Mark Lythgoe

Science plus Art: more than the sum of their parts?

This year the Cheltenham Festival of Science, which is now in its second year, attracted more than 20,000 visitors. During the meeting, I went to a presentation that proclaimed it would reveal 'the best ideas in science ever'. The event was staged as a debate between Peter Atkins, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford, and Peter Tallack, a former editor at Nature and editor of 'The Science Book'. Atkins' choices were evolution by natural selection, the expanding universe, and the second law of thermodynamics (Atkins, 2003), whereas Tallack plumped for the scientific method, the atomic hypothesis, and the equivalence of the mind and the brain (Tallack, 2001).

Tallack claimed that, of all these ideas, the one that trumped

them all was the scientific method: the idea that there is an objective

world out there that can be probed by experimental investigation.

None of the others, he claimed, would have been verifiable without

it. I too believe that the scientific method is the best of the

lot, but unfortunately the audience gave that accolade to natural

selection. Although I'm sure the lay public had a good grasp of

the importance of the scientific method, I'm sure natural selection

came out on top because there are more popular science books on

evolution than on any other topic - quite apart from the fact that

Darwin holds a special place in the hearts and minds of the British

public.

During the question time I suggested that none of the ideas that

had been presented were truly great ideas, and that the importance

of understanding our scientific limitations, rather than simply

extolling the virtues of the scientific approach, is the greatest

notion in science today. It is this belief that I want to expand

upon.

Figure 1: All highlighted areas (coloured) are based on regions of activation found in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies while volunteers viewed pictures of their partners.

Some time ago I took a friend, who was having a few problems with

his relationship, to a lecture titled 'The neural basis of romantic

love' professing that he would find love in science even if he couldn't

find it at home (Bartels, 2002). Towards the end of the lecture,

the areas where 'love' was to be found in the brain were revealed

(Figure 1- right). I stood up to ask the speaker 'now that

you have investigated and found love in the brain, how has this

personally informed you of what love is?' Of course, science hadn't

helped, nor could it help, nor will science ever help to answer

such questions. It was the wrong tools for the job.

The limitations of language have always been too apparent to me.

As a child I was lucky enough to suffer from synaesthesia - I was

able to taste shapes. Even though the scientific method can describe

in detail why this happens, I can never explain to you the taste

of the sharp pointed corners of a cube or a right-angled triangle,

nor the taste of flatness of a solid plane as it melts on the end

of my tongue. Clearly Nietzsche was on the right lines when he suggested

that science describes the world in wondrous detail and complexity,

yet disappointingly without ever really explaining anything.

In 1982 Jackson argued in a analogous fashion, that a neuroscientist

with black-and-white vision might know all the physical facts about

colour vision, but would still not know what it is like to experience

seeing red (Jackson, 1982). Similarly, science can describe the

various functions of the brain associated with emotions such as

fear or love, yet we are no closer to sharing them.

Over the last few decades, investigation into consciousness has

finally been deemed worthy by the scientific community. Although

artists might claim to have been manipulating our phenomenological

experience of the world - via our central nervous system - through

artistic stimuli, which thrill, question and captivate, for many

hundreds of years. Richard Gregory in trying to unravel consciousness

proposes that the '�difference between hypothesis of science

and the perceptual hypothesis is that only perceptions have consciousness

- qualia - such as sensations of red, sound or pain' (Gregory, 1998).

These vivid sensations, which are second nature to the artist, may

be stimulated by qualia-like visual and emotional components of

art, drama, music or literature. The shared universal experience

of living and dying is embodied in Bill Viola's Nantes Triptych

(Figure

2), which couples the shadowy bay between birth and death

(Viola, 1992). Here we can experience the immediacy of a full-lived

experience, it is here we can communicate the phenomenological experience

of our world, it is in this arena that we open a platform into consciousness,

not through the understanding of microtubules as Roger Penrose offers

(Penrose, 1998).

Figure 3 : Mapping Perception (2002) film and installation, (Dirs Andrew Kotting and Mark Lythgoe). Mapping Perception examines the limits of human perception through an investigation of impaired brain function, making visible the connections between scientific and artistic explorations of the human condition, probing the thin membrane between the able and the disabled.

Working with artists and scientists for the last 10

years (Lythgoe 2002, 2002a, 2000b) has demonstrated to me that great

art constitutes an open investigation into the human condition:

into experience, memory and love - subjects that are also common

to scientific study. And that scientists and artists can collaborate

with different aims and objectives, while pursuing similar kinds

of questions (Figure 3 - above).

Figure 4 (left) : When you recognize a familiar face the parts of the brain highlighted in orange on this functional magnetic resonance image (fMRI) light up. In this case 'lighting up' means there is increased blood flow to the areas that are working hardest. Functional MRI allows these regions to be visualized. Winning image from the Wellcome Trust Biomedical Image Award in 2003 (image courtesy Mark Lythgoe and Chloe Hutton).

Figure 5 (right). Portrait of a Molecular Biologist (2003). We understand much about DNA and how it builds a human, but we still have much to rejoice in humanity itself. This portrait of a molecular biologist celebrates both the discovery of DNA and our individuality. We are, indeed, greater than the sum of our parts (� Dr Charmaine Griffiths, The British Heart Foundation).

Today our understanding of the brain is being transformed

by many new developments in science, not least the emergence of

imaging technologies, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

These technologies enable us to visualise the various structures

of the brain in remarkably fine detail, and to see which structures

are activated by particular tasks, such as moving the fingers or

listing words beginning with 'c', or even just thinking about doing

these things. MRI is also extensively used in neuroscience research,

highlighting which parts of the brain are activated when one feels

elated, or angry, or scared, or whatever (Figure 4 - above).

But can the scientific method really explain what love or hatred

is, even if it tells us which parts of the brain are associated

with these emotions? Can it really tell us what consciousness is?

To look fully inside the brain, to really know what someone is feeling,

maybe we need something more than science can offer, and maybe combining

science and art goes some way towards providing that something more

(Figure 5 - above).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

The authors would like to thanks Marion Kalmus (artist-in-residence

in the RCS Unit of Biophysics, Institute of Child Health, UCL, London,

and Rachael Dobson for their helpful comments and suggestions.

- November 2005

About the Author

Mark Lythgoe is a lecturer in radiology and physics in the Royal College of Surgeons Unit of Biophysics at the Institute of Child Health, University College London.