Social Pain and Metaphors for Physical Pain

Social rejection hurts. Literally. This is one of those metaphors that has physical reality. No wonder, then, that works of literature dealing with such rejection are full of metaphors for physical pain.

Sylvia Plath, for example, uses painful tastes as a metaphor for rejection:

Jilted

My thoughts are crabbed and sallow,
My tears like vinegar,
Or the bitter blinking yellow
Of an acetic star.

Tonight the caustic wind, love,
Gossips late and soon,
And I wear the wry-faced pucker of
The sour lemon moon.

While like an early summer plum,
Puny, green, and tart,
Droops upon its wizened stem
My lean, unripened heart.

Note we have vinegar, sour, tart. We know each of these as "sharp" tastes. Why sharp? Because sharp is stabbing, causes pain. The other sense mentioned is that of the wind on the skin, described as "caustic." A "caustic wind" is one that is of course a burning wind -- buring being painful, of course. Synonyms are "bitter" and "acid." Vinegar is an acid, of course. So the series of metaphros is maintained.

The fact that social rejection makes one stimulate in the brain the same pathways as are stimulated by actual physical pain allows one to make sense of the consistent use of such metaphors in, for example, poems about social rejection.

Epigenetics

We typically think of Darwinism when discussing genetics and inheritance, but more and more it is becoming obvious that there is Lamarkian epigenetic inheritance as well. Not only are genes heritable, but gene expression patterns. And those gene expression patterns are determined by one's environment. In other words, the environment affects my gene expression patterns, and those gene expression patterns are then inherited by my children. We have known about epigenetics -- particularly DNA methylation (something I was fascinated with when I was actively studying molecular biology in college) -- for a while now, but it has only been recently that much attention has been paid to it. The human genome project seems to have had a huge influence on these developments, since the number of active genes seemed bizarrely small for such a complex organism as human beings. What gives? Well, there are all sorts of regulatory differences,and mong them are epigenetic influences as well.

What does epigenetic inheritance have to do with understanding human nature, evolutionary psychology, and literature? It may be too early to know. But it's never too early to keep an eye out for such research, to be familiar with such effects, to keep abrest of the latest developments. Epigenetics is very important -- we just don't know to what degree, or how it affects human behavior. Yet.

This Is Your Brain on Art

Morgan Meis wonders if it will truly be a sad day when neuroscience allows us to completely understand art? Of course, this begs the question of whether what he is concerned with is at all possible. With 10^10,000 possible brain states per person, I think art may be safe.

Naturalistic Approaches to Culture?

For our readers who are affiliated with an institution of higher education and/or research in Europe, you should consider applying to attendNaturalistic Approaches to Culture? It looks pretty exciting.

I Have a Gut Feeling About this Research's Importance to Literary Studies

It turns out that there is a direct connection between the bacteria in your intestines and learning, memory, and behavior. In other words, to know something in your guts may be more than a mere metaphor. This research suggests that what bacteria are present in your guts affect your psychiatric state. This suggests that some interesting work could be done looking at the way authors represent characters' psychological states and their physical conditions. How many characters have "stomach problems" that affect them and their mental states? Might the linked research lead to our understanding the relation between some specific bacterial cocktails and their psychological affects on their hosts? If so, may we not see this in works of literature?

Don't Analyze Until You See the Whites of Their Eyes

Robin Hanson, an economist who blogs at Overcoming Bias, posts on What the Eyes Say. He points out something I have known for a while, but hardly have at the forefront of thought, which is that humans have "the largest and most visible sclera – the “whites” of the eyes – of any species," which allows us to communicate quite a bit with our eyes. Ah yes, the eyes, which are the windows to our souls. We can communicate direction with a glance. We can give ourselves away with a glance.

How much literature deals with eyes, glances, etc.? A great deal. Volumes worth of literary analysis, I'm sure. Who is ready to write "A Sclerical Analysis of Literature"?

Isabel Behncke: Evolution's gift of play, from bonobo apes to humans