"We all want so desperately to wrap our left brains around the mystery of life and the human mind. But, it's really a fools errand. You are much closer to reaching this goal by doing art than analysing it. We all so easily resort to our preferred means of coping with such a dangerous world, our wonderful logical western European brain-computer."

Maggie:

1) I started as an art major and eventually carried a heavy minor in sculpture while working 3rd shift and guarding suicides at Colorado Psychopathic and keeping my As going in the honors program. I still paint abstract expressionism stuff, do some sculpture (in wood or in human lives), and have held two photo shows.

2) You need to read before you spout. Again, Wilson's "Consilience" has a magnificent chapter on the creative arts and you will find provocative material in "The Adapted Mind." AND please read each of these sources a half-dozen times before you deny their import.

Otherwise, you validate Pinker's conclusion that your verbal apparatus is a "spin doctor"...

JB