From: Iain Strachan (iain.strachan.asa@ntlworld.com)
Date: Wed Aug 20 2003 - 19:29:39 EDT
Here's a question that has been floating around in my mind for a couple of
days, that I think would be interesting to discuss wrt the Religion/Science
interface.
It was prompted by a visit to the Elgar birthplace museum in Worcestershire,
England. Elgar (1857-1934) may have been the greatest English composer
ever, and one interesting fact that emerged from the very detailed audio
commentary that was available was that he was entirely self-taught. He
didn't study music academically; how to orchestrate, harmonize etc, but
picked it up by himself. In a letter, he describes how he got hold of the
score of Beethoven's Pastoral symphony one day, then stuffed bread and
cheese into his pockets and took it into the fields to study all day. From
exercises like this, and what must have been the memory of hearing the music
in a concert (we are in the 1870s, so no recordings), he must have been able
to work out how to make an orchestra do exactly what he wanted. His music
is no copy of Beethoven's; in his own original voice, and he is regarded as
a particularly brilliant orchestrator.
Such abilities one would normally describe as "natural genius", and of
course most of the great composers displayed such abilities; for example,
Mozart (1756-1791) composed all his music in his head, and once described in
a letter (quoted in Roger Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind", p423) his creative
process thus:
--- When I feel well and in good humour, or when I am taking a drive or walking after a good meal or in the night when I cannot sleep, thoughts crowd into my mind as easily as you could wish. Whence and how do they come? I do not know and I have nothing to do with it. Those which please me I keep in my head and hum them; at least others have told me that I do so. Once I have my theme another melody comes, linking itself with the first one, in accordance with the needs of the composition as a whole; the counterpoint, the part of each instrument and all the melodic fragments at last produce the complete work. Then my soul is on fire with inspiration. The work grows; I keep expanding it, conceiving it more and more clearly until I have the entire composition finished in my head though it may be long. Then my mind seizes it as a glance of my eye a beautiful picture or a hansome youth. It does not come to me successively, with various parts worked out in detail, as they will later on, but in its entirety that my imagination lets me hear it. ---Much the same was true of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), who copied down his scores from memory, having composed them in his head and apparently had the ability to "hear" exactly what they sounded like and then to translate into notes on the paper.
But then there is the downside to genius. Geniuses are freaks of nature; given to depression and instability (Elgar suffered badly from depression and self-doubt, and apparently so did Mozart, for example; Shostakovich was a highly nervous, obsessive character - though in his case much of the nerves came from living under a tyrannical regime.)
It seems that certain medical studies that have taken place into what happens when brain damage occurs, and often it is the case that hidden talents maybe on a par to what I've described in composers have emerged as a result of brain damage (or mental illness). In his book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat", the clinical psychologist Oliver Sachs recounts the story of two autistic twins he interviewed in an institution. These men were so backward educationally that they could not understand the concept of multiplication. But an incident occurred when someone spilt a box of matches on the table, and they immediately both said "A hundred and eleven". When asked how they counted so many matches so quickly, they said "We didn't count them. We saw 111". This again is an extraordinary feat; what is it about a pattern of matches on a table that gives it 111-ness as opposed to 110-ness or 112-ness? How was their brain able to perform such feats? With most people the pattern-recognition breaks down at around 5 or 6. I saw a video of brain-scan activity once at a neural networks conference, where the subjects were presented with random dot patterns on a screen and asked to say how many there were. There are two halves of the brain involved; a pattern recognition part (on one side) and an analytical part (on the other side). With up to around 4 dots, only the pattern recognition side was stimulated during the test; however with more than that, the analytical side was also stimulated (you may see a 5 as a 3 + a 2 then mentally add them up to make a 5). But these twins could apparently "see" i.e. pattern recognise 111 of them.
Another example was given some time back in a TV series about the function of the brain; the example was of a man who had a progressive brain disorder leading to anti-social behaviour. But one remarkable trait that emerged was that he was suddenly able to do the most beautiful and intricate paintings, where previously (when he was "healthy") no artistic ability had been evident.
Where is this line of reasoning going? It seems to me that maybe most humans are capable of the most tremendous feats of creativity and processing in their brains, but that this ability is firmly suppressed in most of us, who remain "sane". The ability to do phenomenal things is often associated with instability, and leads to problems.
So how is it that the brain is massively over-specified for what it is normally called upon to do? Is there an evolutionary explanation for this? Genius, of itself, would appear to confer disadvantage to the individual, leading to instability, and frequently suicide (for example the comedian Tony Hancock).
Or, alternatively, it is often said that creative gifts are what God has given you.
Is this an area where we can profitably discuss where religion and science interface with each other? Is it possible to try to discuss scientifically the nature of "inspiration". And is the "inspiration" that leads to a Mozart symphony of the same nature as the inspiration of scripture?
------------------------------------------------------------------ Iain .G.D. Strachan
There are 10 types of people in the world ... those who understand binary and those who don't.
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