Dutton's Video

Initially, I was following along with much of what Dutton was saying. Many of the biological concepts which he presents have been repetitive in much of my studies. I also did not mind his definition of beauty, which he describes as, “…an adaptive effect, which we extend and intensify in the creation and enjoyment of works of art and entertainment.” For instance, I can see why he may refer to beauty as an adaptive effect. If many of us, but not all, were to view ancient buildings and compare them to the modern, redesigned works, we would choose the modern ones as being more beautiful. This is because over time, we adapt to our surroundings and the things that we grow up around.

However, during the middle segment of his lecture and more towards the end, I started to disagree with a lot of what he had to say. At the closing of his speech, he states the following: “The next time you pass by a jewelry shop window displaying a beautifully cut, teardrop-shaped stone, don't be so sure it's your culture telling you that sparkling jewel is beautiful." After reflecting upon this statement, I realized that it did not agree with my views of beauty. To me, everyone has their own individual view of what is beautiful. Therefore, it is difficult to try to connect what science has to say about beauty, to how our eyes view it. Additionally, Dutton uses the word “culture” in this phrase, which I do not think is necessarily appropriate. Even individuals from the SAME culture will have different perspectives on what they believe is beautiful.

These ideas are important to talk about because there should not have to be a universal definition of beauty which is assigned to certain elements in the world. Everyone should have a voice, and part of that is being able to decide for yourself whether something is beautiful or not.

Blog #1 on Pinker - Brittney McLaughlin

I found myself extremely torn while reading about "The Blank Slate", as I feel that I was meant to. I'd pretty much consistently believed for my entire life that our behaviors were shaped by our environments, and I'd never really heard any arguments otherwise. Even thinking back to when I was in preschool - I remember connecting the child who was always in time-out to her mother who would yell and scowl when she picked up her children from school. There was never really any doubt in my mind that she acted out in school because her parents acted out at her at home. And even now, it's difficult for me to process this idea that there's a gene in my body that specifically tells me to get frustrated easily, and another gene that tells me to forgive just as easily. After all, I've been told for years that my frustration is a result of my anxiety, and that the anxiety is a result of a chemical imbalance in my brain...not a gene that cannot be altered.

But, then I read this wildly profound and confusing article by Pinker. One of the several pieces from it that really made me take a step back and rethink this whole idea was the concept of the "Noble Savage." It's commonly believed that the reason that we don't kill each other left and right anymore is because we've evolved out of the era that this was necessary. But, Pinker says no - and presents research that suggests that a frightening percent of people still frequently think about murdering someone. The reason we don't do it is because now we understand it's not morally correct, and there are severe consequences for taking another's life. So, while our environment technically influences our decision not to kill, the desire to slice off our neighbor's head with a katana sill remains, because it's a part of our genes. And while I can't say that I've ever genuinely thought about killing someone, it makes sense to me that others do. Why do we declare murdered "mentally insane" and sentence them to a lifetime in a mental health facility, when years ago their act of violence against 1, 2, 10, 20 people would've paled in comparison to any one of our ancestors? Is it so crazy to believe that there is a gene in our bodies that tells us to act out violently in certain situations?

No matter which way you look at it, I feel that freewill is the overarching theme that essentially addresses the entire issue. Even if I did totally buy into this idea that all of our core behavior was due to genetic design, I still believe that we all have the freewill to act however we choose. Isn't that what Pinker is suggesting with the Noble Savage? We are programmed to kill, but we ourselves, and we as a society, make the choice not to do so. Freewill is more powerful than genes - my genes tell my hair to grow brunette, but I still have the freewill to dye it blonde. This isn't changing how my hair will continue to grow, but it changes how I present myself to the rest of the world. With that said, I believe that no matter if our genes dictate anything about our behavior or not, our environment has a heavy influence on how we decide to act, and how we present ourselves to everyone around us.

