Lots of free-time symposium thoughts

From my understanding, C.P. Snow’s critique of the two cultures breaks down into two lines of thought: in an abstract sense, science and art have a great deal to offer one another, and in a practical sense, everyone must receive both scientific and artistic education in order to bridge the gap between rich and poor.
For the first line of thought, I’m hoping to apply my Program II, theoretical neuroscience, and my research in Dr. Adcock’s neuroscience laboratory to make a presentation at the symposium.  My thoughts are still pretty sketchy though, so I’d appreciate some feedback.
Theoretical neuroscience is a new field of neuroscience that tries to understand the brain from a mathematical viewpoint as a dynamical system.  This stems from research exploring the peculiar “emergent properties” of complex, interacting systems.  The most culturally accessible part of this research is chaos theory, with the well-known proverb “a butterfly that flaps its wings in China can cause a hurricane in Cuba.”  This saying captures the phenomenon that small perturbations in densely interconnected systems can have surprisingly vast effects.  A useful mental picture for seeing how this applies to neuroscience is fractals:

Above is an example of a Julia set fractal which is in essence a graphic representation of the chaos inherent in the function f(x) =  x^2 + c.  One picks an arbitrary imaginary c value, in this case -.8 + .156i, and then iterates the function (plugging in the value of f(x) into x over and over) over all x values in the complex plane and coloring based on how fast f(x) goes to infinity.  One can see the “butterfly effect” by noticing how small shifts in certain areas cause drastic changes while in others they do not.  Most importantly for neuroscience, one sees incredible mathematical and aesthetic order and complexity from the simple function x^2 + c.  The idea behind theoretical neuroscience is that, if you model different aspects of neural function with differential equations, you get equations considerably more complicated than x^2 + c, which is accompanied by more ornate emergent structure.
These theories apply to neurons quite well, and new research shows that it can explain aspects of memory retrieval, decision-making, and emotional organization.  One can extrapolate (far beyond what is scientifically responsible, I admit) to suggest that all of human mental life, from memories to daydreams, can be viewed as the emergent structure that arises out of the chaotic, mathematically understandable interaction of billions of neurons.  This is where, I feel, theoretical neuroscience and art can communicate most fruitfully.
The task facing theoretical neuroscientists is somewhat equivalent to a pre-algebra student being given the above fractal and then asked to figure out what equation it comes from.  Unraveling the secrets of the brain will require innovative mathematics, but more importantly, it requires a deep understanding of the structure of the object we are trying to explain, in this case, the mind.  Neuroscientists, especially theoretical neuroscientists need the research and guidance of the most brilliant analysts of human nature there are: artists.  If you are skeptical, consider the example of economics.  For over a hundred years microeconomics research rested on the assumption that people always maximize utility, which resulted in hopelessly flawed models.  Only recently have economists considered phenomena such as altruistic punishment, which any reader of Hamlet would recognize as a universal human trait.  Likewise, early 20th century psychologists were convinced autism was cased by “refrigerator mothers”(mothers with cold, distant parenting styles).  Literature has explored the relationship between mother and child a great deal longer than psychiatry, and it seems that any poet could tell a psychiatrist that the “refrigerator mother” theory is misogynistic nonsense.  Philosophers, theologians, writers, musicians, and artists have been exploring the questions that frame neuroscientific research for millennia.  Without consultation between these fields, neuroscientific research may go the way of classical economics, operating based on an impoverished framework with outdated and oversimplified assumptions.
In the reverse direction, artistic thought can profit from the insights emerging from neuroscientific research.  What does it mean for thought to arise from the mathematical interaction of neurons?  Many people are disturbed by this idea, but I don’t think that it has to be disturbing.  Just as campfires are no less captivating knowing that they are merely energy emissions from chemical reactions, free will is no less powerful knowing that it results from predictable neuronal interactions (borrowing from Irene’s post).  It is not the aim of theoretical neuroscience to replace conscious life by equations and numbers, to do so would be drastically overestimating the scope of science. Rather, theoretical neuroscience aims to supplement our understanding of the mind with elegant and provocative mathematics.  It is an exciting challenge for artists to incorporate scientific discoveries of mind into public consciousness without reducing free will, morality, love, or any other treasured human trait.
On a different note, it is very depressing to read C.P. Snow’s prediction that the gap between rich and poor will have been bridged by the year 2000, when in fact it has widened, not just between rich and poor countries, but between the rich and poor in developed countries.  I don’t know enough history or economics to say exactly why this is, but I think it would be interesting to think about whether Snow’s complaint about education still applies. I do think, however, that a cultural hostility towards science has exacerbated the environmental crises we are now facing.  It will take the combined efforts of art such as Silent Springs and good science and policy making, such as what I hope to see from John Holdren and Steven Chu, to make the changes necessary to save the environment.  Hopefully the integration of science and art for environmental purposes will fare better than it did for economic inequality.

So I know that was pretty longwinded, but I’d love some feedback.  It would be usefull for both my prospective symposium topic but my Program II proposal, which I’m currently working on.

Thanks all,

Ian