Cogito ergo dumb
"I am a brain, my dear Watson, and the rest of me is a mere appendage."
Sherlock Holmes
by Arthur Conan Doyle
"Wonder rather than doubt is the root of knowledge."
Abraham Joshua Heschel
If you’ve been to the University, you’ve probably played that peculiar and often annoying game, "What’s your major?"Imagine the setting: It’s the first week of freshman year and you’re going through orientation. You visit the bookstore, get your class schedule and set up your dorm room just the way you like it. That evening, you head to the cafeteria, load up your tray and make for the nearest table where you join a gaggle of new classmates. You introduce yourself and inevitably, someone plays the query, "So, what’s your major?"
At this point, you had better be ready with something impressive. Physics or philosophy would be good. Pre-something would also go over well: pre-law or pre-med would demonstrate your ambition as well as your high test scores. Engineering would be impressive, as would mathematics, chemistry, business or neuroscience. All of these disciplines are considered credible, worthy and compelling. All are proof of your substantial intelligence.
If you declare your interest in the humanities however, you’re going to be on thin ice. Language, art and music are all acceptable as fields of study, but are not nearly so impressive. ("Do you want fries with that?" will be the standard prediction of your employment potential.) Clearly, you’re a couple of notches down the totem pole from the big dogs of academia, but you’re still in the game. Obviously, you’re not going to be nominated for a Nobel prize anytime soon, but you’ll probably get invited to a lot of parties all the same.
But whatever you do, make absolutely certain that you don’t reveal that you’re majoring in physical education. This will be a complete non-starter and will generate only an uneasy silence. No one at the table will have any idea what to say. Most will be surprised to hear that a PE major even exists; it's not even clear that you belong at a university in the first place. Inevitably, they will picture you in a sweaty gym suit with a whistle hanging around your neck and a clipboard in your hand. You may have a great bod, but well, that’s as far as it goes; for all practical purposes, you're dead from the neck up.
If you actually are majoring in physical education, be sure to dress it up in more acceptable clothing. Tell people that you’re studying biomechanics, kinesiology or the anatomy of human movement. This will demonstrate your affiliation with physics and medicine, thus providing some measure of credibility. But whatever you do, don’t mention PE.
But why?
The short answer is that PE is the low man on the academic totem pole. It’s not even considered a true discipline and has zero academic cred. If you’re a PE major, you’re sucking hind tit on the fount of human knowledge. You’ll be lucky to get a job at all, much less a date.
origins
Everyone knows that PE is an academic backwater and a dead end, but why should it be so? Why is the study of human physicality so universally dissed? Why do we routinely demote our bodies to the lowest rung of our academic ladder? Do we really think so little of our physical selves?
I have pondered these questions for years and have become more perplexed at every turn. Aren’t our bodies at the very core of who we are? Shouldn’t our bodies have at least equal status with the arts and the sciences? Shouldn’t the ability to manipulate our limbs have equal standing with our ability to manipulate abstract symbols? Where did this distorted bias come from?
After reviewing a host of possible explanations, I’ve come to the conclusion that much of the blame lies squarely with the perpetrator of the mind-body split, Rene Descartes.
Descartes, as you may recall, was a French philosopher, mathematician, scientist and writer in the early seventeenth century. He was a key figure in the scientific revolution and is sometimes described as the "Father of Modern Philosophy."
As a young man, Descartes undertook a quest for knowledge. He pondered the great questions of existence and became determined to get to the ultimate root of philosophy. This was serious business and he resolved to doubt everything so as to get to the core of what was true and real.
He became a radical skeptic and even went so far as to doubt his own physical sensations. After all, he famously mused, there might be an unseen evil demon at work, pumping false sensory information into his brain. How would he ever know? His brain, after all, could be in a vat of liquid, subject to the inputs of a mad operator. There was simply no way to tell.
So, for Descartes, sensation was off the table as a reliable source of information. And since the body was not to be trusted, all that was left was the mind. This became his ultimate touchstone and identity. "I think, therefore I am" he famously declared. The body became irrelevant, except as a life support system for his prodigious feats of cognition.
Descartes' work was profoundly influential in his day and he became an icon of Western civilization. We incorporated his dualistic assumptions into our culture and our institutions. Today we honor the mind and neglect the body. We think, therefore we are.
And so, Descartes is now the biggest man on campus. When we sit around the table in the freshman cafeteria, we’re playing out the implications of his mind-body dualism. We honor the students of the mind and devalue those who study the body. We accept a ranking system handed to us centuries ago, a system that now appears increasingly distorted, archaic and unhealthy.
consequences
Unfortunately, there are profound consequences to our Cartesian value system. When we put the body at the bottom of our academic hierarchy, we should not be surprised to find a sedentary population completely out of touch with their own bodies and their physicality. We should not be surprised to find an epidemic of physical apathy and disease.
The values of the university cascade downwards to the rest of our educational system. High schools mimic colleges, elementary schools mimic high schools. And so, the body becomes devalued across the board. If resources are tight and something needs to be cut, PE is always the first to go. Test scores are vital, but the body is expendable.
