Neuromythography

The Architecture of the Soul

Everybody Is Interested In Pigeons

3 min read
It is often suggested to me that I should scale back the ambitions of Neuromythography. Focus on a particular area in order not to overwhelm people, so that my ideas might be more easily accepted. I am often reminded that as Charles Darwin circulated his Origin of Species manuscript, one highly-educated reviewer offered him similar advice...

Don’t get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.

It is often suggested to me that I should scale back the ambitions of neuromythography. Focus on a particular idea in order not to overwhelm people, so that my ideas might be more widely disseminated. Dumb down the vocabulary, so that I might better appeal to a broader audience. I am often reminded that as Charles Darwin circulated his Origin of Species manuscript, one highly-educated reviewer wrote to another:

It seemed to me that to put forth the theory without the evidence would do grievous injustice to his views, & to his twenty years of observation & experiment. At every page I was tantalised by the absence of the proofs. All kinds of objections, & possibilities rose up in the mind, & it was fretting to think that the author had a whole array of facts, & inferences from the facts, absolutely essential to the decision of the question which were not before the reader. It is to ask the jury for a verdict without putting the witnesses into the box. One part of the public I suspect, under these circumstances, will reject the theory from recalling some obvious facts apparently at variance with it, & to which Mr. Darwin may nevertheless have a complete answer, while another part of the public will feel how unsatisfactory it is to go into the theory when only a fragment of the subject is before them, & will postpone the consideration of it till they can study it with more advantage. The more original the view, the more elaborate the researches on which it rests, the more extensive the series of facts in Natural History which bear upon it, the more it is prejudiced by a partial survey of the field which keeps out of sight the larger part of the materials.

Charles urged the publication of Mr. D’s [Darwin’s] observations upon pigeons, which he informs me are curious, ingenious, & valuable in the highest degree, accompanied with a brief statement of his general principles.4 He might then remark that of these principles the phenomena respecting the pigeons were one illustration, & that a larger work would shortly appear in which the same conclusions would be demonstrated by examples drawn from the wide world of nature.

This appears to me to be an admirable suggestion. Even if the larger work were ready it would be the best mode of preparing the way for it. Every body is interested in pigeons. The book would be reviewed in every journal in the kingdom, & would soon be on every table. The public at large can better understand a question when it is narrowed to a single case of this kind than when the whole varied kingdom of nature is brought under discussion at the outset. Interest in the larger work would be roused, & good-will would be conciliated to the subsequent development of the theory in all its bearings. It would be approached with impartiality,—not to say favour, & would appeal to the large public which had been interested by the previous book upon pigeons.

Darwin published Origin of Species anyway, and I am publishing my work on this site anyway. Go big or go home.

References:

Letter From Whitwell Elwin to John Murray, 3 May 1859, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2457A.xml

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