Could Neuroscience Be the New Apollo?

I’ve spent the past few days reveling in various NASA-related media in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11’s successful landing on the moon, which occurred yesterday.  (Strongly recommended is the recent documentary In the Shadow of the Moon, as well as the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, and also this website–although it’s a little late for the awesome, and surprisingly suspenseful, real-time aspect of it.)  I’m not going to try too hard to restate the enduring significance of America’s manned space program, about which far more eloquent writers than I have offered much.  But I could not shake, this past week, the persistent question in the back of my head: could neuroscience be the new Apollo?

Now, before considering that question, it’s wise to stress an obvious difference.  The space program was, for the most part, an endeavor of applied science, in contrast to the class of basic scientific investigation that modern neuroscience belongs to.  (Which is not to discount the farther-off promise of applied neuroscience, whether in the case of curing psychiatric or neurodegenerative disease or allowing locked-in patients to communicate and potentially regain mobility).  The commonality for me rests in the ability of each, one demonstrated, the other hypothetical, to inspire awe and transcendence while nevertheless remaining rooted in naturalistic science and entirely physical methods.

Before Darwin, of course, the locus of the great debate between science and religion was in the question of Earth’s relation to the rest of the universe.  The truth is that our planet is but one of several revolving around a star that is, itself, insignificant among the uncountable multitude of others.  This conclusion conflicted with our deeply held intuitions about the primacy of our experience.  Perhaps even moreso than Neil Armstrong’s famous words, the most indelible contribution of the Apollo program might be the striking “Earthrise” photograph taken by the crew of Apollo 8.  It starkly reveals the reality that everything we know and cherish resides on a tiny blue marble dwarfed by the immensity of the universe.  This realization, however, was undaunting, as it was paired with inspiring proof of the power of mankind’s ambition when paired with our capacity for scientific reason.

As some have observed, neuroscience has the potential to similarly threaten deeply held beliefs.  Most neuroscientists and philosophers believe that the maturation of our field will yield an understanding of how our intellect, our imagination, and our morality are the products of a physical system, that there is no “ghost in the machine.”  The implications for religious dogma about the soul are obvious, but, as Paul Bloom has argued, we’re all wired to find this conclusion somewhat shocking and unsettling.

At the same time, neuroscience seems to captivate the public in much the same way as did the early years of manned space flight.  This has, at the moment, troubling consequences for those of us interested in the quality of scientific journalism, but I believe it could pay off in the long-run.  We can only benefit if the quest to uncover the nature of the mind is viewed as an grand achievement of reason rather than as a duplicitous assault of secularism.  Neuroscience is also helped along by the air of glitzy cutting-edge technology, although I fully assume that the current fMRI machines and methods will one-day seem like the Mercury spacecraft: crude progenitors of the true marvels to come.

There are other differences, of course.  Neuroscience is a diffuse field, and there’s not a clear, singular goal like landing on the moon.  Understanding consciousness, perhaps, but the difference is we don’t even understand what that’s going to look like.  And there are no political or nationalistic implications.  It should be obvious that I don’t mean the comparison literally.  Nevertheless, in terms of what the undertakings meant for the relationship between scientific enterprise and the existential truths we hold dear, I think there are clear parallels.

Mankind has always looked outwards; we have always been driven to exploration, and we have always looked towards the heavens.  At the same time, though, we have looked inwards and obsessed over our true nature.  Before Apollo came Magellan and Columbus, to say nothing of the first homo sapiens who decamped from Africa for the fertile crescent.  And likewise, the history of literature and philosophy is one of struggling with the source of wisdom and of the passions.  Neuroscience will, I believe, one day represent the pinnacle of this latter project.

I, for one, hope that the exciting work my colleagues are doing will one day be for others what the accomplishments of NASA are for me today: a source of beauty and inspiration.