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OCTOBER 9, 2003
| theArts | |||||||||||||||||||
| Is it Me, or Just My Brain? | |||||||||||||||||||
| By Hayley Heaton | |||||||||||||||||||
ake one piece of gray matter, dice it into a cup of infinite emotions, add a heaping teaspoon of reason and thought, toss in a handful of language, stir it all up, let it simmer for thousands of years and what do you get? A big, fat, fun symposium!
Scientists, artists and philosophers have long struggled with the link between the mind, the body, emotions and the surrounding world. In fact, it’s a subject that has challenged us since the beginning of thought. For most of us, the idea of putting science and literature together would result in something comparable to “The Odd Couple’s” constantly bickering roommates. When asked about the adversities of linking science with literature, Katherine Coles, the fearless leader of the Utah Symposium on Science and Literature, says, “Essentially, all intellectual inquiries are asking the same thing: What does it mean to be human? Up until Victorian times, the truly educated person was educated in all fields—the sciences as well as the humanities and the arts. The modern world is so specialized that we have become used to our work and our studies being in very narrow disciplines and we aren’t used to working outside of our own limitations. What we’re trying to do is go back. We are trying to understand the synthesis of what it means to be human in all areas of thought.” The second annual Utah Symposium on Science and Literature will be held at the University of Utah Oct. 9 to 11. It will host major figures in the worlds of science, poetry, creative non-fiction, literary theory, the humanities and social sciences to discuss commonalities that spread throughout these disciplines. The underlying purpose for the symposium is to help erase some of the lines that have long set up between these disciplines and to discuss the interchangeable connections between the sciences and the arts. Keynote speakers will include neurologist Antonio Damasio, poet Jorie Graham and philosopher Thomas Metzinger. Damasio’s research investigates the roots of emotion and its role in human reason. Graham’s poetry is insightfully cerebral and emotional and touches upon subjects that extend from philosophy to painting. Her poetry represents and praises the progression of thought. Metzinger is widely considered to be the foremost European philosopher of the mind. His interests include selfhood, cognition and the role they play within each other, as well as the world of ethics. Together, these three speakers have written more than a dozen books that explore different ways that map out how one reasons and/or how one sees beauty and the connections between the two. Although the link may be hard to trace, there is a relevant connection between the sciences and the arts. The Utah Symposium on Science and Literature will not only open up lines of communication within these various fields, but also to the general public—people who are curious about ideas of selfhood and how they relate to language, emotion, human biology and cognition. All participants are encouraged to take full part in the panel discussions, question-and-answer sessions and the hands-on demonstrations. By the end of this think tank, there should be an answer to the question: Is it me, or just my brain? For a full schedule of symposium events, visit www.scienceandliterature.org. |
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