the life lives on. Comparing the organic world with a tree of which the trunk is the original protoplasm, of which the branches and leaves represent all the species produced later by differentiation and improvement, what does it matter that some twigs are broken off by the storm if the trunk and the basic protoplasm persist with unabated vigor, giving promise of shoots of ever greater beauty and luxuriance? Critically speaking, there are no independent individuals, alive or dead, but only one single substance, protoplasm, which fills the world with its creations, which grows and ramifies and moulds itself temporarily into ephemeral individuals, but which never dies. In our being there moves still that ancient protoplasm of the archiplast (that is to say, the first cell which appeared in the cosmos), the point of departure, perhaps, of the whole of organic evolution.

. . .

This protoplasm filled both space and time with its creations; it crawled in the caterpillar, dressed itself with rainbow colours in the plant, adorned itself with the crown of intelligence in the mammal. It began unconscious and ended conscious. It was the slave and plaything of the cosmic forces and it ended as the driver of nature and the autocrat of creation.

. . .

Has it reached its limit and exhausted its fecundity in the human organism or is it keeping in its portfolio plans for still higher organisms, for beings infinitely more intelligent and understanding, who are destined to rend the veil which covers first causes and to do away with all the laborious polemic of scientists and philosophers?

. . .

Who knows? Perhaps this demigod, protoplasm, will also died on that sad, apocalyptic day when the torch of the sun is quenched, when the embers in the heart of our globe become cold and there remain upon its crust only funerary debris and barren ashes! Day of horror, solitude filled with anguish, night of utter darkness, that in which, with the light of the Universe, the light of thought is extinguished! But no! This is impossible! When our miserable planet is worn out and frigid old age has consumed the fire at its heart, and the earth becomes a glacial and unproductive desert, and the red and dying sun threatens to overwhelm us with everlasting darkness—organic protoplasm will have attained the culmination of its work. Then the king of Creation will abandon forever the humble cradle which rocked his infancy, will boldly attack other worlds, and will solemnly take possession of the Universe!'"

Have a good night.

11.

            There are tens of thousands of words on this blog, neatly arranged. They represent my best attempts to share the soft, weak thoughts that I have tried to shape into elementary sentences. But I feel that this blog has thus far been no more than a convenient repository for my own crude ideas, which are irrelevant and unfounded. I stared this blog for Cajal, and I must remember to engage his materials and resist my theorizing. He is the wise one, and I am ignorant. I need to listen and read more, and talk and write less. And I must elevate my studies, my work, above the quotidian chaos of decision-making and personal life. There is so much noise and distraction in the world that hinders our progress.
            But eleven is a new beginning; from now on, I will train my focus on research topic: the unification of artistic and scientific thought, as seen in the life and work of Santiago Ramón y Cajal. He was a complicated man with flaws and defects. Yet he overcame in order to achieve intellectual greatness. In the process, he gave the world an abundance of truth. My working thesis is that his discoveries re-direct the light of Truth like mimetic mirrors, clear, refined glass surface in which we might see and understand ourselves clearly and acquire the natural wisdom of self-knowledge.

My next post will address the second part of Cajal's autobiography: "The Story of My Scientific Work."

10. Recollections [II] and Romanticism

            First, a word about the quote I have permanently added to the page. In his writing, Cajal quotes and cites Goethe perhaps more than any other literary figure. This is a man who mistrusts most in the humanities. But, of course, Goethe is one of the greatest writers who has ever lived, having penned the romantic The Sorrows of Young Werther [so powerful that it is believed to have contributed to the rise in a generation's suicide rate] and the classic Faust [the protagonist seeks that which, "deep within it, binds the universe together"(382-3)]. The symbol of the rainbow in Faust II, Act 1 is as brilliant as in The Book of Genesis itself. But few know that Goethe was also a scientist; his most fascinating work was on color theory [no surprise, now, that he chose a rainbow as the "changing-unchanged" element, rising above this wordly turbulence]. I propose a definite intellectual kinship between Cajal and Goethe, both of whom undertook joint investigations of science and art and, in the process, dissolved the artificial barrier between the two. As young men, both endured phases of intense romanticism, but their greatest and most enduring contribution to the progress of human understanding came later, in maturity. The two geniuses agree on many things, including the faith in work and the futility of words. Perhaps one day I will venture a more in-depth comparison. But for now, I'll just joyfully read Faust once more. When I open the book, light pours out. That is despite the fact that it is more or less impossible to understand what is going on in that chaotic closet drama. Quite an achievement!

