Issue date: 11/21/08 Section: Opinion

Sacks's anti-reductionist credo is implicit in all his writings, but occasionally he makes it explicit. He once wrote, "To restore the human subject at the center-the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject-we must deepen a case history to a narrative or tale; only then do we have a 'who' as well as a 'what,' a real person, a patient, in relation to disease-in relation to the physical." Elsewhere he commented, "The realities of patients, the ways in which they and their brains construct their own worlds, cannot be comprehended wholly from observation of behavior, from the outside. In addition to the objective approach of the scientist, the naturalist, we must employ an intersubjective approach, too."
My good friend Susan Schept, who teaches psychology here at Stevens, will probably whack me over the head for saying this. But I agree with Howard Gardner that psychology is not really a science-certainly not in the same sense as chemistry, nuclear physics, molecular biology. The human mind resists conventional scientific analysis and reduction, and with good reason, because it is by far the most complicated object science has ever confronted. But with the help of wise, eloquent, imaginative mind-explorers such as Oliver Sacks, we can gain-if not self-knowledge-than at least a deeper appreciation of our endlessly odd selves.
[John Horgan is Director of the Center for Science Writings, which is part of the Stevens College of Arts & Letters. To learn more about the CSW, visit our website, www.stevens.edu/csw.]

< prev Page 2 of 2

Article Tools