In a review of two books on boredom, Joseph Epstein includes an aside about one of my primary boredom-triggers:
In the last chapter of Boredom, A Lively History, Toohey veers into a discussion of what brain science has to tell us about boredom. I almost wrote a “compulsory discussion,” for with-it-ness now calls for checking in with what the neuroscientists have to say about your subject, whatever it might be. What they have to say is usually speculative, generally turns out to be based on studies of mice or chimps, and is never very persuasive.
Here, here!
Friday, June 10, 2011 at 1:52 pm
The guy next door is starting a Master’s program in neuroscience in the fall. He want to look at the brain with imaging equipment from biochemistry rather than the traditional fMRI stuff (I didn’t really understand the equipment he was talking about, but he told me that it is really good at figuring out what substances are, what they are made of, etc, etc–sort of like the labs in CSI, I guess–and we were only talking over the fence while cutting our respective lawns). He didn’t find it funny when I joked, “So you are training to become a phrenologist.” I think Alain Badiou makes the same joke somewhere.
Friday, June 10, 2011 at 1:53 pm
Sooooo true. I wrote a master’s thesis on the insights of neuroscience for the doctrine of the soul/Christian conception of the self… and after two semesters of research came up with pretty much nothing. I’m pretty sure the neuroscience bubble burst.
Friday, June 10, 2011 at 2:30 pm
Neuroscience has gone down a blind alley — they need to focus on the pineal gland/soul interface, and after that, everything will fall into place.
Friday, June 10, 2011 at 2:42 pm
He didn’t find it funny when I joked, “So you are training to become a phrenologist.” I think Alain Badiou makes the same joke somewhere.
Neuroscientists do too.
Friday, June 10, 2011 at 2:55 pm
What’s the latest neuroscientific take on the general dismissal of neuroscientific findings as trivial and speculative?
Friday, June 10, 2011 at 4:37 pm
When people dismiss neuroscientific findings are dismissed as trivial and speculative a part of the person’s brain lights up. In other news, when people are hungry some shit happens in their stomach. And when they want to fuck blood rushes to their penis. That last one is only true for, like, half the population. The jury is still out on why.
Friday, June 10, 2011 at 8:23 pm
This imagery of areas of the brain “lighting up” makes me think of that old electronic game “Simon.”