            For my bar-mitzvah in May 200, I received a book from our dear family friends. Their patriarch was a distinguished philosopher, Milton Munitz, whose first work on cosmology my mother helped publish. I remember that Milton was a warm and lovely man who happened to be brilliant. The book that his family gave me was called The Story of Philosophy, by Brian Magee [DK Publishing, 1998]. I just found it; I have it here before me. I opened the book, after ten years, to find the publisher's information and saw this inscription:

"Dear Ben, May you always search deeply for wisdom."

            I loved this book even though I did not understand it. One of my favorite philosophers was Søren Kierkegaard [I think I liked the swashbuckling slash through his first name's "o"]. Once, at the dinner table, I was talking about some idea I had read and my sister put down her fork emphatically and said "I DON'T CARE ABOUT KIKIKI!!! SHUT UP!" All of us had a big, healthy laugh. I love my sister because senses bullshit and will not stand for it. I still have read no Kierkegaard. Some guy in my Dostoevsky seminar at Middlebury invoked his name and drew a triangle on the board one day but it was too much of a stretch; I was hardly listening. One can get lost in the language of philosophy. Cajal describes it as a "mania."

            Anyway, looking in this book, Kierkegaard "proposed that the individual is "the supreme moral entity and that decision-making is the most important human activity -- through making choices we create our own lives"[209]. I agree with this, and so would Cajal. So maybe there is a [hyper]link here. But the real reason that I mention Kierkegaard is not to name-drop, or for association, but because I found a great quote from about genius:

"There are two kinds of geniuses. The characteristic of the one is roaring, but the lightning is meagre and rarely strikes; the other kind is characterized by reflection by which it constrains itself or restrains the roaring. But the lightning is all the more intense; with the speed and sureness of lightning it hits the selected particular points - and is fatal."

This is very insightful stuff. The first kind of genius is the one our discourse features most prominently. It is a very romantic concept of genius. Just look in your mind right now and describe what you see. Or, all we might need to do is think of the immediate associations. Or we could look on the wall or Facebook profile of a number of young people for Jack Kerouac's famous quote: "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to etc." etc. etc. blah blah blah it's the Benzadrine talking. Pure emotion, like a drug, fast-acting but not long-lasting. But it feels great. Yes, it is always great if girls put your picture on their wall. Or tattoo your words on their arm.

I will admit: Also for my bar-mitzvah [an unexpected theme of this post] I received a copy of On the Road from my mother's best friend of fifty years for my bar-mitzvah. I devoured it. Me and three friends planned a cross-country trip. We found a wooden box, to which we each contributed a dollar-or-two a day, and buried it under our favorite graffiti tag [REBS] near the bus stop. [It was promptly stolen].

But for the love of a Literary God, when we talk about this important mania, romanticism, let's start to remember Nietzsche's even more beautiful, but less sexy quote, from Thus Spake Zarathustra:

"For I would rather have din and thunder and stormy cursing than this deliberate, dubious cat calm; and even among humans the ones I hate most are the soft steppers and half-and-halfs and dubious, dawdling drift-clouds."

[Oh boy . . . you feel the charge going through you? I do. Those are powerful, focused words. Because Nietzsche is such a careful wordsmith, that word "hate" is throbbing with real feeling like an angry heart. Most importantly, though he is an eminently skilled crafter of sentences, Nietzsche's stylization does not overtake his meaning. His words are solid and sweet, like hard candy. And I believe that naturalist imagery is always more purely accessibly than any other. Lightning is Nature's ultimate Roman candle. Sorry, Jack. I will still and always love you, like an old girlfriend].

