Letters, p.68
Letters, page 68
“Dear Oliver,” he wrote,
I, like you, am awed by the evidence of the technological revolution. I only fear that the proliferation of options may exceed our capacity to absorb them, whereupon we shall find ourselves on a treadmill chasing satisfactions only because they are available. There are Greek myths, ending in tragedy, about the terrors of excessive satiety and they will not be myths much longer.
*10 Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated on November 4, 1995.
*11 Bellugi was a cognitive neuroscientist who was a pioneer in, among other things, linguistic studies of ASL.
*12 The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, home to Bellugi and other researchers, including Francis Crick.
*13 Goodall had written to OS that she had only very recently discovered that “what I have always considered a uniquely embarrassing/irritating mental failure is not peculiar to me!” She went on to describe her own complete inability to remember and recognize individual faces.
*14 OS had reviewed, for Neurology, a 1992 book: Mental Lives: Case Studies in Cognition, edited by Ruth Campbell. This included the story of “Dr. S.”
*15 Goodall replied that it was no easier for her to recognize individual chimps, and that her cinematographer also had the same difficulties. She went on to say that both of them also got lost easily. (OS would later write, in his article “Face-Blind,” that agnosia for faces and places are often linked.)
*16 Frumkes was working on a book called Favorite Words of Famous People.
*17 Diamond reviewed The Island of the Colorblind for The New York Review of Books.
*18 Carl Sagan (1934–1996), a planetary scientist at Harvard, was denied tenure despite, or possibly because of, his huge following as a popular author and television personality.
*19 Deadly Feasts, a book about mad cow disease and other prion diseases, including Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Creutzfeldt is a very rare degenerative disease leading to personality changes, dementia, and death. Like kuru and other prion diseases, it is spread by contact with infected tissue.
*20 Riggs, a zoologist in Austin, Texas, wrote in response to “The Case of the Colorblind Painter” to observe that his own dreams were devoid of color, even though he had normal color vision.
*21 Poyser had written about OS for Nuvo, an alternative newsweekly in Indianapolis.
*22 John von Neumann (1903–1957), a mathematician and computer scientist, was also interested in game theory.
*23 Sakau, or kava, is a mildly psychoactive drink that OS sampled when he was in the South Pacific, as he wrote about in The Island of the Colorblind.
*24 OS had recently returned from a trip to Brazil, during which he explored the Amazon River and the Pantanal (where he fell in love with the gentle, giant rodents called capybaras).
*25 OS had long believed in the importance of seeing patients in their homes, but in this case he had begun visiting very elderly people who lived independently, with the idea of writing a book about healthy aging. (This book was never written, but some of his thoughts on the topic were included in a short essay, “The Aging Brain.”)
*26 A version of this essay was published as a foreword to a book edited by OS’s good friend Concetta Tomaino (see Selected Bibliography) and eventually evolved into a book, Musicophilia.
*27 War of Words: Women and Men Arguing.
*28 Though Marie Stopes (1880–1958) became famous in Britain for her advocacy of birth control and women’s rights, she was also a paleobotanist.
*29 In “The Dream Mechanism,” Freud describes his own dream of holding a glass top hat in his lap. This reminds him of Carl Auer von Welsbach’s huge commercial success with a new type of gas mantle widely used for street lighting until the age of electric lights.
*30 Lutetium was so called after Lutèce, the Roman name for Paris.
*31 About priority in the discovery of element 71.
*32 To celebrate OS’s sixty-fifth birthday, on July 9, 1998, we organized a boat party, circling Manhattan. The cake was decorated as the periodic table of elements.
*33 In the margin, OS added: “Is 65 the lowest sum of 2 squares in 2 ways? 82 and 12/72 and 42? Is this why one celebrates it (vs. 55)?”
*34 Miller.
*35 In On the Move, OS revealed that this “medical student” was in fact himself, under the influence of amphetamines.
*36 At this time, Sontag was battling uterine cancer. She survived this, as she had survived breast cancer earlier, but died in 2004 of leukemia.
*37 The Goulds had hosted a small celebration for OS’s sixty-sixth birthday, for which guests had been invited to dress as a particular element.
*38 It is unclear what book OS is referring to. Gould did not use “animal magnetism” as a title for any of his books or articles, though he discussed Anton Mesmer and animal magnetism in his essay “The Chain of Reason versus the Chain of Thumbs,” collected in Bully for Brontosaurus.
*39 Robert John Aumann.
*40 Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century, an updated version of Gardner’s hugely influential theory of multiple intelligences—linguistic, spatial, intrapersonal, etc.—put forth in his 1983 book Frames of Mind.
*41 “Hard Times for Curious Minds.”
*42 We magazine, though short-lived, was dedicated to people with disabilities and their families and friends.
*43 Singer’s editor at Ecco Press.
*44 See letter to Harvey Shapiro, November 10, 1977.
*45 Within a few years, with the burgeoning research on animal consciousness, OS, like many others, would begin to revise his opinion on this point.
*46 Arthur Eddington (1882–1944), mathematician and physicist.
*47 William H. Prescott was an eminent historian, whose History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843) and History of the Conquest of Peru (1847) remain widely read.