This ranking system plays out all across the health and medical landscape. Most of our modern lifestyle diseases–heart disease, diabetes, depression and obesity–are highly preventable. And yet, we take almost no preemptive action. Instead, we wait for physical conditions to grow into full-blown diseases and then hand the problem off to the big-brain Cartesians at the top of the pyramid. When they succeed, we heap praise upon their heroic intelligence, but when they fail, we write it off as an inexplicable social problem.
The tragic irony is that Cartesian dualism has been soundly refuted by 100 years of solid research into mind-body relationships. We now know with certainty that the mind and body are intimately related to one another. The relationship is complementary and influence is reciprocal. Separation is an illusion. The conversation between tissue and cognition is constant and comprehensive. The mind drives the body and the body drives the mind.
Antonio Damasio put it this way in Descartes’ Error xvi - xvii
"The human brain and the rest of the body constitute an indissociable organism, integrated by means of mutually interactive biochemical and neural regulatory circuits (including endocrine, immune, and autonomic neural components)...The organism interacts with the environment as an ensemble: the interaction is neither of the body alone nor of the brain alone...The physiological operation that we call mind is derived from the structural and functional ensemble rather than from the brain alone: mental phenomena can be fully understood only in the context of an organism’s interacting in an environment."
Because of the tight interrelationship between mind and body, it is folly to put one above the other. Our academic pyramid is built on flawed Cartesian assumptions. Mind and body ought to be studied and enjoyed in equal proportion, as yin and yang. Rather than a totem pole with hard science on top and PE the bottom, we ought to imagine a circle with mind and body in intimate conversation with one another.
no dumb jocks
The conventional academic hierarchy makes even less sense now that the "dumb jock" myth is finally being laid to rest. Hundreds of research studies have now proven beyond question that vigorous physical movement is good for the brain and in turn, intelligence. Far from being dumb, people who move their bodies do better across a wide span of cognitive challenges. Movement makes us smarter.
People continue to cling to the "dumb jock" myth of course, but the prejudice is getting weaker every day. We now know that physical movement promotes neurogenesis, the birth of new brain cells, and synaptogenesis, the growth of neural connections. Vigorous movement also promotes the production of BDNF ("brain derived neurotrophic factor"), sometimes described as "miracle grow for the brain." Exercise also reduces the corrosive effects of stress hormones, which in turn preserves the function of the hippocampus, the brain’s essential memory center. (For a comprehensive review of the beneficial effects of movement/exercise, see Spark by John Ratey.)
So, far from being dumb, it’s beginning to appear that, all other things being equal, jocks actually have a mental edge over their sedentary counterparts. Eventually, we will be forced to readjust our stereotypes. We might even suppose that an opposing phrase will begin to take hold in the popular lexicon. Perhaps we'll start talking about "dumb intellectuals" and ridicule their sedentary, aphysical lifestyles.
alternative philosophies
As I ponder the long reach of Cartesian dualism and its pathological effects on human health, I often wonder how different our world would be if Descartes had been an athlete, a dancer or a martial artist. Instead of doubting his senses, he would have learned to trust and sharpen them. His attention would have gone out into the world and the environment. In turn, his philosophical writings would have been more integrative. He would have emphasized relationship, not division. Ultimately, this would have been reflected in our culture and in turn, the health of the human body.
And so I imagine myself as a coach to the young Rene, getting him out of his shoes and out into the land. I’d have him run the trails and climb the mountains of Europe. I’d teach him to develop his sensory capabilities. I'd give him lots of multi-plane movement to stimulate fresh connections in his nervous system. I’d get him out of his head and into his body. I'd drag him out of the library and into the open air. I'd make him put down his notebook and go for a run. I'd help him see the magic of human physicality and exuberance.
It was not inevitable that Descartes would mistrust the body and choose to identify with the mind; there were other options. Given a different life experience or a creative coach, he might have come to an entirely different conclusion: "I feel, therefore I am," (Accipio ergo sum.) "I wonder, therefore I am," (Admiror ergo sum.) "I dance, therefore I am," (Chorea ergo sum.) "I play, therefore I am." (Adludo ergo sum.) "I move, therefore I am," (Agilis ergo sum.) "I create, therefore I am," (Aedifico ergo sum.) or "I love, therefore I am. (Amo ergo sum.)
I am physical, therefore I am
So, maybe it's time for another look at "What's your major?" Instead of accepting our inferior status at the back of the academic bus, maybe it's time to stand up for the human body and an integrative course of study. Maybe it's time to challenge the status quo and insist on having a voice in the conversation. Ask the Cartesians how their massive brains are going to function without a healthy, active body. If they give you an evasive, abstracted reply, drag them away from their computers and get them out into the open air. Get them out of their shoes and back into their bodies. Give them some vigorous movement and then have another conversation.
Chances are, their thoughts will become a touch more integrated and comprehensible.
And who knows? They might even change majors.
