Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1996 - 20

Theatre's traditional and most elevated role
is to metaphorically transform the personal into the universal.
tion, like the differences in audience response,
are probably based on indi\~dual past experience influencing neural activity. This being so,
qualia are the Mt. Everest of science and art.
Thinking about how I think gives me a
feeling of awe and wonder. The complexity is
hard to imagine. The numbers are staggering.
Consider one more paragraph, this from another Nobel laureate, Gerald Edelman.

Eacb nerve cell receives connections
jrom otber nerve cells at cites called
s)Jnapses. But bere is an astonisbing
fact-tbere are about one million
billion connections in the cortical
sbeet. Ifyou were to CO/lilt tbem, one
connection (or synapse) per second,
)'Oll would finish counting some
tbir()J-two millioll years after )IOU
began. Anotber way for getting a
feeling for tbe numbers of connections in tbis e.rtraordinalJI structure
is to consider tbat a large matcb
head's wortb ofyour brain contains
about a billion connections. Notice
tbat 1 only mentioned counting connections. If we consider bow connections migbt be various~)1 combined, tbe number would be
I~)perastronomical--on the order of
ten followed by millions of zeros.
(There are about ten followed ~)'
eigb()1 zeros' worth of positive~)1
charged particles in the whole
known universe!)20
I have fractal awe, similar over many
scales. The vastness of the universe and its beginning in a tiny dot is impossible to contemplate without amazement. At the other end, I
am impressed by the techniques used to peel
away the onion of matter to find ever smaller
particles. And even though botanists know
why, 1am repeatedly surprised when every two
weeks, there is a spectacular blanket of white
flowers in my yard because many separated
clumps of fortnight lilies choose to bloom exactly on the same day. The process by which
the lilies "know" when to flower is nothing
compared to the zillions of neural reactions
taking place evelY second that 1struggle to find
18

ALL

TD&T

these words to write.
Beyond my personal reactions to discoveries in neuroscience, I believe that when
more information is available, there will be
tremendous and unforeseen dislocations in
the way we think about ourselves. Already, we
are told by Crick and Churchland that the commonly held belief in the duality of body and
soul is a myth. There are only neurons. If, in
the coming years, we are given convincing evidence that there is no such thing as a soul, the
implications for religion, ethics and concepts
of the self will at least equal the adjustments
humans had to make when commonly held beliefs-a flat earth, the sun revolving around
the earth, man created in his present form by
God-were discovered to be false.
As we stand on the brink of such a dramatic change, I am saddened by the fact that so
few in our society know what is happening in
science.The great debates of our time, abol~
tion, gene cloning, in-vitro fertilization, en~-
ronmental protection, scientillc research
funding, to name just a few, have been framed
by emotional rather than factual arguments.
Lacking knowledge of the physical world
dooms us to superstition, fear and prejudice,
even as the decisions we make have a global
impact that should overide any national, racial
or religious loyalties.
In the midst of great social change, there
are individual stories to be told, dramatic tales
that connect us to each other and to the problems we face together. Theatre's traditional
and most elevated role is to metaphorically
transform the personal into the universal, turn
isolation and division into attachment and
unity. My hope is that contemporaty theatre
will be a messenger, bringing news of a world,
which, as we discover its secrets, becomes
more wondrous every day. *:.

ENDNOTES
I. Tom Stoppard, Arcadia (London and Boston:

Faber and Fabel; 1993), 1.4.
2. Paul Recel; Associated Press, 24 ~lay 1996.
3. james Gorman, New York Times, Sunday, 19
~lay 1996, Arts and Leisure section, 31.

4. Alan Lightman, Dancefor Tiro (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1996), xi.
5. Benoit ~landelbrodt would add compleXity to

the list of inate aesthetic principles because he
believes that fractals are everywhere in nature
and therefore part of what we find beautiful.
james Gleick, Cbaos (New York: Penguin, 198 ).

6. David Hockney, as quoted in Art News (September 1996): 124.
7. Leonard Shlain, Art and P/~)lsics (1 ew York:
William Morrow and Co., 1991).
8. john Horgan, 77Je End of cience-Facing tbe

Lilliits ofKnowledge in tbe Tiviligbt oftbe
SCientific Age (Reading, MA: HelLx Books/
Addison Wesley, 1996).
9. Paul ~l. Churchland, 77Je Engine ofReason,
tbe Seat oftbe Soul (Cambridge and London:
The ~lIT Press, 1995), -8.
10. Francis Crick, Tbe Astonisbing Hypotbesis,

Tbe SCientific Searc!J for tbe Soul (New York:
Touchstone, 1994), 178.
II. Betty Edwards, Drawing on tbe Rigbt Side of
tbe Brain (Los Angeles: J.P. TaI"Cher, Inc., 19 9).
12. Vladimir M. Petrov, "Quantive Estimates of Left
and Right Hemispherical Dominance in Art,"
Leonardo 29 no. 3.
13. Gerald M. Edelman, Brigbt Ail; Brilliant Fire
(Basic Books, 1992).
14. Zac Hanscom, Professor of Biology, San Diego
State University.
15. Crick, chap. 4.
16. Churchland, chap. 3.

Beeb Salzer, autbor of The Skeptical
Scenographer, teaches at San Diego State
Universi()1 and is ajrequent contributor to
T&DT.

17. Crick, 60-61.
18. Ibid., 61.
19. see Crick, p. 256, Edelman, p. 114, and especially Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Erplained (New York: Little Bro\\11, 1991), chap. 12.
20. Edelman, 17.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1996