Time for a moment of self-promotion (not entirely shameless—-I’m mildly embarrassed). For those of you who haven’t yet read my short piece on the marriage of reductionist neuroscience and post-modern poetry here at Culture11 , there is also a much longer piece at The New Atlantis that more thoroughly investigates both that theme and Thiele’s erudite book on the subject. While I take no issue with the great progress made by neuroscience medically and technologically , I do take exception with the attempt to reduce the whole and complex panoply of human behavior to neural relays and synaptic fireworks. In fact, neuroscience’s breathless exertions in the service of explanatory comprehensiveness leave no room for an account of personhood, moral agency and responsibility, or the longings of the soul. To continue a now familiar theme, a genuine postmodern conservatism would be grateful for all neuroscience and science in general has taught us and for all the ways it has improved our lives, but also recognize that there is more to human life and experience than can be captured by the physiology of the brain.
