A Story of an X

A Twice Told Tale

By Liz Newbury

When two letters love each other, after a time they will naturally create a wider vocabulary. This is what happened in the case of O and P. They were expecting to create a charming little N or a curvy little C, something that would fit well into the scheme of science. That was where all the good letters went, you know. Into science or engineering or chemistry. They were quite surprised when the nurse came out and declared,

Have you ever seen a person on the streets and immediately had some sort of attraction to them?

In 1971 a question posed by Linda Nochlin changed the way art history was viewed. Her essay “Why Have There Been No Great Female Artists” explores the reasons for the severe disproportion of female to male artists throughout the course of art history (1). While this is undeniably at least in part an issue of social concern, the may be more than one answer. It is possible that art history and neurobiology can, in fact, over-lap. There are irrefutable physical, hormonal, and genetic differences between women and men. More importantly, aside from these primary and secondary sex-differences there are a wide variety of sometimes subtle, sometimes prominent neurological differences, from basic neural organization to the way female and male brains process everyday information (4). There are evolutionary advantages to having differences between the female and male members of a species. These differences in no way imply and superiority or inferiority between the sexes, especially in humans (4). In people, there is much more overlap in these dissimilarities, due largely to the fact that our own brain structure is largely malleable and able to be easily manipulated and changed due to our higher functional capabilities. It seems pertinent to investigate the fact that the reason there are “no great female artists” might because of biological differences in the creative process or ability to produce art.

If I showed you a picture of a beautiful person what would you think about their ability to fly a plane? You may think this question is absurd, how could someone’s looks tell if they would be a good pilot or not? Well, believe it or not, odds are higher that you will think that they are a better pilot than you think an average looking person would be. In fact, you will probably assume that they are also nicer, more generous, more intelligent in general and more sensitive (the list goes on) (1). Why do we generalize like this, and are there any facts to support this seemingly incredible bias?

Description of final performance:

Sky and I decided to stage one of our regular post-class lunch discussions for the class. The conversation took on the form of the discussion we would be about to have after our last Gender and Science class. We thought this would be an entirely appropriate format, given that we actually did extend our conversations beyond the classroom in this way. I can’t say that I have done that with many other classes, which is a shame, because it felt really good to have those very stereotypically “college” conversations. It was a sign that I was learning a lot from this course.

People who claim to have had religious or spiritual experiences or personal connections with a divine being often describe their experience in the same way.  They tend to report a sense of enlightenment, the loss of a sense of self and time, and feeling of being one with the world around them (1).  This description persists cross culturally, overtime and regardless of religion.  Due to the fact that so many different people have such similar mystical experiences scientists propose that there must be some common thread that links these individuals together.  Naturally, since all of our other experiences are processed in the brain, why not look for an area of the brain that processes G-d, or a G-spot? 

  Book Review: The Holographic Universe 

     I’ve chosen to review Michael Talbot’s The Holographic Universe because I am deeply interested in scientific models of the cosmos that attempt to provide an explanation for experiences typically deemed mystical or supernatural. Most of the traditional scientific literature with which I am familiar ignores, minimizes or disavows the existence of a diverse array of experiences: precognition, retrocognition, psychometry, psychokinesis, clairvoyance, lucid dreaming, etc. Talbot’s theory (which he also describes as a “paradigm”, “analogy” and “metaphor”, in acknowledgement of the fact that it is “still an idea in the making”[p.7]) offers us a compelling “story” about the source of these, and many other anomalous phenomena.

Feminism: The Ecological Practice of Science

Rosemary Malfi

I. Introduction: Ecology and the Feminist Critique of Science

Like many successful lesson plans, I choose to start this piece with definitions. Let us take a look at the etymology of the word ecology. The prefix eco- comes from the Greek word oikos, meaning “house” or “dwelling” and –ology refers to logia, which means “study of.” Therefore, the field of Ecology is literally “the study of the house or dwelling.” You might be asking yourself, “Isn’t ecology about plants and animals? What does a house have to do with it?” I answer this question with another, albeit less ancient, definition. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ecology is “The science of the economy of animals and plants; that branch of biology which deals with the relations of living organisms to their surroundings, their habits and modes of life, etc.” In some rudimentary way, ecology is about plants and animals, but more accurately, ecology encompasses the study of all living organisms on this earth, small and large, and how they interact with each other and the environment.

When we speak of our physical selves, we are often referring to the image we have of our body, as it is represented in the mind. Many faculties are involved in creating this mental representation; some are sensations which we receive as input to the nervous system. These immediate experiences allows for the perception that there is a unity of the body, but this perception is grounded in assumptions and preexisting information about the body. Knowledge of the body is organized to fit a certain schema that permits one to view themselves as a complete embodied person. The mental image of our body schema is the body image. It comes to us through the senses, but is not a mere perception; there are mental pictures and representations involved in it, but it is not a mere representation.

Howard Belsey began preparing the projector for his daily lecture and putting his History of Art slides in order. This routine had become almost as tedious as the students that partook in his classes and he executed his preparation without enthusiasm. The time had come for the lecture to begin and the students began to fill the empty seats in front of him. Some faces he recognized and others he did not; he presumed they were only shopping the class. The last student to arrive rushed in, closed the door behind her and walked over to the nearest available seat. Her name was Alyssa and she was one of the students who had decided to shop the class and was using this single lecture as the deciding point to whether she would take Howard’s class. The lecture began and Howard projected his first image on to the screen: "Rembrandt's Dr. Nicolaes Tulp Demonstrating the Anatomy of the Arm” (1632). He had offered them a Rembrandt who was neither a rule breaker nor an original but rather a conformist; he had asked them to ask themselves what they meant by 'genius' and, in the perplexed silence, replaced the familiar rebel master of historical fame with Howard's own vision of a merely competent artisan who painted whatever his wealthy patrons requested.