Theatre and Dynamic Systems Theory

Abstract

If actors worry that science is going to take the mystery out of the creative act, they have little to fear. The cognitive and neurosciences are still in their infancy when it comes to understanding how the mind works. When asked to explain the simplest of actions—for instance, how is it possible to pour a glass of water?—science can only answer: I don’t know. The science can describe certain mechanisms that involve the sensorimotor cortex and areas of the brain associated with hand-eye coordination, but when it comes to the specifics of why a glass of water is wanted or which neural processes allow the body to move to the tap, turn it on, and then off again when the glass is full are too complicated for our current under-standing. Experimentation, like rehearsing a play, is a labor-intensive process that works incrementally toward understanding phenomena. The difference is that science tries to eliminate as many variables as possible so that the object of investigation can be understood in isolation, whereas rehearsals explore as many avenues as possible in order to select the one best suited to the production. Neuroscientists are still trying to understand the intricacies of what happens when a synapse fires in the brain, and why and how it does so, not to mention why it happens at a particular time or how it connects with other synapses to create the complex sequence of events that lead to a simple action like pouring a glass of water.

The claim on the floor is that both overt behavior and brain behavior, properly construed, obey the same principles.¹

—J. A. Scott Kelso