Historically, the gulf between the two fields has been deep and communication between the two poles fractious. However, at last Thursday's "UB at Sunrise" program, the gulf narrowed and the communication flowed as Louis Goldberg and Diane Christian discussed the changing field of mind studies and the evolution of the ideas of consciousness and psyche. Goldberg, dean of the School of Dental Medicine, spoke for the sciences. Christian, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of English, represented the humanities.

"Blurred frontier"

Before an attentive audience of nearly 200 in the Center for Tomorrow, they spoke across what Goldberg, quoting Isaiah Berlin, called "the blurred frontier between two ways of knowing."

He noted that the chasm between the two has narrowed considerably in the past few years. Consciousness studies, which usually fall under the rubric of cognitive sciences, have come to embrace understandings of mind and self developed in the humanities, along with empirical data from such fields as psychology, cellular biology, neurophysiology, biochemistry, cybernetics and quantum physics. All is not peaceful in the realm of consciousness studies, however, because it is there, Goldberg pointed out, that the battle between our ways of knowing is fiercely joined.

Berlin, he noted, commented that "we hold many values that are mutually incompatible and conflicts between them cannot be resolved. Things, facts really exist, but our attempts to make sense of them embroil us in hopeless conflict."

Perhaps, Goldberg averred, not too hopeless a conflict.

He discussed his personal odyssey to understand the mind-consciousness-body connection from his graduate-school days. Beginning with discussions with neurophysiologist James Perryman as to how the human brain can study the human brain at all, Goldberg continued the battle in his mind about his mind by reading MIT's Marvin Minsky, one of the founding scientists of artificial intelligence, and Minsky's antithesis, anthropologist Tim Ingold, who was driven to distraction by Minsky's celebration of nanotechnology as an ideal tool for social engineering.

"It is fascinating now," Goldberg said, "to see how a large part of the terrain over which I had been wandering in amateurish delight has crystallized...into the recent, dramatic and explosive emergence of consciousness studies as a central battleground for the re-contesting of old and venerable wars. It is a place where quantum mechanics meets the zombies of cognitive science; where neuroscience meets pan-psychism, where God meets artificial intelligence.

"The floodgates are open," he said, "Everybody wants to have a shot at explaining consciousness. What a glorious mystery it is, and what glory would go to those associated with its solution, if there is, of course, such a thing as solution."

Galvanized by a talk given by Christian at the Chautauqua Institution, Goldberg is attempting to compensate for his education in science, which, he said, "left me with only a shallow appreciation of a major part of my (cultural, intellectual) heritageÉthe part that is necessary for full participation in the intellectual life of the late 20th century."

Christian said her studies in mythology, religion, art and culture developed her intrigue for what she terms "the story of science." In graduate school, she attended meetings of The Johns Hopkins University "Tudor and Stuart Club," which alternated speakers from literature and medicine followed by beer (now orange juice) and discussion.

"Truth is the prize"

Later, "while exploring imagination and story and religion-the stuff of myth-I was aware that scientific skepticism sees myth as false, superstitious and useless, not as revealing a sacred story.

"So it was and is exciting to me," Christian said, "that a brain scientist-Nobel prizewinning brain man Gerald Edelman-took notice. He is a scientist, a musician and lover of poetry-but he believes in science, which he calls 'imagination in the service of verifiable truth.'

"Truth is the prize," she said, "verifiable is the science. Imagination shall be subordinated, along with subjectivity. This feels like religion to me."

She cited her readings in science-Darwin, Freud, Edelman-and their understanding of body and mind. Edelman's biological model of brain, she said, "has real resonance for the problem of mind and body in the religious story that promises we'll survive, not as disembodied consciousness or souls or spirits, but as renewed immortal bodies."

In her analysis of myth, mind, science and "truth," Christian spoke of Qoheleth, the preacher in Ecclesiastes, and the great historian of Greek religion, Walter Burkert, who stressed the significance of imagination as a territory shared and by both scientists and scholars of the humanities.

Both speakers agreed that as the field of consciousness studies expands, it will continue to require knowledge from many realms familiar to both science and the humanities to explain multiple aspects of the vast, unexplored territory of human understanding.