How to Look: Lessons from “Observers” of Neutrons and Neurons
“Only that day dawns to which we are awake" - Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Two intellectual titans. One dominating physics, the other, neuroscience. Richard Feynman and Santiago Ramon y Cajal’s life’s bare little resemblance, yet there was distinct convergence amongst their vast cognitive arsenal: they both knew how to look.
In his famous “Feynman Lectures”, the physics Nobel Laureate said we do not know the rules of the game of life, all we are allowed to do is watch the playing unfold. Benjamin Ehrlich similarly noted deep observation as a prerequisite in the skillsets of Humboldt, Darwin, and the subject of his biography, The Brain in Search of Itself, Cajal.
Unadulterated attention is as elusive as ever. Our eyes are forced fed so much. Regular scheduled programming and obtrusive algorithms have distended our visual guts, refluxing our thoughts into each other. Our gazes have been appropriated to the point of inducing blindness.
Where did we go wrong? Hard to say definitively. Perhaps it’s more helpful to ask how we can go right. The live’s of these two figures offers some guidance to avoid intellectual/spiritual dampening.
Whether it was a book or bird that his father highlighted and he patiently observed, Richard Feynman’s adolescence was marked by deliberate and deep attentiveness to life’s phenomena. He patiently watched the “playing” of the game. This impassioned yet patient gaze is needed for nuance to come into focus. Without it, there is no proper substrate for reasoning to exercise upon.
Retreating across the Atlantic and 60 years, another pair of eyes were wide. Santiago Ramon y Cajal was groomed, against the will of somewhat rigid social classes, to be a doctor. His remarkably ambitious father left less to chance than Feynman’s father. Having overcome immense difficulties to become a doctor himself, he mandated school, even robbing cemeteries to supply him and his son’s extracurricular dissection lessons (a favorite infraction of some 19th century medical schools). This approach risked choking the vitality from Cajal’s nascent vision. Fortune would have it that Cajal balanced the intensity by retreating into art and his imagination. In art he was able to release the dancing forms and images he vigorously absorbed onto the page, and this catch and release process manifested in the remarkable neuronal art he later produced.
While deep attention is not sufficient, it is a necessary trait for the naturalist, the physicist, or the artist. Mental discernment needs visual acuity. In our overly saturated modern visual field, I am attempting to relearn attention and perception, and reclaim unprejudiced sense of saliency. From there, I can grow myself and my mental discernment. More simply, I’m trying to learn how to look.
Miscellaneous: (Left) Feynman playing the bongos. (Right) Cajal bodybuilding portrait included in his autobiography. He did not include a picture of concerning Nobel Prize.
