Looking Ahead to Future Brain Studies

books and arts

Exhibition Looking ahead to Leonardo’s legacy future brain studies The Codex Atlanticus is a The New Brain Sciences: Perils collection of more than a and Prospects thousand sheets of the edited by Dai Rees & Steven Rose scientific and technical Cambridge University Press: 2004. 316 pp. drawings of Leonardo da £65, $120 (hbk); £24.99, $43 (pbk) Vinci, put together at the David Papineau end of the sixteenth century by Pompeo Leoni, a The brain sciences are undoubtedly bur- sculptor. Leoni was trying to geoning. In recent years, molecular bio- organize Leonardo’s work chemistry and genomic mapping have been into categories, cutting and combining with fancy functional imaging pasting drawings from techniques to tell us more and more about original notebooks on to the the brain’s internal workings. atlas-sized pages that give Still, is all this new knowledge really such the Codex Atlanticus its a good thing? The contributors to The New name. Some drawings were damaged in the between the Accademia dei Lincei, Italy’s Brain Sciences are not sure. As Steven Rose process and others lost. national academy, and the publisher Anthelios explains in the introduction: “You will find History continued to be unkind to the — are now rare. But one forms the centrepiece no gung-ho overoptimistic forecasts of the drawings. The codex was appropriated by of an exhibition currently on view in the austere, wondrous cornucopia of benefits that neuro- Napoleon at the end of the eighteenth century, baroque rooms of the Accademia dei Lincei in science might bring here.”True, he immedi- before being returned from Paris to Milan in the Rome. The sheets are displayed alongside ately adds: “Nor, though, are our authors mid-nineteenth century. Early photographers, modern interpretations, or counterparts, of doom-sayers with an almost automatic most fortunately as it turned out, captured the drawings: there is a reconstruction of rejectionism in response to new findings.” images of the sheets on huge glass plates, Leonardo’s helicopter in wood and a Ferrari However, even if they aren’t automatic rejec- and these formed the basis of a luxurious engine, for example. tionists, most of the authors certainly seem reproduction in 1906 of the entire codex. In mid-March the exhibition begins an to be worried about something. The original sheets were poorly restored in extensive European tour, taking in Budapest, In the end, though, this book is rather the 1950s and the early photographs are more Bratislava, Warsaw, Bolzano and other European reassuring. The general tenor of the essays is valuable to historians than the original sheets. cities in 2006, before moving to the United States that there is nothing in the new brain sci- Copies of the 1906 edition — a collaboration and Japan in 2007. A.A. ences to overturn anything we hold dear. Only muddled thinking, the contributors The second section is particularly con- promise of recent neuroscientific advances. say, could make you suppose that neuro- cerned with responsibility in a legal context. But even here the pessimism is diluted. science is going to radically alter our lives. If it turns out that someone was predisposed Alongside articles reminding us about the The articles are derived from a pair of to commit a crime because of some geneti- poor track record of neurosurgical inter- recent conferences, and are divided into cally determined feature of their brain, vention, and about the incoherence of much three sections.The first part asks whether we should they be punished? All the contri- of the work on genes and intelligence,there is are more than the sum of our biochemical butors agree that this wouldn’t necessarily a markedly calm discussion by Paul Cooper parts; the second considers whether bio- be a good excuse. For better or worse, we of the role that the drug Ritalin (methyl- chemical determinism means that we are currently hold people responsible for their phenidate) can play in treating attention- not authors of our own actions; and the final choices, provided that they are capable of deficit/hyperactivity disorder. There are also section wonders whether neuroscientific deliberation. If they have the bad luck to be two useful articles analysing the ethics of advances will lead to new medical techniques. lumbered with a nefarious nature, we expect stem-cell research and the prospects for The contributors to the first section are them to curb it: paedophiles aren’t held to resulting therapies. An insightful contribu- emphatically of the anti-reductionist party. account merely for being attracted to chil- tion by David Healy explains the techniques The philosopher Mary Midgley parades dren, but rather for succumbing to their used by pharmaceutical companies to mar- once more in her familiar colours, stressing desires. This doesn’t change just because ket their wares, and left me hungry for more that there is more to human nature than can your criminal tendencies are foisted on you on the way that commercial imperatives are be gleaned from the workings of neurotrans- by your genes. If you are capable of delibera- distorting the development of new drugs. mitters. Her message is echoed by the evolu- tion, it’s still up to you whether or not you Overall, this volume does much to com- tionary psychologist Merlin Donald and the give in to those tendencies. bat various kinds of bad reductionist think- sociologist Hilary Rose. These authors are of This theme is repeated in a series of lucid ing. But it does little to show that the ‘new course quite right,but I did wonder who they articles from the philosopher Peter Lipton, brain sciences’ pose any particular threat to took their opposition to be. Poor Richard the ethologist Patrick Bateson, the appeals- anything. Prospective readers should also be Dawkins comes in for some flak, but it’s not court judge Stephen Sedley and the academic warned that there is scarcely any information exactly clear what for.It might also have been medical lawyer Alexander McCall Smith. about the brain sciences themselves. Still, helpful if these essays had distinguished Those who know of the latter only from there is no harm in being reminded once more clearly between the uncontentious his fictional chronicles of the No. 1 Ladies’ more that there is more to life than basic methodological point that theories outside Detective Agency in Botswana will not be scientific knowledge. ■ neuroscience can help us to understand surprised by the elegant prose with which he David Papineau is professor of the philosophy of people and the rather more controversial carries out his day job. science, King’s College London, The Strand, metaphysical issue of whether we are made By and large, the third section is not London WC2R 2LS, UK. His latest book is of anything more than molecules. particularly enthusiastic about the medical Thinking about Consciousness.