Proposition: Science and Language Are Components of a Mother Process Used by the Brain To Construct Testable Models of Reality.

About four weeks ago, I started to get serious about organizing my thoughts for this short presentation. As had been the case for hundreds of times over the years, I was faced with the usual decisions about whether I’d talk about chemistry, life sciences or medicine and at what level. What would be appropriate for the expected audience? And it suddenly struck me that I needed to talk about a fresh subject (for me), one that has been bothering me in one form or another and often subliminally for more than 20 years: Americans must begin to introduce Science to their children in the same way that they introduce English, early and naturally as an integral part of the common culture. We must stop teaching Science as a special add-on, an esoteric or arcane subject that only the select (almost priestly) few can master.

Noam Chomsky and his disciples have popularized (not without controversy) a view of language as being innate to the structure of the brain. I think that what we have come to call the scientific method is just as innate to the baby brain – - early in her introduction to the world, the baby is testing her environment, making inferences about it, testing the inferences and adjusting her view or adopting a new one. Long before she can speak, the baby has an elaborate model of reality, and is testing it and revising it constantly. Ask any mother!

The crux of my proposal is that the baby should be introduced to Science close to the time that English is introduced. We should not wait until the English language is firmly in place, to explore the scientific method explicitly and formally. (In practice, and perhaps unknowingly and unintentionally, we really do not wait completely, but we do not acknowledge and optimize the practice.) I maintain that the ways the brain treats key science and language concepts are similar and the baby uses similar (if not identical) regions of its developing brain in processing them. The way that the brain deals with science and language concepts is really just a sub-set of a Mother Process of high survival value – making sense out of, or developing a model for, behaviors with high survival value in a complex and threatening world. We assume that language has that high survival value and indeed, research has shown, that at one month, the baby is processing the English language at a much higher level than the most adoring and high-expectations mother ever dreamed possible even five years ago. To the point, the baby’s brain begins to specialize for language processing by age one month because words and not random noise, activates the left-brain hemisphere and the prefrontal cortex, resembling word activation in the adult. How the Mother Process I propose works is a question mark, but we will explore some of its dimensions throughout the following.

 
Why we must Introduce Science Early in the Infant’s Education.

I used must in introducing this topic of early science education. Why the imperative? It comes from studying the national news and opinion polls. For example, the morning I had my epiphany about this subject, some of the relevant articles in the first two pages of a respected national news paper described: South Koreans cloning a dog; Wall Street stock analysts pooh-poohing the peak oil hypothesis (that morning the price of light crude oil was $66.00); White House aides supporting the President’s view that intelligent design be give equal place alongside “Darwinism” in science classes on evolution in the public school system (not even ardent ID proponents recommend that); and a prominent industrialist supporting a high level White House aide who removed cause-effect statements from scientific advisory documents on global warming because the subject was a matter of uncertainty and debate, and therefore was not “sound” science.

The articles ranged in their treatment of science content from, “just-OK” to woefully uninformed, with a few of the articles having a decidedly anti-science bent. That’s about average for science reporting in the mass media today. Perhaps such reporting contributes to a public attitude of distrust and antipathy toward science and scientists that is widespread, cutting across social and economic classes in an unusual way we haven’t previously experienced (or noticed) in our country. It has the usual effects, of course – cuts in science funding, decreased graduates in science and engineering (60,000 per year compared to China’s and India’s hundreds of thousands), loss of the lead in key areas of science and engineering (stem cell and cloning work going to Asia and England, and engineering the infrastructure of China and India going to the Swiss, French and Germans). Some wags might attempt to salvage some relief from this bad news in the apparent humor in the South Koreans cloning a dog – it’s not funny, the dog was deliberately chosen because it has a very tricky reproductive system. Their unqualified success is very bad news indeed for any who attempt to suppress certain areas of science anywhere in the world. But the real bad news concerns the whole subject and it affects us all. It relates to the way difficult decisions are made in a complex society. In a republic or a democracy, we expect difficult decisions to be made after an informed debate among the citizen-stakeholders (broadly defined), in which participants use a common language. To the extent that they do not or cannot use a common language, discontent and then often rage and turmoil are the result of decision-making. And too often the penultimate result is a resistive and unreasonable reaction that nullifies the debate. The issues that science and its highly trained practitioners raise, are among the most difficult and important society faces. These science issues should be resolved just like issues related to business and the law, for example, through the aforementioned informed debate with important input by, but without deference given to, experts. Contrast that with what often happens today regarding contentious science issues, in which resolution is achieved through deference to, and controlling intervention by, scientific or religious authority. Invariably resolutions achieved in this way are socially and culturally divisive, economically and scientifically disastrous, and religiously and ethically inconclusive.

 
My History Led Me to the Proposition That Science Can and Must Be Taught Early.