           As a youth, Santiago Ramón y Cajal was as romantic as the protagonist of some nineteenth century French novel. In fact, he loved those books, which he found in his neighbor's house. His father, a "pure intellectual," did not allow fiction, or any fanciful flights of imagination for that matter. This included drawing, one of Cajal's gifts. Cajal had a "madness over drawing"[41]. In a truly hilarious episode, his father sought the advice of an artistic expert in order to paralyze his son's dreams. The only man available was a traveling house painter who was in town to whitewash the church's fire-burned walls. Young Santiago, eight years old, timidly presented drawing of an Apostle. The categorical verdict: "What a daub! Neither is this an Apostle, nor has the figure proportions, nor are the draperies right -- nor will the child ever be an artist"[40].

           But Cajal's art was not merely a hobby, it was a fever. He was addicted to the experience of Nature, "the intoxication of the aesthetic instinct,"[130] and would often take long walks by the Aragon river and contemplate adventure. "I gave rein joyfully to my romantic dreams and consoled myself for my sentimental solitude"[61]. In fact, the author uses a completely new vocabulary to describe his feelings, as though he were a different person under their influence. His words are from the vocabulary of sickness, learned, perhaps from his father. He regarded these indulgences as "frivolity and irregular behavior"[154]. Eventually, hepronounces himself "cured of his artistic madness"[129].

            He describes himself as having a "foolishly quixotic character"[213]. [More on Cajal's relationship to the Spanish hero at a later date]. Other terms: "determined and troublesome artistic tendencies"[99], "incorrigible idealism"[104], "dreamy sentimentality"[85]. Cajal was a very emotional youth, but, eventually, his powers of reason prevailed. I am learning a lot about his psychology and look forward to learning more as I receive more material. Apparently, in his youth, Cajal wrote poetic verses and an adventure novel; I have inquired as to their whereabouts. It is essential to remember that Cajal never lost his instincts, he only controlled them. As he says: "natural impulses, when they are very strong, may be modified somewhat, and often concealed themselves, but are never obliterated"[44]. Ain't that the truth!?

            In the second part of the autobiography, I look forward to reading about Cajal's incorporation artistic instincts into his scientific work. This is the nature of my investigation. It must have been a delicate balance.

9. Recollections [1] and Kieslowski

There is more than one way to treat life, the softest tissue. The most beautiful memoir that I have ever encountered is Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory; the most truthful autobiography that I have ever read is Santiago Ramón y Cajal's Recuerdas de mi vida [Recollections of My Life, The MIT Press]. That vital document, is divided into two parts. The first, "My Childhood and Youth," accounts for the primitive history of a great mind. Cajal's literary method is pure illumination, including honest admission of imperfection. But it is the evolution of his elemental insight that drives the narrative, written truthfully and, at times, beautifully. [Sometimes it is naturally so].

            The greatest personal influence on Cajal's development came from his father, Justo Ramón y Cajal, a traditional, self-made doctor. From his father, Cajal acquired the traits of character to which he claims to owe "everything that [he] is"[4]. These traits are:

"a profound belief in the sovereign will; faith in work; conviction that a persevering and deliberate effort is capable of moulding and organizing everything, from the muscle to the brain, making up the deficiences of nature and even overcoming the mischances of character -- the most difficult thing in life"[4].

Moreover, Cajal's father presented to him "the beautiful ambition to be something worth while, and the determination to spare no sacrifice for the fulfilment of my aspirations, nor ever to deviate from the direct path on account of secondary motivates or minor reactions"[4-5]. By the end of his life, when he wrote Recuerdas, Cajal understood the inherent beauty of the our endeavors for meaning, the importance of nearly monastic dedication, and the proper judgment of importance. And, concerning his career, a dogged resolution will later focus his scientific vision. These are the foundations of his character. "There is no doubt that, aside from hereditary influence, the ideas and example of a father are factors of decisive importance in the education of his children," Cajal states, "and therefore are essential determinants of their tastes and inclinations." The relationship of Cajal to his father is undoubtedly the principle external formative force upon his plastic brain. No understanding of Cajal's life and work is complete without a paternal examination.

