Our crisis of foundations: what Tom Wolfe's novel, among other things, brings to mind

National Review, Dec 13, 2004 by John Derbyshire

MY colleague Jonah Goldberg, speaking at a recent panel discussion in which we were both participating, remarked that modern democracy is sorely in need of a metaphysic. That put me in mind of one of Aldous Huxley's aphorisms. In his 1937 essay "Beliefs," Huxley said, "It is impossible to live without a metaphysic. The choice that is given us is not between some kind of metaphysic and no metaphysic; it is always between a good metaphysic and a bad metaphysic, a metaphysic that corresponds reasonably closely with observed and inferred reality and one that doesn't."

Why am I raising such ethereal matters? In recent days, I have read Tom Wolfe's new novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons. The novel, as you may have heard, deals with an innocent young girl from back-country North Carolina who wins a place at an elite university, where she--or at any rate, her innocence--is destroyed as swiftly, coldly, and thoroughly as a kitten that has wandered onto a busy six-lane expressway. In the last chapter of the novel, titled "The Ghost in the Machine," we see a Charlotte who has finally lost touch with her soul, thereby becoming a well-integrated member of the elite culture. She loves Big Brother ... who in this particular story is a dimwitted college athlete.

This will not be a review of Wolfe's book (which I enjoyed, and recommend to readers with strong stomachs for cold-eyed observations of modern depravity). It is only that the fate of poor Charlotte, and Jonah's remark, and Huxley's apothegm, and the previous book I'd read, which was Roger Penrose's The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe, and a scientific encounter I shall describe in just a moment, all together fired off a train of thought that seemed worth recording.

Tom Wolfe has for some years been nursing an interest in matters metaphysical. Back in 1996 he wrote an article for Forbes ASAP with the title "Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died," centered around some conversations he had been having with young neuroscientists. There are loud echoes of that essay in I Am Charlotte Simmons.

Wolfe's preoccupations embrace three main areas of the human sciences, the first of them being studies of the social behavior of animals. The key name here is Edward O. Wilson, the Harvard biologist whom Wolfe refers to in that Forbes essay as "Darwin II." The fictional university Charlotte attends is, among other things, a place where dominant males--fraternity bluebloods and star athletes--browse freely on the sexual favors of nubile females, as in a chimp colony.

The second area is neuroscience. Charlotte herself takes a course in this subject, giving Wolfe the excuse to insert slabs of it into his novel. Our understanding of brain function has gone much further than most non-scientists realize. Nowhere in that understanding is there any trace of a notion of the conscious self. According to Wolfe, practically no working neuroscientist believes that such a thing exists. The "I" that is the first word of Wolfe's title may, science tells us, be an illusion; and the fate of his heroine suggests that this is indeed so.

The third area that interests Wolfe is genetics. As with brain function, our knowledge of genetics has progressed much further and faster than is commonly known. Indeed, some of the areas in which it is progressing very fast are those where brain function and genetics meet. Here is a random quote plucked from current scientific literature (in this case from the November 22, 2004, issue of The Scientist): "Using PET [a brain-scanning technology], Jon-Kar Zubieta, an assistant professor of psychiatry and radiology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and colleagues found that mutations in COMT [the gene encoding manufacture of an enzyme called catecholO-methyltransferase] increase pain sensitivity by reducing the enzyme's ability to activate the [micro]opioid system." Translation: The brain's response to pain is, at least in part, genetically determined.

So is a great deal else of the human personality. I recently had a visit from a researcher at a prestigious university. He and I had been exchanging e-mails on topics of common interest but had never actually met. This brilliant and engaging young man works in a field called computational genomics. He spends his time trawling through--"data mining"--the 3 billion units of the human genome, trying to figure out how it all works. Plenty has already been figured out, as he eagerly showed me, taking me through some academic websites on my home computer. Genes for human intelligence? "Sure, we have several nailed down, and more are showing up all the time. See here ... and here ..."

SECOND THOUGHTS

I have been interested in these aspects of the human sciences, in a dilettantish way--a Tom Wolfe-ish way--for twelve or fifteen years. At first I welcomed these new understandings in biology, neuroscience, and genetics. They seemed to me to reinforce the conservative view of human nature, and refute the liberal view. Yes, men and women are fundamentally and immutably different. Yes, human races exist, and differ in ways other than the physically obvious. No, the human personality is not infinitely malleable, cannot be molded to perfection by social engineers shuffling environmental variables around. Yes, religious belief is a source of health and strength, both personal and social. (From the point of view of Mother Nature, sub specie Darwini if you like, success is reproduction, and the only really philoprogenitive groups of humans are the religious ones.)