These are pretty strong words, and I owe you some of the history that influenced my views, which developed in over 40 years as a scientist, research administrator, program director, and reviewer for the National Institutes of Mental Health. I came to Tech from a small high school in a small town in the northern part of the LP, and was supported by a scholarship and part time jobs. I also had full time NSF fellowships for doctoral work at Illinois and postdoctoral study at Stanford with Henry Taube (later a Nobel Laureate). Without government support, my schooling would have taken much longer and have been a much harder slog.

Vivid memories of Tech include small classes, dedicated professors, snow, copper mines, and the bar at the Douglas House. Professors that I vividly recall are mostly those from my chemistry major, including: Mike Berry, a gifted, kindly fuss-budget who knew which details could be ignored; Frank Whitmore with whom I carried out senior research and who stressed that chemistry was an important discipline but that division into physical, analytical, organic, and biological sub-disciplines were not too important; and AJ Doane who taught chemistry lab like it was a unit operations course (engineers will know what I mean). Two other impressions, these from non-science courses, are still clear as a bell to me. In my Logic course final exam, I was assigned the defense of a proposition that I disagreed with to my core (and still do), “In an increasingly complex world, the moral man can appeal to authority in making rational decisions”. That I won the debate still bothers me. The second was the delightful economics course taught by Sam Tidwell, a true gentleman who, as I recall, liked neither micro- nor macro-economics and felt that the value of the discipline was its ability to describe how goods and services come to be valued. This was before 1968 when the first Nobel Award in Economics was made. These awards have amply recognized methods for valuation.

I spent most of my professional life at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory as a scientist, the Founding Director of the National Stable Isotopes Resource, and a Deputy Division Leader for Chemistry; and at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine as a Professor of Cell Biology, Chair of Cell Biology, Deputy Director of the Cancer Center, Professor of Neurosciences and Director of the Center for Non-Invasive Diagnosis. In my own scientific and technical work, I participated in a major transformation of magnetic resonance from a high resolution structural and analytical technique used by individual chemists and physicists for the study of small, purified chemical samples placed within the bore of a small magnet. It evolved to a medical diagnostic technique used by large multi-disciplinary teams of chemists, physicists, statisticians, physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, and surgeons to non-invasively study living people (especially their brains) placed within the bore of a huge magnet. My principal contribution to this development was to show that the structural and analytical MR techniques did not need purified samples extracted from (dead) biological samples, but could be accomplished with the intact biological specimen, and eventually with humans. With this technique available, we no longer need to tear a biological system apart, analyze its constituents, and then make inferences about how the intact system worked; we can study the system as it lives and breathes. This has been a huge step in science and medicine.

 
We are now embarked on the serious, objective study of questions like:

   •    Does high-level learning occur on the unconscious level?

   •    Does the brain recognize error or correctness before it becomes conscious?

Both these provocative general questions, the answers to which are provisional yeses, address capabilities that the brain needs in its earliest development (much sooner than language is mastered), if the Mother Process proposed is to be workable. Another capability that the brain needs early for the Mother Process to work is the ability to distinguish self from non-self. To show this, magnetic resonance is not required – some years ago, it was demonstrated that a baby, within a day after birth, could stick out her tongue in response to an adult doing the same.

So we are squarely within the domain of experimental psychology, and the study of infants and children is one of its fascinating domains. The excursion into my research and administrative experiences has relevance to my original proposition. Before we move on to a consideration of the essential role of language in testing models of reality, it is appropriate to point out that my educational experiences in magnetic resonance in medicine are also directly relevant to my proposition.

Early in the development of magnetic resonance in medicine, we had a near-crisis in teaching physicians about the new technique, which they were anxious to explore. In the early stages it was disheartening to see magnetic resonance specialists “educating” physicians across the two chasms of specialty jargon. The near-crisis passed with hard work by all, and there is now an effective series of educational programs. Then into this calm, a paradigm-shifting wave swept in. I was sure it eventually would result in a real educational crisis. A new magnetic resonance modality called functional magnetic imaging, fMRI, was introduced. This is the modality that allows us to study how the brain learns. It began making inroads into experimental psychology soon after it was developed. Initially, I feared that the new wave would sweep in a full-blown crisis in education. In the way these waves work their wonders, experimental psychologists would soon be leading learning experiments in fMRI. Not only were they non-specialists in MR, but they often had minimal backgrounds in the physical sciences. The crisis never came; the psychologists had an attitude! And what a wonderful attitude it was! They came like babies with new toys, “How does this work? What can I do with it? What are its limits?” Soon, very soon, I heard previously fMRI-naïve experimental psychologists delivering thoughtful lectures on the subject, and providing insightful critiques on fMRI techniques in NIH study sections. What facilitated the educational process was a remarkable lack of embarrassment about initial ignorance and apparent absence of turf questions. The experience left me with an old phrase that echoes in unguarded moments, “And the babes shall lead them”. Now we come back to consider why language is necessary in the testing of reality.

