The Mind Lives on the Heart

“CATASTROPHE AND MIRACLE are the two poles of our bipolar imagination, and both are enveloped in the folds of contemporary science.”

“Apocalyptic fiction rehearses stories of the end of the world brought on by scientific malfeasance and tragic hubris, while science journalism touts the end of human suffering through cloning and stem-cell research.”

“When Blaise Pascal wrote “Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point” (The heart has its reasons that reason cannot know), he couldn’t have known that the invention of organ transplantation in the 20th century would reverse the primacy of the heart over the head and occasion a new definition of death.”

“The miraculous developments in transplant medicine threaten bodily integrity and transform some people into a storehouse of parts. The historian Melvin Kranzberg captures this ambiguity in the first of his six laws of technology, “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.””

“During the first half of the 20th century, physics was the science most likely to challenge philosophy with the destabilizing effects of Einsteinian relativity, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and the atomic bomb; since then, advances in biology and medical technology have become the dominant scientific framework within which to confront our oldest binaries — self/other, life/death, and mind/body have all become increasingly troubled by developments in immunology, organ transplantation, genetic therapy, and neuroscience.”

“The heart is a pump, contracting ceaselessly 100,000 times a day; it makes the machine jump and dance; it is the seat of love. It is nothing more than a muscle and nothing less than the locus of human identity and human experience.”

“But the heart has been displaced and dispossessed: “The heart is dead, long live the brain.””