            But Cajal was also compelled by an inborn force he more than once calls the devil: the childish instinct to make mischief. It began naturally and innocently but became downright delinquent. "In the realm of the inclinations and tendencies of my mind," Cajal writes, "I was, like the majority of youngsters brought up in the small towns, an enthusiast for the open-air life and a tireless cultivator of games of strength and agility"[15]. This leads to an unconcern for the closeting classroom and a compulsion for physical activity that brings Cajal harsh punishment, even imprisonment, during his youth. "I was in my childhood a wayward creature, excessively mysterious, secretive, and unlikable," he admits[16]. But while the stories of his scampishness are entertaining and endearing [think of Antoine in Truffaut's Les Quatres Cents Coups], they are counterproductive to his success. Such is the process of growing up after all, a process of pushing against one's self although it feels as weighty as the world.

             Cajal experienced this human struggle, but I will save the retelling of anecdotes. I am concerned here and now with his mental life. So, Cajal believes two predominant natural inclinations lent to his character "a somewhat strange aspect"[16]. I would forego humility and say "special." These  are: "the investigation and contemplation of natural phenomena and a certain incomprehensible antipathy for social intercourse"[16]. Cajal is a naturalist thinker and writer; his sublime descriptions of walks along the Aragon River, a central and transformative metaphor in his life, are as fine as the finest literature. He writes, beautifully:

"Often, through long hours of contemplation I fell into a sweet lethargy; the gentle murmur of the ripples and the splashing of the water as it glided over the pebbles paralyzed my pencil, insensibly clouded my eyes, and produced in my brain a state of subconsciousness favorable for fantastic recallings of the past. The sound of the stream acquired little by little a quality of martial trumpets and the swish of the wind seemed to bear from the blue shores of the past the voice of tradition overflowing with heroic ballads and golden legends[61-2]."

The man gave his attention to the infinitely small. Even the physical descriptions of his characters in Vacation Stories are testament to this devotion to detail, which reminds me of Proust and Nabokov. Yes, his inter-personal intuition, as he readily admits, is not as shining [he awkwardly refers to his father as his "progenitor"]. But in his case, it hardly matters.

            Cajal explains that at the age of seven or eight occurred three events "which had a decisive influence upon [his] later ideas and feelings"[19]. This sort of scientific organization makes factual research easy and breezy. These events almost symbolize themselves; a writer only has to add tiny but valuable insights and thin but sturdy bridges. The three events were:

1) "the commemoration of the glorious victories in Africa"[19], after the 1860 victory over the Moroccans at the Battle of Tetuan. This was a national apotheosis, and the initiation of strong and important patriotic feelings in Cajal. In the beginning, this included antipathetic instincts towards Moroccans, "the other." But later, he writes, he corrected this defect: "As time passed and I gained in understanding, I came to realize that, in respect of unjust and impetuous aggressions, all peoples are alike"[19].

2) "the falling of a thunderbolt upon the school and the church of the town"[19] which, I hardly believe, happened just as the children were "in the midst of the deep abstraction of the prayer . . . 'Lord deliver us from all evil'[19] and killed a priest. "For the first time there crossed my mind, already deeply moved," Cajal writes, "the idea of disorder and lack of harmony"[23]. The chaotic intervention explains Cajal's aversion to spiritualism, whose Good God he believes is falsely featured to be "a most tender father and a sublime artist"[23]. Fortunately, Cajal explains, he was not distracted by abstraction; he continued "strengthening the mind by continuous observation of the spectacle of nature"[24]. He exhibits an unflagging material focus.

