“We can use physics to describe the movement of organic molecules through space,” Dr D. explained on the first day of class. “We can use physics to describe the movements of other life forms. And ultimately, it would theoretically be possible to use physics to describe the state of the human brain at a particular point in time and thereby determine the thought processes that those particular neuronal connections manifest. Thus, we could thereby use physics to describe thought. True, it would take an almost infinite number of equations and a very sophisticated computer, but we could do it.”
My question for Dr. D. would be this: regardless of whether our current understanding of the human brain was rich enough, would anyone like to use mathematics and logic to describe the positions of all the particles in the brain? True, this might be a great exercise in demonstrating human capability, and if we were able to do this, this might lead us to a better understanding of the inner complexities of the human psyche. But would it not just be easier to just read body language, instinctively, intuitively: read the direction of that person’s gaze, the corners of her mouth, see that the position of her arms are crossed, that she’s slightly hunched over, and her cheeks are red?
A couple days later, I felt homesick. I go to UNC, but campus is different when you live in a dorm on south campus, you take classes in an unfamiliar building and are still struggling to adjust yourself to the workload. My efforts at remedying my emotional distress focused on the logical implications of my actions and reasoning my way through my emotions. After a couple hours of this, all I wanted to do was go to sleep; it was much too effortful to sustain. I had slogged my way through physiology reading, taken a nap and woken up not feeling much better. Then, an instinctual twinge told me to call one of my friends, who was particularly good at saying the right things at the right time: and directly after the conversation, I felt markedly better. And that was when I realized something. It would be difficult for a physicist to determine mathematically, logically, via vigorous calculation during a period of weeks or even months, what was occurring in a human brain at a single instance – this would be much better done via intuition, instinct, a human mode that has been refined over the course of million years and divines the others’ internal states relatively accurately and efficiently. Somewhat like the burden of applying physics to understanding other human beings, I realized that following my emotional intuition was ultimately so much more efficacious than trying to apply logic to a situation that required a more instinctual response.
I tend to intellectualize too much and trust my instincts and emotions too little, and apply my created mental conceptualizations where perhaps other modes of being would be better suited. Doing this I suspect would not be unlike thinking about stride during a run experiencing the run suddenly become much harder, or using emotions to reason through a logic problem. I would say too, that there are some experiential components of being human that it is impossible to directly describe via mathematics and logic. These experiences transcend intellectual or emotional understanding: near-death experiences, for instance, or the feelings during a deeply meditative and concentrative state. These are things though, that scientists strive to break down and explain via models, reasoning, complex explanations. I think this may be necessary to some degree – the science of the latter state has been investigated by researchers like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – but I do also think that it is vital to realize the limits of knowledge – that an intellectual grasping is not the same as an intuitive one. This is something that I will strive to remember as I contemplate my approach as a future health professional.