The cerebrum: our most special speciality

    Let’s begin this blog with the inductive argument in one of Cole Porter’s songs: “Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it. Let's do it, let's fall in love.” He runs through a list –- birds, bees, fleas, sponges, oysters, clams, jellyfish, shad roe and more -- concluding that all forms of life do it (hermaphrodites aside), and because humans are one of the forms, they do it; and so they very probably ought to do it.

    It happens that the writer T. H. White uses a similar inductive argument to take us to the point where the obvious conclusion is that we ought to create our minds. In a letter to L. J. Potts (January 8, 1941) he writes:

What is right or wrong (for a species)? Well, I can only suppose that it is Right for a species to progress in doing what ever it does. It would be quite wrong for a tortoise to attempt flight. It has no wings. In the end, you come down to the idea that a species must specialize in its own speciality. Follow that up, and you find that what is right for man depends upon his speciality, his wings, tail, beak, backbone, fins, antennae or whatever his most special speciality may be. And you will find that his most s. s. is his cerebrum. This (not the cerebellum) is as much overdeveloped in Man, as a species as, for instance, the nose of an elephant is overdeveloped from my nose. (quoted in The Life of the Creative Spirit, p.169)

    In other words: I have these several pounds of flesh in my head, my cerebrum. It’s my most special speciality. It’s a container meant to hold my mind: the ethereal organ of thinking, feeling, empathy, language, foresight, imagination, memory and more. White’s pointing out my most special speciality leaves me with questions. Should I let my mind form haphazardly or should I force its creation? And if I should create it, to what end? And how best to do it?

    I like White’s remarks and their implications. I like education justified without the threat of penalty (or reward of money), as with “Better go to school and study hard and learn or you won’t get a good job.” I like thinking it’s as right and beautiful for quail to do their most special thing, which includes sauntering along the beach in good quail company, as it is right and beautiful for Roger Folk do his most special thing, painting their sauntering. I like quail and all the animals and plants and Roger Folk to be in the answer of “What should I do with my life?”
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    Winter’s coming. If you haven’t read it, consider a warming cup of tea with T. H. White’s The Once and Future King.”

Comments

[Nat B. Frazer]

Thomas Berry in his book, The Dream of the Earth, claims that humans are "the universe become conscious of itself." If we see ourselves, by virtue of our enlarged cerebrum, as fulfilling this role, what does it mean for us? To learn as much about ourselves (i.e., the universe) as we possibly can, and to share this information as widely as possible. As professional educators, we academicians should take Parker Palmer's advice and seek "to know as we are known." In other words, we should be aware that our students learn more by the WAY in which we teach and from the PERSON who is doing the teaching, than from the subject lessons we offer them.

[Randall Stutman]

Charles, saunter this: Sometimes the scene weighs more than the script. Sometimes the peripheral image burns deeper than what's in focus. In those special cases, you have lost. Your argument means nothing. It is all about the colors and not about you. Or as Robert Evans put it: "If I go to a party and 8 different people come over to me and say 'Gee, that's a great looking tie,' as soon as I get home, I take it off and put it in the shredder. Screw the tie! I'm not there to make the tie look good. The tie is there to make 'me' look good." I really like this blog for the paint it throws, if you catch my drift.