An Anthropologist on Mars
Paradoxical portraits of seven neurological patients, including a surgeon consumed by the compulsive tics of Tourette's syndrome unless he is operating; an artist who loses all sense of color in a car accident, but finds new creative power in black & white; & others.
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What Hacker News says
- At the end of the day, it's the "Is your green my green?" question and is unknowable.
You cannot describe something that someone lacks or has a substantially different subjective experience with, truly.
The best we can do is show that the effects of your seeing green are the same as mine (biologically, behaviorally, etc).
If you're curious about the broader subject, would highly recommend reading An Anthropologist on Mars.
- This reminds me of "An Anthropologist On Mars" by Oliver Sacks. The first story of seven is of a painter who gets in a car accident. He develops Cerebral achromatopsia[0] and loses the ability to see and think in terms of any colors other than basically a gray-scale. It was this story (among the others in the book) that helped me become aware of just how interconnected and bizarre the human brain is.
- I highly recommend Oliver Sacks' books. I've read "An Anthropologist On Mars" and "The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat". In both, he talks about several people who had various brain injuries and their strange consequences.
I love his writing: he simultaneously gives a detailed analysis and a very humanistic perspective.
- The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons : Sam Keam - http://samkean.com/thetaleoftheduelingneurosurgeons.html Quite liked the writing style - neuroscience book written in a story format
Other good books in similar genre
An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales : Oliver Sacks http://www.amazon.com/An-Anthropologist-Mars-Seven-Paradoxic...
The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science: Norman Doidge - http://www.amazon.com/The-Brain-That-Changes-Itself/dp/14915...
- As long as we're discussing Dr. Sacks, I just read his short story (part of same-titled book) "An Anthropologist on Mars." The titles derive from Dr. Grandin Temple's perception of being high-functioning autist in academia/husbandry; she is best-known for re-designing slaughterhouse shutes, able to "see" as animals do.
Her entire story left me, a spectrum-kiddo, grasping for what "real" even is.
The thing that struck me as her "most unhuman" aspect [but with which I can relate, self-inflictedly]: Dr. Grandin doesn't understand most human social customs, so from a young age vowed to never enter into a romantic relationship.
She considers this entirely a waste of time, and lives to work.
Highly recommend Dr. Sacks many books/collections, may he RIP:
[I'm just a fleshbag]: Man Who Mistook Wife for Hat
[LGB / growing up]: Uncle Tungsten
[Parkinsonianisms]: Awakenings
- One example can be found in Oliver Sacks' "An Anthropologist on Mars", which has a chapter about a blind man named Virgil who regained his sight in adulthood and it took him a long time to make sense of visual stimuli.