3) "the eclipse of the sun in the year 1860," about which Cajal admits he had doubts. "Will science be mistaken?" he asks. But the moon appeared as predicted, as though the scientists had pushed it there. Scientific method managed to gain understanding of the unknown. His father drew his attention to "the kind of fear and of indefinable anxiety which takes possession of the whole of nature" when an event so seemingly "opposed to reason" occurs. How can nature be ignorant of our interests? This is Job's teleological, but essentially self-centered, question.

Summarily: "The eclipse of 1860 was a brilliant revelation for my youthful intelligence. I now realized that man, helpless and unarmed before the irresistible power of cosmic forces, possesses in science a heroic redeemer and a powerful and universal instrument of foresight and dominion"[25].

This is what a prophet of science saw and felt.

For more on these ideas, I direct you to perhaps the most powerful piece of cinema I have ever seen, the first installment of the Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski's masterpiece The Decalogue, ten short filmic interpretations of the Ten Commandments. When a young boy and his father [like Cajal and his] choose to have faith in science, the message, from Deuteronomy 5:6, turns out to be quite different from Cajal's: Lo y'yeh l'cha elohim achairim, al pani [Thou shalt have no other gods before Me]. So thought-provoking and brilliant. Trois couleurs is a work a serious genius, too. Caveat spectator; they are profoundly moving of the innermost physical mechanisms, wrenching the heart and stirring the soul. Like the best art, they incite powerful feelings.

Interestingly, it seems to me that Kieslowski's teleological meditation, upon the existence of a cruel God, affirms Chaos theory. In his film, scientific calculation is a futile contrivance of man that fails to predict volatile nature. Cajal's interpretation of the uncontrollable, on the other hand, is positivistic. The Neuron doctrine, the fundamental idea of modern neuroscience, seems to affirm the absolute belief, which Cajal learned from his father, in free will as a tool to achieve progress. I propose a basic, but amoral, tension between Neuron theory and Chaos theory. In the brain of each individual, this struggle is constant. As capable beings, ourselves like the gods we have imagined, we have the potential to either create or destroy. I gather that the Hindu God Vishnu can represent creation and destruction. Inventors of religious story have understood this dual nature of the cosmos and the self [this is not reductive: one part of the philosophy allows for infinity].

For the utterly awful fear of God is really a fear of one's self, of that part that might "transgress." Look at how our species continues to destroy each other and our planet; we can get sick and do sick things. We invented the Apocalypse. See the warfare and the warming. The Bible contains a warning about our human nature that Kielowski inverts and updates. But the message is the same: we ought to be constantly aware of our relationship with the universe and our own ideas. Good art is reflective in that way, as a pool or a mirror. It illuminates experience, so that we can understand what exists and may impossibly attempt to define the word impossible. Cajal and Kielowski interpret omnipotent God in opposite ways, as Progress and as Chaos. Along the unraveling line of time's balled yarn, I hope that we shall at some point eventually know who reigns supreme. In the meantime, the artist must find a way to make these two chords, one major and one minor, Progress and Chaos, concord and then he must play for as long as he humanly can.

That's enough for now. I have only covered a small number of chapters from Recuerdas. Still to come are Cajal's affairs with art and his reflections upon death. I am truly enjoying this book. Cajal's fiction was admittedly [by him] mediocre, but so far his autobiography has real literary value. I will continue to share his insights. Thanks.

8 1/2. Pilsen

In this half-post, I wanted to share the personal experience of my trip. I was lucky to stay with a warm, friendly couple named Lindsey and Justin in the awesome Chicago neighborhood of Pilsen. It is an area with heavy Mexican influence and one that boasts incredible art, sprayed all over what seems, while walking, to be every singe wall. When looked at together, the buildings resemble a row of an old homeless man's teeth, each shaped uniquely and sharpened by the weathering world. One could study them for a long time; there are countless stories ready to be told. In short, the place has character. And so I admit that I love Pilsen, and here is why:

THE HOOD

 

 

THE MURALS

 

 

THE STATION

 

 

 

 

  

So there it is. But the last thing that I want to say is: God bless CouchSurfing!