*48 Kermode’s article “Palaces of Memory” in the journal Index on Censorship.
*49 Hymson described his ability to visualize, with closed eyes, finely detailed “movies.” He wrote, “I’ve been aware of these movies since I was a child, and spent many hours happily sitting with my eyes closed watching the show play on. It was not until my teens that I realized other people didn’t have them too. I can remember hearing people talk about being bored, and not really understanding. ‘Why don’t they just close their eyes and watch a movie if they’re bored?’ ”
*50 Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide.
*51 Jamison’s husband, Richard Wyatt, a neuropsychiatrist, died in 2002 after a prolonged illness.
*52 Electroconvulsive therapy.
*53 Jamison quoted Jonathan Himmelhoch, a psychiatrist: “The narcissistic ponderings of psychiatrists whose political agenda supersedes their clinical experience must not be allowed to keep patients who are suffering the most severe form of pain from relief.”
*54 Coates had written:
It is not only the doctors who perform hazardous operations or give life-saving drugs in obvious emergencies who hold the scales at times between life and death. To sit quietly in a consulting room and talk to someone would not appear to the general public as a heroic or dramatic thing to do. In medicine there are many different ways of saving lives.
*55 Cohen was one of OS’s closest friends during their time as Oxford undergraduates.
*56 The philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.
*57 OS’s childhood home at 37 Mapesbury Street in London.
*58 The Queen’s College at Oxford University, OS’s alma mater.
*59 Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism.
*60 Dipropyltryptamine, a psychedelic.
*61 Helfgott was captain of the British Olympic weight-lifting team at the 1956 and 1960 games, though the medals OS refers to here were from other weight-lifting meets.
*62 Robert John Aumann.
*63 The Mind Tree by Tito Mukhopadhyay, a young man with autism.
*64 Facilitated communication, where a “facilitator” helps nonverbal people write or type, remains controversial. Some critics feel that the writing that results is unconsciously influenced by the facilitator.
14
Snapshots
2003–2006
To Christof Koch
Neuroscientist
May 8, 2003
2 Horatio St., New York
Dear Christof,
Many thanks for your charming letter—I am glad Uncle Tungsten had such resonance for you. I know Peter Atkins personally, and love his Periodic Kingdom; it certainly conveys the enchantment of the Kingdom better than anything I have ever seen, and (I suspect) it was in my mind when I wrote (p. 28) about a magic “kingdom” or “garden” of numbers (maybe an essay of Freeman Dyson’s called “Ramanujan’s Garden” was also in my mind—it is impossible to trace all the antecedents of one’s thoughts). It is very sweet of you to think of sending me the Atkins book. I am sorry that neither “[The Case of] Anna H.” nor “The Mind’s Eye” reached you, and I enclose these.
I thank you for the summary paper you wrote with Francis—and, as it happens, I have read it, and several times, with great attention and admiration. One reason for doing this is that I have especially been thinking of motion perception, and its disorders, and its possible mechanisms, myself, as well as some of the broader problems of consciousness. (I think I got scared off the whole subject back in ’92, and took refuge in chemistry and botany for a decade; but now I am back.) I take the liberty of enclosing this[*1] too, and will send a copy (as well as an Uncle Tungsten) to Francis as well, especially as it draws on and quotes your paper with him. It is only a manuscript, rough and provisional, though I hope it may become an article for the NY Review of Books. I was at Cold Spring Harbor a few days ago, and was told there that Francis is not too well, though fully and wonderfully himself.
With kindest regards,
Oliver
To Francis Crick
May 10, 2003
2 Horatio St., New York
Dear Francis,
I hear news of you from many sources—from Ralph Siegel, especially, from friends at Cold Spring Harbor, and from Christof Koch whom I met again recently at CalTech, and have been corresponding with—and you have especially been in my mind since I read your paper with him in February Nature Neuroscience.
I was very fascinated by this, especially your “snapshot” proposal, because I have long been interested in motion-perception and its disorders, and have often wondered whether one uses “frames” or “snapshots” in real-life, as well as in the cinema.[*2] I had already started writing about this when I received a copy of your paper with Christof—and now (though I don’t usually send out manuscripts which are still being revised) I take the liberty of sending you my “consciousness” piece, because it draws heavily on your own thoughts towards the end.
