Reconstruction and Adaptation [An Anthropologist on Mars part 1]

Oliver Sacks is probably one of the most recognized Neurologist, unfortunately he died in 2015.  He didn't die without creating a legacy though now only his achievements, but the books he wrote.  One of these books is titles An Anthropologist on Mars.  This title really got me, why would an anthropologist me on mars?  How would they survive?  Well these are question I feel Oliver Sacks wants you to ask yourself.  In order to understand this more I read the preface to this book.  The book as a whole is comprised of a bunch of different case studies all with a similar theme.  What is this theme though?

Adaptation.

Oliver Sacks introduces his book with a story about himself.  He explains that as he is writing this book he is using his left hand, even though he is right handed.  This was because of an injury to his right shoulder.  He explains how this new lifestyle with a dominant left hand gets easier every day, but there was some learning curves.  Now Sacks walks differently, and developed different patterns to what he is used to, in a way he created a different identity.  He then explains that some adaptations are deliberate, while some are through trial and error, but most occur by themselves, unconsciously.

"Defects, disorders, diseases, in this sense can play a paradoxical role, by bringing out latent powers, developments, evolutions, forms of life, that might never be seen, or even be imaginable, in their absence.  It is the paradox of disease, in this sense, its "creative" potential, that forms the central theme of this book."  This quote is when I started to understand the title of that book.  The idea of an anthropologist on mars in almost a contradiction, but what creative ways can the brain problem solve this contradiction to make it work.  For example the preface explains that blind and deaf children achieve what other children can do in a different way.  They learn to see and hear without the standard ability to.  That is what the brain of the anthropologist must adapt to do.  They must learn to become an anthropologist on mars, they must adapt.

In this book we will discover stories of people with altered conditions, and how they made survival possible with them.  The power of reconstruction and adaptation is going to be an interesting one.  The brain is the most  "most incredible thing in the universe" for multiple reasons, and this book contains some of them.  Everyone creates their own world in their brains and their perception of reality is different depending on multiple factors.  That's why it's important to study everyone individually and try to understand their inner thoughts and world.  It is impossible to understand a person just on observation of behavior from the outside.  That is why each of these case studies are important to understanding the adaptation these people made based on their perceptions of reality.

As I proceed forward into the world of neuroscience literature I will be paying attention to how a neuroscientist writes and thinks.  The first story that I will read is called The Case of the Colorblind Painter.

Work Cited

Sacks, Oliver. An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales. New York: Knopf, 1995. Print.