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I going to take a potentially crude course and point out that there seems to be a general pattern for our class posts. I see two types of questions, which generally follow a concrete routine. The first type is a sort of scientifically focused question that posits the subject of our discussion as a potential solution to a specific neurological disorder. The second type of question expresses itself as a sort of macro-metaphor for neurological activity that links societal patterns and group behavior to internal biology.

The first type of question seems firm and tenable. However, the second type comes up a bit in this class, and I wonder how credible or productive it is, especially since I'm apt to enjoy these sort of humanist reflections as a literature student. For example, Jlustik's meditation concerning the desire for social hierachries as a reflection of absent (or egalitarian) neurological order strikes me as just the sort of metaphoric appropriation of the material that I myself am inclined toward. 

My question now: How legitimate or conducive to insight are such meditations to the sciences? If you read a text like Heidegger's "Why Poets?" you read that verse has a purpose: Namely, to reach out into the abyss of an arbitrary and inherently meaningless existence and articulate something ineffable in such a way as to fortify onself against the "desolation of the world's night."

Now, this sort of language strikes me as profound and inspiring, but can applying it to neuron patterns really elicit greater insight into human behavior on a rigorous, scientific level? I suppose one answer is that it might inspire or drive a scientist to think differently about a given task or observation, but this is still subordinating metaphoric thought to scientific progress. The whole point of constructing metaphors is that there is no point - poetry and literature exist as their own referent. That is, they aren't designed to convey a definite meaning, but rather to exist as objects in their own right. I fear that my conceptual reception of microscopic activity is fundamentally non-productive to a scientific discourse; I fear it converts the content into an ineffable and mystic example of language as heroic impotence.

Anybody have a response to this?