Oliver Sacks on Humans and Myth-making | Big Think

Oliver Sacks on Humans and Myth-making
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Humans naturally create stories and narratives, says Oliver Sacks.
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Oliver Sacks:
Oliver Sacks is a psychiatrist and neurologist best known for his collections of case histories from the far borderlands of neurological experience, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and An Anthropologist on Mars, in which he describes patients struggling to live with conditions ranging from Tourette's syndrome to autism, parkinsonism, musical hallucination, epilepsy, phantom limb syndrome, schizophrenia, retardation, and Alzheimer's disease.
In 1966, Dr. Sacks began working as a consulting neurologist for Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx, a chronic care hospital where he encountered an extraordinary group of patients, many of whom had spent decades in strange, frozen states, like human statues, unable to initiate movement. He recognized these patients as survivors of the great pandemic of sleepy sickness that had swept the world from 1916 to 1927, and treated them with a then-experimental drug, L-dopa, which enabled them to come back to life. They became the subjects of his book Awakenings, which later inspired a play by Harold Pinter and the Oscar-nominated feature film called Awakenings.
In July of 2007, Sacks was appointed Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center, and he was also designated the university's first Columbia University Artist. Sacks Latest book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (2007), was has been Revised and Expanded in a new edition that was released in September of 2008.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Question: Is the human brain predisposed to create myths?
Oliver Sacks: Yeah. First I would say that the human brain or the human mind is disposed to create stories or narratives. Children love stories, make up stories.
Jerome Bruner, a great psychologist, has spoken of two modes of thinking. One is to create narratives, one is to create paradigms or explanations or models. And of course some of these will come together because then you want to have a story which explains.
We all come into the world and human beings are evolved into a mysterious world and had to wonder where they came from, how the world came from, what are the stars doing.
And in the absence of better explanations, I think, supernatural explanations sort of come to mind. There must have been some great figure who created the universe and who perhaps is keeping an eye on us now.
And say before 1859 and before [Charles] Darwin, before The Origin of Species was published, there was no natural explanation of how different animals and plants had come into being, let alone human beings.
I think Freeman Dyson, a great physicist who once wrote, “I am a practicing Christian but not a believing one.”
So I think my parents were practicing Jews, but not believing ones. I don’t think that belief is a particularly strong thing in Judaism. But my mother was also botanically inclined. I grew up in a Darwinian world, and I was very startled when I came to the [United] States and found that millions, millions and millions of people didn’t believe in evolution. I still am profoundly perplexed.
To proclaim that one doesn’t believe in the evolution, I think, what would label one as an idiot in most of the civilized world; certainly, in Europe.
And again, growing up in Europe, it was our feeling the world would become more and more secular. And now, of course, as the world stands by mad, dangerous fundamentalism on all sides; who would have thought that the 21st Century would dissolve into religious conflict?
I’m a sort of quiet, old, Jewish atheist. I’m not a militant atheist. I don’t sort of argue about things like [Richard] Dawkins and [Daniel] Dennett and Sam Harris. I quite like their books, but I’m not militant by nature, and I’m not very argumentative by nature. And if people want to believe, well, then that’s their business.
What concerns me is when belief is used to influence and corrupt educational politics. And that seems to me monstrous that creationism, or so-called intelligent design, is thought next to evolution or instead of it. And I do think it is almost is a form of madness.
Question: Is all religion madness?
Read the full transcript at bigthink.com/videos/oliver-sa...

[@ultraphobic69]

Listening to Oliver I have this overwhelming feeling of loss. He seemed like such a gentle, caring man completely at peace with himself. Would love to have spent one night talking to this man

[@podfunk]

RIP Ollie, but we still have your books. A big thanks for them.

[@knoxdeangelo9960]

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[@armanijulius8112]

@Knox Deangelo instablaster =)

[@knoxdeangelo9960]

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[@armanijulius8112]

@Knox Deangelo happy to help xD

[@Neueregel]

RIP Oliver Sacks, (9 July 1933 - 30 August 2015) was a British neurologist and writer. He was Professor of Neurology at New York University

[@thembluetube]

''to proclaim that one doesn't believe in evolution would label one as an idiot in most of the civilized world' - Love Sacks.

[@reaganwiles_art]

I was reared in a household by parents who were not college graduates but who accepted evolution as a matter of course; when I discovered that not only minimally educated people denied evolution but also many with advanced degrees did deny it I was not only shocked and disconcerted but afraid, because one cannot debate with irrational minds (in the USA)

[@archiebunker4108]

Evolution does exist on the micro level but it is full of holes.