Blog Post #2--Techno-science shaping lives (ours, for example). Due Saturday 3rd @ 11:59 PM; comment by Sunday 4th @ 11:59PM

Tell a story—about techno-science shaping your life—and use our work so far to make sense of it.  Take both 'techno-science' and 'shaping your life' however you need to to make it interesting (to you and us all)


Like What? Thinking back, I (Robin) realized that I was a fidgity, loud, easily distracted (Oooo! A shiny thing….!) non-punctual, chaotic kid. The nuns in elementary school knew exactly what I was: 'an ill-behaved child' who was not 'working up to his potential.'  The appropriate treatment was time-outs, notes-to-mom, and occasional paddling. Today, I would be diagnosed ADHD and probably treated with Ritalin or Adderal. And the nuns can't paddle (by law). My life would have been different, for sure, but who knows how?

In High School, we heard all the time about who was and who wasn't 'college material.' My SAT scores proved that I was 'college material,' and I went to college (in spite of erratic and crappy grades).

This is science at work, naming, categorizing, measuring, offering stories, diagnosing, and thus creating ('making up' or 'constructing') things like bad kid / ADHD kid or 'college material.'  Like all constructions, they're absolutely 'real'; these decisions and labels have consequences; shape lives.

'Sir Francis Ford's children giving a coin to a beggar.'
1789.  London:  Tate Gallery.

Carl Elliot would help by framing historically-local 'disorders,' and talking about the 'semantic contagion' involved in lots of 'direct-to-consumer' drug ads, and lots of articles about ADHD and child-rearing.  Pinker would look to my genes (and my OC father and alcoholic but literate parents). Lewontin would insist that naming a kid 'disordered' (or not) changes him or her, and that the diagnoses mirror and legitimate already-present societal beliefs. Just like the way Dickens writes up Oliver Twist and 'The Artful Dodger' mirrors and confirms a belief that the poor are — well — just inferior to us wealthy folks by nature. And more exciting: that the labels then act to shape the person, whose behavior greatly effects whether and how his or her genes get passed on: 'constructivism.'

And most useful, maybe, might be Latour's account of the ways instruments — 'devices for seeing' (his Topofil, Munsell color code, technical names like 'sandy loam,' maps, theories etc.) literally make the mud and worms of Amazonia into 'facts' and data that can move around, that can be talked about, that take on scientific reality.  The DSM criteria that define a psychological  'disorder' also make it.  Terms like ADHD or SAT scores don't simply refer to some neurological pattern in Robin's head (and body).  They construct Robin (and all his fidgety friends, some of whom went to college).

Robin finds he's not going to die of prostate cancer--maybe.  And that he became (by definition) less manly in 2010, because testosterone / PSA levels just 'naturally' decline with age.  It's a fact.

So really:  how did techno-science construct you (or your family, friends or the world you live in)? 

Let your Science and Culture friends know about you. And explain some science-in-action.  
Use our readings to frame and illuminate. All of them, including Brave new world, say — if reading it brought the power and danger of 'science' into focus for you.

Concepts and Issues—from our Keywords and readings (some of many; might help):

Big Ones: All societies have always had 'theories' of Human Nature (science) and these are active in creating specific Political Systems (politics). Always intertwined.

• boundary work (ways science limits, defines, circumscribes)
• naming (and all the other forms of what we'd now call 'circulating reference') 
• conditions / disorders (and diagnoses, treatments)
• instruments / seeing devices / (tests, surgeries, therapies, names-and-definitions, measuring and seeing instruments, ways of talking or writing, maybe even novels and other 'art')
• 'blank slate' (or tabula rasa)
• 'ghost in the machine' (our friend the self or soul)
• noble savages or states of nature
• sociobiology or evolutionary psychology (as disciplines)
• neuroscience / cognitive science (also disciplines—CF: 'boundary work')
• legitimation (ways that science 'makes things so,' as Jean-Luk would say).  If the College Board says you're smart, well, then you are.)
• fact-making and social construction (with all its problems)
• semantic contagion (lots us now have gluten sensitivity — because we know how to 'test' for it, and Dr. Oz did a show on it)

Katrina takes on Dutton (Katarina Ruetten via Robin)

