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Peculiar patterns
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Helen Thomson is a writer based in London
Peculiar patterns Can using the arts as a diagnostic tool tell us about ourselves?
Strange Tools: Art and human nature by Alva Noë, Hill and Wang, $28 Anil Ananthaswamy
“WHAT is art? Why does it matter to us?” These questions are posed time and again in Alva Noë’s latest book, Strange Tools. To Noë, a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, ordinary tools are technological things: we make them to organise our lives. But “strange” tools are those that help us make sense of how we organise our lives. For him, “a work of art is a strange tool”. According to Noë, our lives are governed by organised activities, from walking to dancing, talking to breastfeeding. Such activities, he says, have distinct features: they are primitive, basic and natural, yet demand complex cognitive Choreography lays bare the impulses that make us dance
Adam Dean/Panos
useful, necessary even, for the success of the modern world. Early on, I was concerned that Silberman underplayed the controversial nature of some of the history, such as supposed links between vaccination and autism. It was only later that he weighed in, firmly emphasising the debunking of such research and the “insidious effect” it has had on society. His cast of characters is so large, each with a long backstory, that the book can be a slow read; it could do with fewer chapters. And Silberman rarely covers autism’s most disabling aspects. That said, his tales neatly underline how our understanding of autism has been influenced as strongly by a single thinker as by a whole regime. Where his account of autism’s complex history really shines is in the last third of the book, where we gain an insight into current issues from autistic people themselves. We are left admonished by Ari Ne’eman, an autism-rights activist appointed to the US National Council on Disability by President Barack Obama. Ne’eman says that while the core features of autism can be disabling, many of the difficulties are not to do with the symptoms of autism but with how society treats people who don’t meet expectations of “normal”. The book gains momentum as we turn a page in history where we see autistic adults begin to rise up and form “tribes” after years of alienation. This growing alliance of autistic individuals, their parents and researchers, all of whom have embraced the concept of neurodiversity, proposes that autism be regarded as a valuable part of humanity’s genetic legacy and that society needs to accept and adapt to people who think differently. Only then, Silberman says, will we allow people to embrace their uniqueness and let society reach its dynamic potential. n
and attentional skills; they unfold ideas and concepts and beliefs”. Both “expose the concealed over time; they serve a purpose, and can be pleasurable. “Our lives ways we are organised by the things we do”. are one big complex nesting of Noë’s arguments at times organised activities at different seem obvious, but he has striking levels and scales,” he writes. insights, for example, when he More often than not, Noë says, compares art to map-making: we are unwitting participants in “The task of generating a these activities: it’s our “natural, indeed our biological, condition”. representation of the lay of the land has its source in a Not surprisingly, given this real need, or a felt anxiety.” view point, he sees our lives as a Having set up art as an activity source of existential angst. Why that seeks to expose the patterns do we do what we do? Why are we that govern us, Strange Tools takes the way we are? Art, says Noë, is a way of “illuminating the ways we “Our lives are one big find ourselves organised”. complex nesting of He uses dancing to illustrate organised activities at his point. For Noë, dancing is as different levels and scales” natural as suckling. Dances are organised activities, he says. on other ways of looking at art. For “We participate in them. We get instance, whether the emergence caught up in them. Dancing of art is an evolutionary adaptation happens.” Choreography, says that increases our chances of Noë, lays bare the impulses that survival, or whether we can make us dance – it shows how explain art with neuroscience. dancing affects our lives. In You can’t help feeling that Noë that sense, choreography is art. Noë likens it to philosophy, which wants to elevate art to something that cannot be reduced to neural he calls the “choreography of correlates in the brain, or seen as a consequence of evolution. For him, art “affords revelation, transformation, reorganisation”; it is a subversive activity, not a phenomenon to be explained. Oddly, Strange Tools tries to do just that, and it seems repetitive, as Noë makes the same points many times. Some might object to his view of art as an activity that must make us ask: “What is this? What is this for?”, thus revealing something about ourselves. This is an intriguing, provocative book, but does art always have to be so laden with meaning? n Anil Ananthaswamy is a consultant for New Scientist 10 October 2015 | NewScientist | 47
Helen Thomson is a writer based in London
Peculiar patterns Can using the arts as a diagnostic tool tell us about ourselves?
