ASEBL Journal – Volume 11 Issue 1, January 2015
with such fallibilism to avoid reductionist charges of determinism or epiphenomenology. How then to explore the connections, the overlaps, between animal neurology
(here, meant to include homo sapiens) and rhythm in poetry with an ear toward patterns and rhythm in lullabies, a pattern that stretches back to the earliest recorded ones
of Sumerian and Babylonian culture? Mixing methods requires a lengthier explanation. But all of this comes with a fallibilistic caveat, as when attempting to apply fMRI
scans and genetic information to human activity. As Deacon says, “Consider functional brain imaging, such as positron emission tomography (PET) or functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI). (I)t would be a serious mistake to imagine that the function in question is in any sense ‘located’ in the identified ‘hot spots’, or to believe that
a metabolic ‘snapshot’ would be in any sense a simple correlate to what is involved
even at a gross level in the performance of that activity” (2012: 176). With this fallible
mindset firmly in place, we may begin to proceed. For the most part.
Moving Toward the Human
One question often lacking in the discussion of art is, Why does art even exist? If human activity has been shaped for aeons back into our primate past – long before language – by evolution and natural selection, why would humans engage in such a timeintensive endeavor, spending valuable time and energy on the creation, production and
consumption of artistic work? This is quite a different question than asking whether
science has anything at all to say about art. The pushing apart of science and the arts
has been a principle notion since post-modernism’s early foundation. For example, in
1979 Jean-Francois Lyotard described the incommensurability of ‘language games’
between science and narrative,xii saying, “It is therefore impossible to judge the existence or validity of narrative knowledge on the basis of scientific knowledge and vice
versa: the relevant criteria are different” (1984: 26). This line of reasoning (echoing
Wittgenstein) runs through the interstices of post-modernism, post-structuralism, social constructivism and the updated post-theory (or whatever it calls itself these
days)xiii, though Lyotard here is not calling the incommensurability a positive thing.
Rather, he notes that it is merely a symptom of postmodern/poststructural thought.
Joseph Carroll addresses this sentiment seen often in the ‘post-X’ movements in relation to science, saying, “In the move to post-theory, one grants the general validity of
evolution…but also then declares that it is irrelevant…that it alters not one jot the way
we would read this or that text or describe this or that historical cultural moment…In
reality then, ‘post-theory’ is just the latest incarnation of cultural constructivism”
(2011: 68).
If, as in social constructivi ʹ