 
Language and Testing Models of the Real World.

The ability to test models of the real world has obvious survival value. Where does language fit into this? Nearly all of us would agree that language and attendant socialization make life more meaningful and interesting, but does it have survival value? We would all agree that it does, but might disagree about why it does. It seems to me that there are at least two levels of enhanced survivability inherent in language as applied to reality testing:

   •    Confirmation of self. One needs confidence and a compass in exploring reality. Everybody has heard these words at some time in life, “I can’t believe my eyes? Did you see that?”

   •    Adjustment and improvement of individual reality models through sharing of models and value judgments derived from them. Are all gray hairy beasts with tusks predators of man? Should only round seeds be planted on the west slope of a mountain? How do I find water in hot places with few plants? (Cave paintings and gestures had important, but limited information and emotional content, and did not allow facile juxtaposition of alternative models).

Model and value judgment comparisons are especially important. Because of my belief in this, I have long been fascinated by the reaction of healthy people to subjects with schizophrenia. Most people know something about schizophrenia because of its florid full-blown symptoms, e.g., hearing voices, having visions, and/or living in a world apart. The world has been fascinated by schizophrenia for millennia. Many psychiatrists claim that this owes to its uniquely dehumanizing results. That may be, but I feel that there is a potentially much more potent cause for the fascination – a combined curiosity and fear on a nearly conscious level that the schizophrenic can hear or see or otherwise sense something that we mere mortals cannot. Does their unique model of the world give them special powers? In this context, we note that interest levels in psychedelic drugs are still high worldwide. We also note that, in prior ages, schizophrenic subjects were not thrown into the streets as in our time, but some were revered as seers and visionaries or, more ominously, were feared as witches and warlocks.

 
How Can Science Be Taught before Language Comprehension?

To answer to this question we need to know, what science? Science has become a fuzzy term over the years. We have geoscience, neuroscience, chemistry, physics, and a seemingly endless list. There is even the “sound” science prized by the current White House. What I mean is the scientific method itself, specifically the experimental scientific method that has at its heart the demonstration of cause and effect relationships – it is a process, rather than a language, notably not the Science language that is much bruited about these days. Now I hope the light comes on for those of you who have struggled with the question posed at the beginning of this section – method can precede its articulation.

In fact, it is likely that the scientific method (or its basis) has been encoded in our genes earlier and more firmly than language has been. Some history books talk about the development or evolution of the scientific method. In contrast, I believe that, over time, we discovered an existing method slowly and more slowly learned to articulate it. In this regard, it is noteworthy that Einstein is quoted as saying, “I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational [read language-based] thinking”. (The choice of the words “came upon” is also significant). Einstein understood deeply and intuitively what I’ve been trying for years to understand using language based thinking. Words are so powerful and seductive that sometimes they get in the way of understanding. For example, Aristotle (pre-Chomsky) alleged that men and women had different numbers of teeth and provided learned arguments why this must be so. He never bothered to check the evidence. Inarticulate babies stand in marked contrast. Ever watch a baby exploring his mother’s mouth even to lingering over individual teeth, seemingly counting them.

 
What Kinds of Things Can Infants and Young Children Be “Taught” About Cause and Effect?

What I know about the answers to this question is based partly on a small amount of careful work by others, but is mostly anecdotal and communicated to me by my 18 month-old granddaughter who has about two understandable words in her evolving vocabulary at present. Cassidy is a born pointer, at first she pointed out new features that she recognized in her mother’s face, and later in larger spaces, a new chair or a new or moved painting on the wall, or an old feature that she could finally focus on, like the lights far overhead. Of course, we all joined in the game and named for her the things she pointed to, “Yes, Cassidy”, her grandmother would say, “That’s a chair like the one in your room, but it’s a lot bigger”, making an expanding gesture with her hands in an appropriately loving grandmotherly way. The pointing game, and that’s what it was, soon transformed to an explicit, low-level cause and effect exchange when Cassidy’s mother and grandmother began to tell her stories about the many pictures arrayed in her bedroom and in her dining space (lucky kid, a dining space no less). Soon Cassidy was selecting specific pictures for the story telling to suit her mood, perhaps cued by memories of the tone and meter of the mother’s/grandmother’s voice employed in the different stories.