I also enclose a published piece (“The Case of Anna H.”) about a patient of mine with a visual alexia etc—and (finally!) a copy of my book about boyhood and love of science etc, Uncle Tungsten. I hope this may give pleasure, and not be a burden to you. I have heard that you have been in poor health lately, but Christof tells me you are undaunted, and still reading mightily. I often think of you with great admiration and affection, and send you my warmest good wishes,
Oliver
To Gerald Edelman
May 25, 2003
2 Horatio St., New York
Dear Gerry,
I had meant to write to you, thanking you for your recent paper (with Tononi),[*3] which I found immensely fascinating—and stimulating. Indeed it provoked a (perhaps unwise!) addition, or change of direction, to something I was writing—this was basically part of a mass of writings about “Time,” especially, time, motion, continuity etc—thoughts provoked by recent biographies of Muybridge and Marey, a boyhood interest in ciné-, stereo- & color-photography/perception, the extraordinary accelerations and retardations and standstills of movements and thought-flow in some of my “awakenings” patients etc which had been occupying me throughout April, when I had a lot of time on my hands, having had an injured right shoulder re-operated, and hence an excuse for deferring most of my usual activities, and being able to type with one finger of my left hand almost non-stop for four weeks—all this (forgive my syntax, this now-labyrinthine sentence)—and then I got your article, and ventured onto the charged and “dangerous” realm of the “basis” of consciousness; and added to what I had written a sort of “coda” on some of your thoughts (and Francis’s). As I say, I had meant to send a letter, this letter, or something like it, but then I had suddenly to leave for Australia—my brother there having become suddenly ill with cancer of the pancreas—so the letter wasn’t written, and Kate, meanwhile, sent off my (very rough, and perhaps needing-to-be-radically-revised) manuscript. […]
I was intrigued, while in Sydney with my brother and his family, to contrast the behaviour of his 3-month-old grand-daughter with an 8-month-old child of a neighbour’s—to see how the younger one had almost no use/control/image/consciousness of her body—or so it seemed to me—while the 8-month-old child was full of skilled and purposive movements of all sorts. I feel I need to observe babies closely (and, maybe to read Piaget again too). I mostly see the decline of consciousness in my injured or elderly patients, so it was lovely seeing something of its dawn instead. Our birthdays—my 70th, you have a year or two on me—come up in July; if you are in NYC, I hope you might come to a little party I am having on the 9th. And I hope you—and Francis—were not miffed by my phrase about “grand old men” when, of course, intellectually, one is just warming up, just beginning to see how things really are. I certainly felt an almost-adolescent energy and intoxication with my burst of writing last month, and I imagine you get such bursts all the while. But Francis, I hear, is not in good health now—I have not had contact with him for several years. […]
I take the liberty of enclosing (or did Kate send it?) a piece on visual imagery,[*4] which was supposed to come out in the New Yorker in April, but got bumped because of Iraq; oh, and a little letter (from the 15 May Nature) on elephant motion, a tiny offshoot of my “Time” writings in April.
I do hope that Maxine is now restored to health, and I send you both my warmest best wishes,
Oliver
To Christof Koch
June 18, 2003
2 Horatio St., New York
Dear Christof,
[…] First, you are very welcome, more than welcome, to use the Leg quote[*5] in your book; I am delighted that (finally!) someone thinks the phenomenon worth notice (I am not sure that I have much capacity for abstract thought, but I think I am an accurate describer). Besides Leg, Awakenings and Migraine, I make a (very brief) reference to the phenomenon in Uncle Tungsten (p. 143), where I mention experiencing this (as well as other visual disturbances in migraine attacks) from an early age—and where I mention that such experiences, along with a passion for color-, stereo-, and cine-photography as a boy, were important in tilting me towards the later choice of neurology, and an interest in visual disorders in particular. I also make a (brief) reference to cinematographic vision (and some other visual disturbances) in my Island of the Colorblind (pp 87–90), after drinking sakau (kava), altho’ I suspect (and hint) that I had already been having “a strange visual excitement such as I am especially prone to, especially at the start of a migraine.” In general, my own experiences of cinematographic vision have nearly always been in the context of migraines (and often associated with scintillating scotoma etc. tho not invariably or necessarily so)—altho’ I have had the experience once or twice from LSD, and, as mentioned, with the sakau. […] Sometimes (as in the passage you want to quote) it has been associated with a geometrized, “mosaic” vision—but again this association is not invariable or necessary.
The acutely disordered context of cinematic vision makes it difficult to get reliable estimates of its rate—but my own experiences, and those related to me by patients, suggest a relatively “slow” flicker, or succession, in the 6–12 hz range. The very word “flicker” seems to suggest something faster—on the verge of “fusion”—whereas it can definitely be a slower and more leisurely succession (and often with persistence and overlap of the separate images, but—again—not necessarily or invariably so). In some attacks, with a scintillating scotoma in addition, I have felt there might be a synchronization or resonance between the two phenomena. I tried hard, when I was working in a migraine clinic, and later seeing my “awakenings” patients, to get EEG’s during attacks (and once thought I might have caught one, with a concurrent slowing of alpha rhythm)—but the attacks proved to be too sporadic and unelecitable (tho’ migraines, especially visual migraines, can sometimes be provoked by strobe illumination, like photic seizures etc, and I experimented with this a little). I wondered about transcranial magnetic stimulation when I was writing and thinking about Isaacson, the painter with central achromatopsia—I wondered if I could be made to experience what he experienced—but at that time (late 1980’s) there was some talk about elicitation of seizures or permanent damage from TMS, so I didn’t press the matter. […] I cannot answer the question about relative movement—I think I was probably rather immobile, partly because I was enthralled, partly because I was immobilized and in bed with the leg and its cast. I don’t think there was any relation between the leg syndrome and the migraine—though when I wrote to A. R. Luria about the leg, he wondered whether such syndromes were commoner on the non-dominant side. I have not discovered—but I have not systematically searched for—other descriptions of cinematic vision in the clinical literature. […]