[@jokerxxx354]

@@archiebunker4108 I think you and people like you should receive mental care. Of course evolution is not complete theory, but it obviously is consistent with all the evidence.

[@archiebunker4108]

@@jokerxxx354 Where is the evidence for transitional species? None found. Only hoaxes.

[@ibendiben]

@@archiebunker4108 You are, you silly, or are you an exact copy of your dad and his dad and of Adam? Why do you have a tailbone? Feeling devilish? Who do you think Kaïn made love to? His mother? His sister? A monkey? Would you follow orders from a man dictating to kill your child (Isaac)? Are you fond of a man that purposely has his son tortured and killed to prove a point? You think a leader should let all people that don't praise him burn in hell? Aren't all tirants following His example?

[@ryecatcher1366]

The true greatness of humanity. To act with compassion without the threat of eternal damnation. If there is a creator then I'm sure he will take this paradigm into consideration. What a guy. A true human being. Just come across his work and I'm enthralled. Unique. Rest easy

[@somedudeintheinterweb8665]

Bible god

[@sweetmetalchic]

thank you mister sacks

[@GuppyPal]

Just want to say, I love Oliver Sacks and his books, and I love your channel BigThink.

[@jjhjjff]

The questions presented to Dr. Sacks here are, at best, misplaced and biased. Whoever formulated these questions was trying so hard to get Dr. Sacks to speak, not neutrally, but ill of religion. I am reading one of Dr. Sacks' books, and I can confidently say that although he was an atheist, he wasn't anything like Dawkins and his fanatics; he was much more profound and had a much better grasp of the human condition. RIP, Dr. Sacks.

[@thyran]

In the last decade, he gradually became more embittered by the religious right trying to push their anti-science and anti-intellectual ideas.

[@falconelly]

Confused when the remark "Belief is their business" was included. Perhaps all belief in context has an inkling of fundamentalism and belief with religion is by definition only the business of a supposed God and not the business of the believer.

[@aimeemacdn]

Thamk you

[@abhinayjakhar5360]

thank you grandfather. ocean of wisdom

[@grinfacelaxu]

❤religious feeling for nature...

[@Ayat78]

One of my favourite humans

[@caiusiv4616]

Thank you.

[@wana3667]

their is a movie called awaken its really good its about him

[@anistissaoui]

Awakenings* same name as the book

[@KeithOtisEdwards]

I think that Oliver Sacks (b.1933) and The Amazing Randi (James Randi, b. 1928) are the same person.

[@alienkishorekumar]

That same way religion was made. RIP Sacks. You are the best!

[@junevandermark952]

To make Oliver's point, this quote came from Stephen Hawking. "In 1985, I attended a conference on cosmology at the Vatican in Rome. The gathering of scientists had an audience with Pope John Paul II. He told us that it was okay to study the workings of the universe, but we should not ask questions about its origin, for that was the work of God."

[@eddieking2976]

Will definitely purchase one of his books. Maybe the one on hallucinations. Actually I like Richard Dawkins books as well as Lawrence krauss's books. I could care less if that makes me a militant atheist.

[@astroglide420]

The 21st didn't dissolve into religious conflict. It still hasn't risen out of the mire of Islam.

[@caramason56]

❤️

[@kristine6996]

My life isn't a story in its origine it became a story during the hindsight of things... Einstein got a lot of help from his wife. So this is a story created in a man's world.

[@HkFinn83]

Wtf

[@lokekennee8850]

Yea yea it’s all women we get it, if you wanna emphasise that point go write a book now before the men do.

[@HkFinn83]

The man who mistook his patients for a literary career.

[@Ayat78]

He’s books are wonderful, his patients also think/thought so too

[@miss2tone]

Was a professor of neurology not psychiatry.

[@francoramos3111]

Dayna Tausig He was a professor of neurology AND psychiatry

[@deboragrion]

also a professor of psychiatry!

[@dobishs]

Now I understand how Oliver was okay with doing experiments on his patients although there were some bad outcomes. He valued research just a little more than the people he experimented on.

[@henk-3098]

What a ridiculous statement

[@popvinnik]

See how believing in god turns one into an idiot?

[@elifield7149]

Evolution does not explain the creation or beginning of the universe. What was before nothing?

[@lokekennee8850]

And religion does? Humans wrote the Bible and we can literally write anything to fill in gaps.

[@astroglide420]

The 21st didn't dissolve into religious conflict. It still hasn't risen out of the mire of Islam.