At about this time (Cassidy’s age ~ 1 yr) her father noticed that Cassidy had become emphatic about pointing at the light switches in every room she came to, and it became more and more difficult to distract her from the switches. She wanted to turn on the light! At some point in development, every child wants to turn on the light, or use the remote to turn on the TV or stereo. (What power, just like Mom and Dad!). Her father took the opportunity to turn this into another cause-effect game, in which all of us participated at one time or another. Cassidy, over time and how she loved the repetition, learned to press the top of the switch to turn on the light by request, and press the bottom to turn it off. Later, she was introduced to a new switch for a fan (whose name she had heard many times), which she activated by pressing the top of the switch in response to a request to turn on the fan. I look forward soon to working with her father in putting together a new cause-effect toy consisting of a telegraph key switch connecting a battery to a choice of a small light, or a motor which does some kind of visible work, or to a heater in a beaker of water. Her father and I will follow her lead, but at minimum she should learn that you need a power source to turn on a light or heat water and move it up a “hill”. The concepts will become clearer and clearer to her as she learns to talk. Later she will be introduced to electrons (which she cannot see) and electricity explicitly (which she can observe the effects of) and how you generate and maintain electrical power. Then with her interest and enthusiasm guiding us, at some point we will introduce magnets and invisible forces on iron filings, and then return to metals and electricity. Somewhere in the progression the Hoover dam will be described while Woody Guthrie sings WPA songs about the Bonneville dam and the Columbia river and electricity in the background.

Obviously, this whole exercise is a work in progress and it is performed under the guiding principles: Follow the child’s interests; Do not get in his way; and Use cause-effect demonstrations that maintain the hands-on participation of the child. An aid in this type of hands on learning is a good dose at bedtime of Richard Scarry’s books on how things work and what people do all day.

 
What Is Accomplished By Teaching Cause and Effect To the Very Young?

At the behavioral level, it seems that there are at least three desirable and expected outcomes: The child maintains an innate drive for testing reality, a drive that is affirmed by the process and supports the child in his perception that the mental modeling and testing of reality is natural and necessary; The core language of science is introduced as it should be, as an integral part of the common culture; and The child accepts that active learning is a natural part of every day life for every one, child and adult alike. The last is an unintended, but a welcome and extremely important, consequence of the process. At some point, the child will ask a question to which the adult in attendance cannot provide the answer. Hopefully, the adult will promptly answer, “I don’t know but I’ll find an answer and we’ll talk about it tomorrow” (or next week, but at a definite time).

At the brain level, I hypothesize that the teaching of cause and effect relationships to the very young will expand and strengthen connections between neurons in critical regions of the brain, and also induce more rapid maturation of those regions. The regions include, but are not limited to, the anterior cingulate gyrus, the frontal lobes, and smaller regions of the parietal association cortices and the temporal and occipital regions. These are areas of the brain that exhibit pronounced activation in fMRI and PET studies of the brain when it is challenged by language and symbol based intelligence tests, by deductive and inductive reasoning problems and by sensory stimuli. They are involved, for example, in sensory perception, language and visual processing, symbol manipulation, decision-making, and other processes one might expect to be involved in model building and testing.

A short digression is in order concerning models of brain function. Until a few years ago, a widely accepted model of the brain allocated specific regions of it to specific functions, e.g., the temporal lobes to processing speech, the occipital lobes to vision, and the prefrontal cortex to “higher functions” including moral judgments. Even mental dysfunctions were assumed to arise from damage to specific brain regions, e.g., for a hundred years of autopsies neuropathologists were engaged in a futile search for the brain “site” of schizophrenia. All this perhaps had its origins in the valuable data obtained about brain function from subjects with brain lesions and accidental damage in specific brain regions. The celebrated case of railroad foreman Phinneas Gage is a notable example. With the advent of functional neuroimaging, the accepted model of brain operation has shifted decisively to the view that all functions are widely distributed – wide-spread circuits become activated by specific challenges to the brain, the more complex the challenge, the more complex and wide-spread the circuits become, although one or more specific regions of the brain may become much more activated than others.

It seems to me that the importance of teaching cause-effect relationships early in a child’s development is important enough to warrant a major R&D effort limited to that task. Beyond that there is the bigger challenge in testing the hypothesis that the Mother Process does indeed have a critical role in the operation and development of the brain.

In conclusion, it is appropriate to stress the expected beneficial effects of the teaching program alone. Early cause- and effect-based teaching should result in a better-informed public (not only about science) that would view life as a continuing learning experience. Better public decisions and a more resilient and innovative economy should also be a direct consequence. For the individuals, such learning would undoubtedly build richer and stronger inter-zonal synaptic connections of the “right “ type that would be likely to survive the drastic synaptic pruning that occurs in the cerebral cortex mainly between 10 and 20 yrs.. Lastly, I suspect that schools today have a difficult time teaching science for the same reasons that they have difficulty teaching foreign languages. Young children can facilely learn both. Neurobiology instructs, “use it early or lose it”.

 
 
                Houghton, September 16, 2005.