What I did on my summer vacation

the visual cliff experiment,

Sadly, it's only two minutes long and so doesn't show rats and chickens and goats being tested on the visual cliff like the complete version does, but at least you can get an idea what the apparatus looks like. If you really want to know how more about Eleanor Gibson or the visual cliff here's a fairly informative obituary and an online reprint of the original 1960 Scientific American article which first publicized the results of the study. Oh, and you can also look at some funny pictures of pigs and babies and goats on the cliff which were taken for an article in Life Magazine (click on any of the 'Related Images' to see the other pictures).

Congratulations, Gordon!

I love Gordon College. I recently found a blog that keeps track of all the interesting projects the faculty, students and alumni are engaged in, from sculpture to service. Reading these posts always makes me fond of the place. But today I’m particularly proud of my alma matter. Yesterday was the dedication of the Ken Olsen Science Center at Gordon—a facility that has been a long time coming, and was desperately needed. I explored the building when I visited campus this summer and was quite impressed. I’m so pleased that my friend, Dr. Dorothy Boorse, will have such a great place to conduct her biology labs and research, and that all my old professors in the psychology department will have the teaching and experimental facilities they deserve.

But I’m also proud because Francis Collins spoke at the Science Center dedication. Francis Collins, the director of the Human Genome Project, has been someone that I’ve admired ever since I read this interview in National Geographic in which Collins is interviewed by an atheist. Collins is just so ridiculously smart and articulate and gracious. Take, for example, the start of his answer to a question referring to the idea of "God the semi-competent." Collins says “That's delightful—and probably blasphemous! An alternative is the notion…” Somehow in this succinct answer he manages to convey his sense of humor combined with unapologetic disagreement, which he then follows by offering of the Christian perspective for the questioner’s inspection. What a great model for apologetics! I also uncovered an interview where he pretty much kicks butt on NPR--no easy feat! Best of all, he’s a great example of a Christian taking science seriously and doing it well—he’s at the top of his field by any measure.

All that to say that I was thrilled to hear that Collins was speaking at the dedication at Gordon. If I were living anywhere close by, you can bet I would have been there like a teen girl at a Jonas Brothers concert (well, maybe not quite so hysterical) to hear him speak on Genomics and the Human Condition in person! As it was, I had to content myself with the podcast of the three talks he gave (search for Gordon College in the iTunes Store, or click here). Now that I’m done with those, I need to get me a copy of his autobiography: Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Good stuff! Way to go, Gordon!

Tree or Rhizome?

In my theory of psychology class this term I read the following:

In philosophy, Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987) applied the metaphor of a root in order to describe various forms of thought. Metaphysics was described as the root of a tree in which everything was derived from a single source or first cause. Modernity was characterized as favoring a fasciculate root, a system of small roots with many sources. (Teo, pg. 138)

Got it so far? I thought not. In other words, metaphysics is like a tree, where there is one main root, with smaller roots branching off, whereas modernity is like grass, which has multiple small roots.

Now, I’m not sure what exactly the justification is for saying that modernity has multiple small roots, and I don’t think that metaphysics and modernity are that distinct. If I were creating a model of thought using a tree it would go something like this: Philosophy is the root is the root of the modernist tree. Philosophy has produced a diverse body of knowledge, including the sciences and the humanities. Each of these fields of study has split into numerous specializations, however it is still possible to trace each branch back to its roots, which is ultimately metaphysics—those ancient conversations about the nature of what is. Nice, right? It’s all very neat and tidy and logical.

Teo continues:

However, postmodernity was described as a rhizome, a stem organ in which branches in the air could grow again into the soil, where old parts died out and where new branches were formed elsewhere. (pg. 138)

My response: Ugh! What a mess!

Even worse, Teo says that modern psychology may be best characterized by the rhizome, given how disunified it is. According to Teo, a postmodern approach to psychology would challenge the “logocentric” notions of cause and effect and “the idea that the person was the center of awareness, an integrated whole, and an entity that opposed other entities” (Teo, pg. 138).

Now, I’m not going to go of on a rant about postmodernism, as much as I’m tempted. I do think that it leads to a deadly epistemological chaos, as the analogy of the rhizome so perfectly illustrates, and that nothing could be worse for psychology than this sort of nonsense.

But let’s consider the tree and the rhizome for a moment, evaluating them simply on their aesthetic merits.

The tree stretches towards the sky for light, and burrows deep into the earth to find water. It has both form and flexibility, trunk and leaves. It is symmetrical. It is strong. Things can be built with its wood. It provides shade. It bears fruit. Children climb it. Birds nest in it.

The rhizome, well… its ability to grow all directions and not be killed by a single cut is pretty useful. There are a few rhizomes, like potatoes and ginger, which I would hate to give up. But in terms of aesthetics, it’s not going to win any beauty prizes. We’re talking about crabgrass here, people! Although the rhizome is certainly an apt analogy for postmodernism, it strikes me as a pretty poor mascot choice. No contest, the tree wins!

Now the only problem with this whole little exercise is that I’m not sure I really want to be chief cheerleader for modernism, or give it a monopoly on the tree. While a neat hierarchical tree is useful for describing science (or church history, for that matter), Biblical trees strike me as wilder and more symbolic. Of course there’s the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis, and the Tree of Life in Revelation whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. And there's that comforting image of the wise man as a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. No, I wouldn’t trade the biblical trees for modernist tree, despite its charming simplicity.

But perhaps a premodern, medieval tree* would do the trick?





Yes, that’s more like it. Much better than a rhizome!

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Teo, T. (2005). The critique of psychology: From Kant to postcolonial theory. New York: Springer Science.

*Tree by Tolkien.