Intelligence in Nature - Jeremy Narby [47]
The typhoon was causing the window of his office to shake. Turning to the future, I asked Arikawa if his work had implications for robotics. âOf course,â he said, âwe supply our data to robotics people, but I myself do not contribute to it directly.â This prompted me to ask what he thought about the scientific view of animals as machines. Referring to Descartes, I asked whether he saw butterflies as machines.
âHmmm,â he said. âThe materials which make up the butterfly body are quite different from those of a machine. Our bodies are also machines in some sense. So we have to know that. Our minds, and the minds of butterflies if they exist, are produced by the activity of brains. And I think that our emotions, or our thinking, all emerge from the activity of brains. So if we say that the brain is a biological machine, then butterflies are like machines.â
âAnd we are, too?â I asked.
âWe are, too. But our body is nothing like any presently existing machine, like computers or copying machines, or cars and airplanes. No, there is some fundamental difference. Yet I think it is also continuous, with no clear border between our system and machines. I donât know if we can really reproduce animals by manufacturing pieces of stuff, but we biologists do want to explain how our mind is constructed, or produced, on the basis of brain activity. At least I have been trying to understand that.â
I asked how long he thought it would take people working on robotics to build a butterfly, complete with sophisticated color vision and intricate neurology. âThe problem is that they are not aiming at producing butterflies, or living stuff as is,â he replied. âThey want to extract certain functions from animals to use for human life. If they really tried to make this animal, for funâ¦â He paused. ââ¦well, one hundred years.â
A century to make a butterfly! Arikawa was clearly confident in the power of science. I had difficulty believing it. But I thought that if anybody was going to manage to build a butterfly, he or she might well be Japanese. As British designer Andrew Davey recently remarked:, âThe miniaturization of form twinned with the maximization of function is a Japanese specialty. It is a hallmark of Japanese design.â
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ARIKAWA OFFERED TO SHOW US some living butterflies. We went downstairs and left the building. Outside, the rain was abating, though the winds were still strong. We got into his car and drove a short distance to his laboratory situated in a prefabricated single-story building. This time, we took off our shoes and put on slippers in the entrance. Arikawa showed us around the sophisticated machines that measure the spectral sensitivities of butterfly eyes. Such research requires stripping the wings from butterflies, tying the living insects to an apparatus, and inserting microelectrodes into their eyes. I asked Arikawa if he thought butterflies feel pain.
âI donât think so,â he replied, âbecause they do not change behaviors when they have an injury on the eye; they do not do anything. So there is no clear sign that they are really feeling pain. At least, when you put a hole in the cornea, or break wingsâbutterflies often have broken wingsâitâs perfectly fine.â
I was left with doubts on this subject, remembering what Martin Giurfa had told me about bee nervous systems secreting opioids, presumably to induce analgesia. But I decided not to press the point. For the moment, invertebrate rights are not high on many agendas.
We walked into another room where six graduate students were working away on computers. They said nothing and concentrated on their work. Arikawa went over to a netted