Five scholars find five ways to say the body does matter

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Services Editor

The question posed as the theme of the UB sesquicentennial academic symposium held on Oct. 4 refers to the fact that western culture for hundreds of years has devalued the physical body while celebrating the products of the mind.

Viewing the question from separate perspectives, five internationally regarded scholars from different disciplines who participated in the program answered the query with a collective "Yes, the body does matter."

Several hundred people attended the symposium held in Slee Concert Hall. Morning and afternoon sessions were followed by panel discussions featuring UB faculty members.

Leading off the program was 1972 Nobel Laureate Gerald Edelman, one of the world's most distinguished physiologists, director of the Neurosciences Institute and chair of the Department of Neurobiology at the Scripps Research Institute.

Noted for his research in biophysics, protein chemistry, cell biology and neurobiology, Edelman also is a symphonic musician and lover of language. He introduced his talk with Marianne Moore's poem, "The Mind is an Enchanted Thing," and proceeded to argue that the mind is so enchanted that its psychological function cannot be understood in isolation from the biology of the brain, which, in turn, can't be fully understood at all.

Edelman's presentation, illuminated by slides, film and video, argued that humanity is on the threshold of a new era that will be marked by the realization of William James' dream of a true set of insights as to how we carry out our neurological functions. Edelman's principal proposition was that the metaphor of the brain as computer is far less appropriate than the metaphor of brain as primeval garden-wild, mysterious and richly layered with secrets we can barely imagine.

His talk was a celebration of the intricate operation of the physical brain from its embryonic development to its mature function.

His oral and visual explication included the presentation of astonishing somatotopic maps demonstrating that each of us develops unique neural configurations. Like snowflakes, they are similar, but never identical, and function somewhat differently to facilitate similar perception, memory and other brain operations associated with consciousness.

"We are not Turing machines," Edelman said, referring to reductive views of higher brain function that hold that the brain function can be formulated as an idealized mathematical model. For every brain, he said, "every act of perception is an act of creation. Every act of memory is an act of imagination."

"The brain," he added, quoting Emily Dickinson, "is wider than the sky. Individuality is real and significant. Genes are not a blueprint for your every action. There is an open-endedness in our physical construct that offers the opportunity for creativity at every turn. Attending to the body prepares us to negotiate the boundaries between the mind and body. If there is to be a resurrection, I think it will be of the body. The body matters."

Katherine Hales followed Edelman with a talk, "Living and Writing the Posthuman Body." Hayles, professor of English at UCLA, writes about the bodily basis of knowing in relation to cultural contexts and changing technologies.

Hayles guided the audience through mid-20th century thought about our position on the frontier of new technologies that have produced cyberspace "communities;" virtual-reality technologies that distribute subjectivity between an "embodied subject" sitting before the screen and a computer simulation inside the screen, and artificial neural nets that can learn and evolve, even though they have "bodies" that are completely different from biological organisms.

She pointed out that this new and complex realm raises difficult questions about two interacting polarities: those of the "the body" and "embodiment," and of "incorporation" and "inscription" Hayles proposed a conceptual framework that employs a consideration of these polarities. This makes possible, she said, a more critical stance toward various kinds of theories, technologies and inscribing practices.

Next on the dais was the Bruno Latour, a major international figure and distinguished writer in the field of science studies from the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines in Paris.

Latour took the audience on a roller-coaster ride through the acrimonious debate between Socrates and Callicles described by Plato in his dialogue "Gorgias." The debate invented the concept of the "impossible body politic"-the collective body of "common" people that requires governing. Both men hated the "common" people, he said, but agreed that they needed to be brought to heel in order for democracy to flourish. For centuries, Socrates seemed the embodiment of virtue and courage since he promoted using reason toward this end. The cynical aristocrat, Callicles, advocated the use of force. Callicles was raised to virtual sainthood by Neitzche who agreed with him that only inhumanity can squash inhumanity. Latour pointed out, however, that in the dialogue, "the love of the people did not stifle Socrates' breath!"

Contrary to popular assumption, Latour said, the "man of reason" and the "brutal sophist" agreed on virtually everything, and in particular, how to ensure that the "common" people do not have a say in the discussion between force and reason.

Harvard Professor Richard Lewontin, a scientist central to the development of the field of molecular biology, opened the afternoon session with a discussion of "the political economy of production transferred to the sphere of the living cell," to wit, the claim that genes or the DNA of which they are made are "self-reproducing" entities that "determine" the nature of the organism that carries them. Like Edelman, Lewontin argued that these metaphors are contradicted by biological reality.

"Every organism is a unique consequence of the interaction between internal, genetic causes and external, environmental causes and the way in which they interact varies enormously from characteristic to characteristic," Lewontin said, suggesting that the body itself is hardly the sole determinant of what the body is.

The final speaker was Margaret Lock, medical anthropologist at Montreal's McGill University, and author of "East Asian Medicine in Urban Japan" and other cross-cultural studies in medical anthropology.

Her talk postulated that Euro/American representations and practices involving the body reflect the assumptions embedded in modern scientific thinking, which assumes that nature is best understood as a neutral, ahistorical domain entirely separate from social and political relations.

Drawing on her major epidemiological study of concepts and treatments of menopause in medical practice in the U.S. and Japan, Lock contested this view and offered a perspective evolved from critical anthropological practice. It is that all knowledge and practice related to the body are historically and culturally produced. The body "matters" most, it seems, as a cultural production whose value varies according to its age, sex and the social value ascribed to its assorted traits.