The other day I got into a fascinating discussion about cognitive science and whether the humanities might be replaced by neuroscience. (See my previous blog entry, Harpham: Science and the Theft of Humanity.) For example, the study of beauty (aesthetics) might be replaced by the study of how people think about beauty and what parts of their brain light up when they experience beauty. This conversation was with a neuropsychologist who was patient with my fumbling critique. Then Bethany sent us a link to a story in the New Yorker where the featured scientist says,
“There’s always an impulse toward phrenology in neuroscience—toward saying, ‘Here is the spot where it’s happening,’ ” Eagleman told me. “But the interesting thing about time is that there is no spot. It’s a distributed property. It’s metasensory; it rides on top of all the others.”
via David Eagleman and Mysteries of the Brain : The New Yorker.