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Hey everyone! Marquise de Merteuil here, starting her evil letters. Just have one book keeping question. It's OK for me to post a blog entry as my forum writing for the week, right? My thoughts don't correspond to any existing thread, and I was thinking of creating a forum topic but just instinctively felt that "the blog" would be a more appropriate outlet. So people can comment on blogs, right? Because, as always, I would love to chat.

Since our course, "Evolution of Stories" is about the relationship between science and literature, we apply Prof. Grobstein's idea that science is a process "of getting it progressively less wrong" to Zadie Smith's idea that literature is the same thing, that classics are the best failures we have, since the author can never express "his true self." Or "soul" but somehow she feels in our society that word can't be said... But even in a course like this it is essential to keep in mind that literature is not just a discipline that can be connected to science, but its own rich field, and so I'd like to see if Smith's argument holds up from a literary point of view, or in other words if it describes literature in a compelling way.

I like the idea that Eden expresses in an earlier thread, How much of “me” is my choice?” It reminded me of something I read about child development. There are many theories on child mental development. Of these theories there is one theory by a man named Lev Semenovich Vygotsky. His theory illustrates development as being largely influenced and shaped by the culture and society that a child is living within or exposed to. Vygotsky views development as a process of inevitable acculturation.

The first few years in child development are precultural, but at 2 years of age, a child will begin to learn semiotic tools it will need to develop. At 2 years a child will begin to grasp language and symbolic thinking. With these tools a child will develop higher consciousness and take in the world through the onslaught that is verbal society. This means that a child’s exposure to language will cause acculturation and the child will assign meaning to words and concepts as they are used and viewed within the society he is living in. These concepts become concrete ideas and allow the child to build upon that foundation with other things that he experiences. No matter what the activity, when children observe the world about them, they will learn and develop values that will later determine his thoughts and actions. Such values are learned unconsciously and can be as little as the usage of the word “cup” and the actions associated with the word cup: “we share cups, we clean up after ourselves when we spill, we must be careful not to break cups.” This type of development allows younger minds to be guided by more knowledgeable individuals.

I found Chapters 1-4 to be very interesting. I'm going to be completely honest: Before I read the material, the thought of reading 80-some pages about evolution made me sick, as I am a Spanish major taking this class for a Div. II requirement & by spark of interest. I'm glad I read now because I learned some new things that 1) I have always wondered about but never cared or remembered to research & 2) just never occurred to me. For example, I never knew that the young Earth initially consisted of methane, molecular hydrogen, ammonia, and water vapor, and finally, oxygen came in increasing quantities with the rise of cyanobacteria.

I also agree with the theory that brain equals behavior. Data from fMRIs and PET scans is pretty convincing for me, but at the same time I think it is important to realize that these machines do not yet show “real time”. “Such images can be acquired with moderately good spatial and temporal resolution; images are usually taken every 1–4 seconds...(Wikipedia)”. Thinking about how quickly one can feel pain or think or react to any stimulus tells me that taking images every 1-4 seconds doesn’t give a very clear picture. So much more is most likely going on within the brain during those 1-4 seconds than the final image shows. Although the parts of the brain that were activated are still shown, they are not precise pictures.

Chapter One: In September of 1994 people in India were found to have a disease that was once called the Bubonic Plague in the 1400s. In the end fifty-six people died, but before it was all over, panic and fear spread throughout the nation rapidly, and then it hit the world. This panic caused the economic and political decline of the country. Stocks went down, tourists stopped coming, and trade with surrounding countries ceased almost completely. Indian doctors and citizens fled the country as well. Basically, all the necessary components of functioning cities were not in place, thus the country lost its ability to maintain an economic infrastructure. The Indian government had been negligent and had not paid enough attention to issues concerning the country's public health; their priorities had not been in order. As Garrett suggets, the government did not need new technology to defeat the plague, but proper implementation of basic health measures. There is a certain amount of trust between government officials and citizens that is necessary for maintenance of public health programs; this trust was violated globally and nationally during the plague outbreak. Garrett proposed that if the Indian citizens trusted their government they would, "respond swiftly to a disease crisis, reach sound scientific conclusions, and act rapidly in a manner that both staunched the outbreak and quelled panic."

To people all over the world cocaine is viewed as a taboo drug. It is the cause of addiction and death among other things, but is, nonetheless, used by people of all social classes. Models and celebrities make it seem glamorous but those who have been sucked in by cocaine’s addictive properties or have seen a loved one hit rock bottom because of it know that it can ruin lives. It seems as though something this detrimental could only be manufactured by humans, but is it? Where on Earth does this horribly addictive drug come from? Is there more than one form of ingestion? How does it integrate itself into and react with our brains? And finally, what makes it so great that one would want to use it again and again, even to a point where it is life-threatening?

Aggression is an emotion that is very present in our everyday lives. Behaviors that reflect aggression can be observed in almost every aspect of the media, including television shows, movies, video games and the news; we can also observe aggressive behavior in ourselves. This type of behavior is generally exhibited in a negative manner, causing pain or unhappiness to the recipient of the aggression. If aggressive behavior results in violence and/or other detrimental outcomes, why is it that humans are capable of expressing it? What sections of the brain are involved in the modulation of aggression and is it possible that this emotion serves a positive purpose?

There is a great deal of emphasis on love, especially in terms of romantic relationships, in our society. The so called “falling in love”, the wanting to be “in love”, and ending a relationship that once contained love are important phases for us, and ones that we spend a great deal of time talking and thinking about. Romantic relationships are an interesting phenomenon in society, as the pathway to one involving love is long and complicated, and so we may say “falling” or “ instantly fell” in love to avoid thinking about this long route. The associations with love, and all that the word brings to mind, makes it nearly, if not impossible, to define. While much research is still being done, there have been discoveries on the neurobiological basis for romantic love, involving an increase in specific chemicals, such as dopamine, which plays a major role in the reward system of the brain. Following these recent findings may make us better able to understand the effects of “love” on the brain, which has confused and baffled us through much, if not all, of human history.

Much of Pale Blue Dot, by Carl Sagan, deals with looking at the Earth from a new perspective. In this perspective, we are, like in a lab we completed, new to this planet, in search of life or intelligence without any prior knowledge. Sagan discusses why this planet is so unusual, and the many oddities associated with it that can we see simply from looking and using basic measuring tools. This book overlaps with much of what we’ve discussed in the course, challenging what we’ve learned and accepted as basic knowledge. It’s a new kind of science that I was able to better understand with the idea of science as a story-telling, making this book particularly more useful to me now than it had been in the past.