8. Ha'aretz & España

This morning I had the distinct pleasure of breakfasting with Dr. Illana Gozes, Professor of Clinical Biochemistry at Tel Aviv University, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Molecular Neuroscience, and President of the Israeli Society for Neuroscience [ISFN]. She is here presenting her research on Plasticity and Memory with a poster called "PolyADP-ribosylation is required for long-term memory formation in mammals." The work, which she told me is "out of left field" [my favorite field!], has exciting implications for Alzheimer's treatment. One found protein is currently undergoing clinical trials.

Dr. Gozes kindly invited me to the gathering of the ISFN tonight at the Hilton Chicago. Unfortunately, I could only spend about twenty minutes noshing and mingling. Some Israeli scientists had put up their posters at the event, and I spoke to a fellow named Volodya Yakolev about his, called "Learning to recognize numerous images." There are many Israeli abstracts that interest me as topic for potential articles, especially "Exploring the brain mechanisms of courage," from U. Nili and Y. Dudai of the Weizmann Institute of Science. Have scientists finally discovered what the poor Cowardly Lion lacked? Can we prevent this horrible disorder in the future?!? After all, lions should be fiercely pensive or pensively fierce, as in the title photo of this blog and the statues in front of The Art Institute of Chicago that I offered in post seven.

After the Israeli gathering, I traveled to Spain. I mean, I traveled to the Hyatt Regency Downtown to meet with Dr. Javier DeFelipe, Professor at the Instituto Cajal in Madrid and lead author of the new book "Cajal's Butterflies of the Soul: Science and Art" [Oxford University Press]. I bought my copy today; it is a stunningly gorgeous work with two-hundred-and-eighty-eight indelible images. Anyone who is in need of content for their coffee table, this is it. The illustrations are just breathtaking, purely and simply and, of course, naturally. It is expensive, but invaluable. I highly recommend it; there is brilliant text as well.

Dr. DeFelipe and I spoke for about twenty minutes before his presentation. He told me about the Instituto Cajal and their materials, and invited me to come to Madrid in order to investigate the "Legacy of Cajal" exhibit, which, although now homeless, includes letters and drawings. Apparently, there are now a couple of people excavating and translating Cajal's letters, which include correspondences with rival Nobelist Camillo Golgi. I was excited to learn that within the next three years there will be an English collection of Cajal's letters.

Dr. DeFelipe then gave an elegant presentation about Cajal's scientific art, or artistic science. Dr. DeFelipe quoted Cajal: "Only artists are attracted to science." The small audience chuckled, but this is not paradoxical, and that is precisely the point. I am currently one-hundred pages into Cajal's autobiography Recollections of My Life [The MIT Press]. In it, Cajal recounts his childhood obsession with art, which greatly disturbed his rigid, traditional father. In order to put an end to his son's untenable dream, Cajal's father solicited the opinion of the only "expert" around: a house-painter visiting the town of Ayerbe in order to whitewash the church's fire-damaged walls. Cajal timidly presented to the man his drawing of an Apostle. The house-painter proclaimed: "This child will never be an artist!" Cajal was eight years old. That gentleman was oh-so-wrong.

Moreover, Cajal made literary contributions to scientific language, coining numerous poetic, but truthful, names and descriptions of the human brain. He called our tangled web of neurons selva temerosa, or "dark and frightful jungle." Pyramid cells, which stand closely together in columns, the cells that I assume were the ones imaged in the Blue Brain Project movie I mentioned in an earlier post [Four] that I saw, he called las mariposas del alma: "butterflies of the soul." Thus, my favorite term and DeFelipe's title. Cajal called the little protrusions from dendrites, which Golgi and others dismissed as unimportant [but nothing is secondary in Nature, Cajal writes in Advice], las espinas, or "the spines," because they look like a rose's thorny stem. Que linda . . .