Strange Tools: Art and human nature by Alva Noë, Hill and Wang, $28 Anil Ananthaswamy
“WHAT is art? Why does it matter to us?” These questions are posed time and again in Alva Noë’s latest book, Strange Tools. To Noë, a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, ordinary tools are technological things: we make them to organise our lives. But “strange” tools are those that help us make sense of how we organise our lives. For him, “a work of art is a strange tool”. According to Noë, our lives are governed by organised activities, from walking to dancing, talking to breastfeeding. Such activities, he says, have distinct features: they are primitive, basic and natural, yet demand complex cognitive Choreography lays bare the impulses that make us dance
Adam Dean/Panos
useful, necessary even, for the success of the modern world. Early on, I was concerned that Silberman underplayed the controversial nature of some of the history, such as supposed links between vaccination and autism. It was only later that he weighed in, firmly emphasising the debunking of such research and the “insidious effect” it has had on society. His cast of characters is so large, each with a long backstory, that the book can be a slow read; it could do with fewer chapters. And Silberman rarely covers autism’s most disabling aspects. That said, his tales neatly underline how our understanding of autism has been influenced as strongly by a single thinker as by a whole regime. Where his account of autism’s complex history really shines is in the last third of the book, where we gain an insight into current issues from autistic people themselves. We are left admonished by Ari Ne’eman, an autism-rights activist appointed to the US National Council on Disability by President Barack Obama. Ne’eman says that while the core features of autism can be disabling, many of the difficulties are not to do with the symptoms of autism but with how society treats people who don’t meet expectations of “normal”. The book gains momentum as we turn a page in history where we see autistic adults begin to rise up and form “tribes” after years of alienation. This growing alliance of autistic individuals, their parents and researchers, all of whom have embraced the concept of neurodiversity, proposes that autism be regarded as a valuable part of humanity’s genetic legacy and that society needs to accept and adapt to people who think differently. Only then, Silberman says, will we allow people to embrace their uniqueness and let society reach its dynamic potential. n
and attentional skills; they unfold ideas and concepts and beliefs”. Both “expose the concealed over time; they serve a purpose, and can be pleasurable. “Our lives ways we are organised by the things we do”. are one big complex nesting of Noë’s arguments at times organised activities at different seem obvious, but he has striking levels and scales,” he writes. insights, for example, when he More often than not, Noë says, compares art to map-making: we are unwitting participants in “The task of generating a these activities: it’s our “natural, indeed our biological, condition”. representation of the lay of the land has its source in a Not surprisingly, given this real need, or a felt anxiety.” view point, he sees our lives as a Having set up art as an activity source of existential angst. Why that seeks to expose the patterns do we do what we do? Why are we that govern us, Strange Tools takes the way we are? Art, says Noë, is a way of “illuminating the ways we “Our lives are one big find ourselves organised”. complex nesting of He uses dancing to illustrate organised activities at his point. For Noë, dancing is as different levels and scales” natural as suckling. Dances are organised activities, he says. on other ways of looking at art. For “We participate in them. We get instance, whether the emergence caught up in them. Dancing of art is an evolutionary adaptation happens.” Choreography, says that increases our chances of Noë, lays bare the impulses that survival, or whether we can make us dance – it shows how explain art with neuroscience. dancing affects our lives. In You can’t help feeling that Noë that sense, choreography is art. Noë likens it to philosophy, which wants to elevate art to something that cannot be reduced to neural he calls the “choreography of correlates in the brain, or seen as a consequence of evolution. For him, art “affords revelation, transformation, reorganisation”; it is a subversive activity, not a phenomenon to be explained. Oddly, Strange Tools tries to do just that, and it seems repetitive, as Noë makes the same points many times. Some might object to his view of art as an activity that must make us ask: “What is this? What is this for?”, thus revealing something about ourselves. This is an intriguing, provocative book, but does art always have to be so laden with meaning? n Anil Ananthaswamy is a consultant for New Scientist 10 October 2015 | NewScientist | 47