“The things that we call beautiful are all different.” This is a phrase that Dutton speaks in the first minute of his TED talk. When I think of beauty, I tend to picture concrete, feasible things such as beautiful people or beautiful places. For whatever reason, this phrase caused me to really think about the idea of beauty. We use beauty to explain more abstract things, such as actions or ideas. I never bothered to stop and think about just how far-reaching and diverse the idea of beauty is. The term can be used to describe just about anything, come to think of it. While this is cool, the idea that all the things in life we find beautiful are different makes me seriously question just exactly what how frequently I use the word. Dutton’s TED talk, while very insightful and interesting, kind of rattled me. I racked my brain for the amount of times I had used the word beautiful to describe something today alone.

This, I think translates to the bigger picture. Why do we do what we do? Why do we describe things the way that we do? This is something that makes us truly unique and is something I find that we keep coming back to in class and in the articles we read. To be quite frank, we really have no idea why we do anything and that is quite terrifying. Ultimately this TED talk makes me think about a neuroscience class I recently took. On the first day of the class, our professor stated that we have no idea how the brain works. For an instant, I was a bit mad that my major was requiring that I take a class in a topic where little is known, but thinking back now I can see that this is just something that is and we will probably not ever really know or understand ourselves, our motivations, or our purposes and that scares me.

Madeline Hermans takes on Dutton (from Madeline via Robin. U of M web services apparently hates Madeline)

1)  Choose one moment in Pinker's "The Blank Slate" (as short as a phrase, as long as a paragraph, or as dispersed as an idea or claim) OR from Dutton's lecture that either CONFIRMS or CONTRADICTS one of your deeply-held values about what's 'really' right, true, and/or just in the world.

One moment that really stood out to me in Dutton’s TED talk lecture was at the end. Where he claims that beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, it is deep in our minds and has been passed down by our ancestors. And that the beauty we find in art, each other, and nature will stay with us and be the beauties in the generations to come for the rest of the species’ existence. I find this statement in itself to be rather beautiful. The theory of natural selection and evolution applies to all. I think it is quite easy for us as humans to read and learn about biology and natural selection and take ourselves out of the equation. While the way that birds find their mate by seeing how colorful their wings are, humans are doing the same but in different ways. And this ability to see and appreciate beauty are the things that have shaped us and progressed us as a species for millions of years.

2)  Explain why this moment is so strong and charged for you — either in affirmation or confrontation.  What is the source of these values for you, in your own life?  What makes them so important?  What is it about what Pinker or Dutton are saying, and how they're saying it, that is speaking to those values so much?

This moment in the TED talk speaks to me quite a bit. I feel as though people may react to this and see this way of interpreting beauty as downgrading its uniqueness and value, but I see it in the exact opposite light. The very fact that we can trace this ability to see beauty to back to over 2 million years ago has a strange way of making me feel connected to our ancient ancestors of the homo erectus species. And the knowledge that our far distant offspring will find the same things beautiful as I did makes me feel connected to them as well.

3)  Finally, take a step back and theorize / reflect on the feelings you've described in parts 1 and 2.  In what ways are you, and Pinker / Dutton, acting out the 'science wars'?  What are the stakes?  Why do you care -- and why should we, who are reading your words?  Want to work across both?  Sure—but don't go nuts.  Feel free to bring in Latour, Elliot and/or Brang, and especially our 'Keyword' log if they'll help you do this theorizing/reflecting.  (But if they won't, don't!)

Both of these (the TED talk and the article) have the potential to invoke a lot of feelings in us as they take what we hold so dear (our sense of identity) and rattle it a bit with some reasoning. I think this definitely has the potential of creating a bit of a science war. The stakes of it are changing the way in which people view themselves, and how they see others. It has the potential of changing the way in which people view life and the way in which they view death. And as Pinker put it, we have this fear of nihilism within us. We desperately try and find ways to see purpose in life, and when there is compelling arguments that counter some of the things that give us that purpose it can certainly take the floor out from under you. If this article and article ut this makes it no less important and crucial for understanding ourselves as with it, we can find an even greater purpose which can be unique in each and every one of us.