Dr. DeFelipe also made a memorable reference to Michelangelo. About his famous "Angel" statue, the Italian master said: "I saw an angel in the stone and carved until I set him free." So it is with our plastic brains, as well. As Cajal says in Advice, "man can be the sculptor of his own brain." I guess that we possess an Uncarved Block [P'U], to use a Taoist concept I learned long ago in a lovely book by Benjamin Hoff called The Tao of Pooh. It holds this potential for change in our brains, the plasticity that fascinated Cajal. Dr. DeFelipe will be sending me his own article from a few years ago in Nature Neuroscience called "Cajal and Plasticity." From his own disturbing educational experience, which I will relate in my next post, Cajal knew that, when treated rightly, the brain can be shaped over time. But he did not believe, theoretically, that the existing idea of the rigid reticulum would allow for such give-and-take. This was long before he became the first scientist to illuminate the material mechanisms, neurons, that facilitate the plasticity that defines our humanity. After learning about my specific interests, Dr. DeFelipe was adamant that I would love this particular article, which talks about all of this and more. I trust him.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal's true gift was vision. He uses the verb "to see" so often in his writing, a likely unconscious technique that reveals his chief concern. Cajal understood that the eye interprets external reality, that knowledge is necessarily removed. This is no tragedy, though. Cajal's clarity allowed for faithful representation of our world. According to Cajal, there is no ordering art and science. After all, to restate his egalitarian principle, nothing in Nature is secondary. According to Cajal, art and science are "pieces of reality." Just pieces, sharp pieces, to an infinite puzzle.

I had an excellent time in Chicago, although the conference events were difficult at times. Thirty-thousand people can overwhelm a novice, no matter how tall he is. Plus, I am now nearly broke. But I learned a lot, and that was my goal. Moreover, I leave here with renewed focus on my goal: to discover the secret to Cajal's clarified vision, and to learn how one might live an intelligent life in this world. Now I must procure a grant in order to facilitate this process.

My team of experts [sorry, I guess cable news has penetrated my vernacular], now includes Dr. DeFelipe, who has offered to guide me to certain materials and help me with a formal letter of support. I am very grateful for this. He also introduced me to his colleague Virginia, a visual artist herself. Along with her boyfriend Pablo, who now studies at the School of Visual Art in New York City and is preparing an exhibit on Cajal, Virginia prepared some spectacular content in Dr. DeFelipe's presentation and the book itself, I believe. I look forward to meeting Pablo back in NYC.

Also, sometime soon, I will be doing a podcast for a new series of neuroscience-themed content for the lay public that Noah is launching. More on that when there is more on that . . .

I will post next about Cajal's autobiography, which is fascinating. He is a more-than-capable writer; some of his rapturous descriptions of the outdoors are truly sublime.

Thanks for reading, Mom!

7. Sun's Day & Bus #51

Like an East-born extrovert with round face all alit on his Name Day, the Chicago Sun showed itself at all Times this morning. Paradoxically, it reminded me of my first night in town. I sat alone at a bar self-spoon-feeding ice-cream and watching the Yankees game when a friendly, forthright, forty-year-old blonde began to mock me. "How's your sundae?" she teased.

Shining . . . shining. 

Today's morning lecture, titled "Moving in an Uncertain World," was delivered by Daniel Wolpert, from the University of Cambridge. He applied Bayesian probability models to explain how the brain predicts and prescribes action. The inter-disciplinary nature of this conference continues to fascinate me. Creative scholars like Wolpert cross-pollinate multiple fields with potent data and information. Wolpert's research shows that the brain processes prior knowledge [e.g. memory] in addition to data [e.g. sensory input] in order to produce "beliefs" or, in mathematical language, "probabilities." Bayes's Rule is:

P(A|B) = P(B|A)P(A)

               __________

                     P(B)

P( ) means "probability of" and | means "given."

