Our next stop on the Knowledge Express is to examine how the theme "what makes humans bad" can be viewed through the lens of natural sciences. A logical starting point would be to describe exactly what the natural sciences are. Any sciences that are concerned with the description, prediction, and understanding of natural phenomena based on observational and empirical evidence can be considered natural sciences. The natural sciences can be subdivided into two main disciplines: life science and physical science.
Life science is essentially the same thing as biology. This field examines phenomena related to living things. With recent advances in modern technology, the studies of genetics and microbiology have been able to gain significant ground in research. Other fields of life science include zoology, medicine, botany, and molecular biology.
Physical science is concerned only with non-living systems. Within physical science, there are many important subdivisions that are the driving forces behind modern people's lifestyle of enjoying high-technology. To be specific, natural science seeks to explain and predict nature's phenomena based on empirical evidence. The natural sciences rely heavily on the scientific method and demand their findings to be conclusive and repeatable. A few examples of fields within the natural sciences include physics, chemistry, astronomy, and earth science.
During one of our in-class knowledge fairs, the topic of pathological lying was brought up. Such a topic fits well into our discussion about what makes humans bad from the perspective of the natural science discipline because Kevin, our presenter, talked extensively about the neurological connections that are involved when examining case studies of known pathological liars. The article Kevin selected as a basis for his discussion followed a man who was 57 years of age who had become a pathological liar late in life. To engage the reader, the article by Poletti et al. first discussed the subject from a humanities viewpoint in order to make an emotional connection with the audience. The article chronicled how the pathological lying affected interpersonal relationships, both within and outside of the immediate family. It was said that the subject would lie about strange, trivial things that did had no effect on his circumstances -- he would lie just for the sake of lying. Even more strange, the man could not remember telling such lies when later confronted about it.
Naturally, the man's family sought help from the medical community. We discussed the various procedures the subject underwent, including psychiatric assessments, full bloodwork panels, neurological examinations, and technical neuroimaging photos were taken using a machine much like an MRI. After the article made a valid explanation of all the technical medical jargon, it was determined by doctors that the subject had frontal temporal dementia, meaning that he would never gain full control of his brain, and thus he would never be able to control his pathological lying.
I enjoyed the time we spent studying the theme in the context of the natural sciences very much. To take the above example of the man who was a pathological liar, is he bad for chronic lying? I would venture to say no, he is not bad. Natural science showed us that this man is not truly in charge of his actions; he is simply compelled to tell lies because of some unfortunate abnormality within his brain, one which the medical community does not yet understand. The subject, in my opinion, is actually a victim because he is not making a conscious decision to behave outside the realm of what society deems "good behavior."
Works Cited
Poletti, Michele, Paolo Borelli, and Ubaldo Bonuccelli. "The Neuropsychological Correlates of Pathological Lying: Evidence from Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia." Journal of Neurology, 258.11 (2011): 2009-2013.
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