Then, in a deft, symbolic switcheroo, he plugged in the appropriate neuroscientific concepts, where:

A=state
B=sensory input

Now substituted:

P(state|sensory) = P(sensory|state)P(state)

                             ___________________

                                       P(sensory)

The expressions translate thusly:

The posterior of the equation, P(state|sensory), is the belief after, the brain's product after synthesizing information. P(sensory|state), the likelihood, represents the noise in our own senses, the information that makes the process unnecessarily complicated, I guess. P(state) is prior belief, the statistics of the task. In other words, if I are preparing to hit a tennis ball, my brain uses the information from every tennis ball that has ever been hit to me by that opponent. In predicting what will occur, Wolpert proves that we ought to shift towards the mean of prior, to compensate for the "noise" of likelihood. If a good tennis player usually hits the ball to the baseline, I ought to shift there despite the fact that the naked probability dictates that it will arrive towards the center of the court. "Noise" is a fundamental limit on performance. Don DeLillo's novel "White Noise" comes to mind. His protagonist leads a difficult life, while the television at times spews voluminous nonsense in the background. Good thing that is not the case today . . . ha! Again, good art intuitively understands human phenomena. The languages are just different. One is true, one is fiction. So what? Brian Boyd's argument, through which I am slowly making my way, convincingly asserts that art is an adaptive trait. I will get to that all once I finish the book.

Anyway, I tried to pay excellent attention to Wolpert's lecture, and it exhausted me. SO, I decided to skip some lectures [Bueller? Bueller?] and take a cab to the Art Institute of Chicago for A Sunday Afternoon on Michigan Avenue. After a day and a half of arid, acronymic description, I sought some rich artistic expression to revitalize my soul. Monet and Picasso's interpretations of the human being in the universe are just as valuable as scientific discovery; one cannot exist without the other. As an Adidas commercial tautologically proclaimed: "Only greatness equals greatness." Greatness understands it, with a paint brush or a microscope. Greatness transcends. Greatness is never forgotten? Not always . . .

Toward the end of my her ninety-five-year-long life, my beloved Bubbie developed dementia. It was a slow process; she began forgetting in her mid-eighties. But at that time, early on, there was one seemingly insignificant fact she always knew. When she traveled to Israel [in the early 1960s], she rode Bus #51 to her cousins's house. We were all amazed. #51, she said each time we asked. I chalked it up to her devotion to detail. But it was hard not to wonder: How could she remember this, but forget something monumental such as her husband's premature death?

Well, now I know why, because science does. Richard Morris explained in his lecture "Brain Systems of Learning and Memory." I am sure that only a handful of people in the whole auditorium understood the entire presentation. But I was able to hook on, most likely because of my own memory, to this one hold. It had long been thought that long-term memory of inconsequential events did not exist. But Morris challenged this with two undermining words: not always. OK, here goes my attempt at an explanation. In experiment, strongly-tetanized neural pathways in the presence of a low concentration of something called KN-93 fail to stabilize. In other words, "important" events are prevented from being encoded by the brain. When, immediately following this, a second pathway is weakly-tetanized, its receptors bind to proteins left-over from the failed first attempt. Morris used the word "paradoxical" to describe this. Just think: a failed memory of the love-of-your-life could contribute to the indelible image of an unromantic fact of daily-life. The former is lost forever while the latter lingers on. Because, after the receptors from the weakly-tetanized pathway bind to the first pathway's proteins, long-term potentiation [LTP] stabilizes. Memory is formed. My Bubbie's memory, now mine, of Bus #51 immediately struck me as a perfect example of this. Who knows what important information, forever lost, produced proteins that paved the way for the Bus. Cajal says that there is no primary and secondary in Nature; every link in the chain proves equally valuable. Morris's findings on memory support this egalitarian theory.

A former SUNday school teacher, my Bubbie was my first teacher, supervising penmanship drills when I was young. I am proud to say that I still pen elegant characters, even in the notes I wrote during a lecture that reminded me of her. I loved her and am thankful for my memories, all that remains from nearly a century of life. I will not soon forget her; she keeps springing spritely up off of my trampoline hippocampus.

Plus, her daughter is my mother and I am my mother's SON, who likes to play with words.

Thanks for reading.