Insomnia as a Social Construct...

Lots of interesting conversation, both about sleep and sleep patterns, as well as about more general issues that arise from thinking about that as a specific case of categories and research directions.

Re sleep itself, the relevant article I mentioned is Awakening to Sleep.  Among other things, the article describes a study by Thomas Wehr ...

in the night and once in the early morning, Wehr's volunteers woke out of REM sleep, which is strongly associated with dreaming, into a period of quiet wakefulness quite distinct from daytime wakefulness ...'  'It is tempting to speculate,'' Wehr writes, ''that in prehistoric times this arrangement provided a channel of communication between dreams and waking life that has gradually been closed off as humans have compressed and consolidated their sleep. If so, then this alteration might provide a physiological explanation for the observation that modern humans seem to have lost touch with the wellspring of myths and fantasies.''

It is well worth thinking more about the issue of whether contemporary understandings of sleep, scientific and otherwise, reflect primarily contemporary observations, and that there may well be contemporary cultural factors that significantly influence those observations in ways that may obscure a clearer understanding of sleep.

This is, of course, a more general issue about science and research, as are other issues that came up in our conversation.  Is there a "norm" sleep pattern that all people should exhibit, with all other sleep patterns then being seen as "disturbances," ie as openings for therapeutic intervention?  Is it useful to think of "disturbed" sleep patterns as either "primary" or "secondary," ie to distinguish between sleep "abnormalities" due to alterations in the mechanisms regulating sleep regulation itself as opposed to alterations in other things that in turn affect sleep patterns?

Like much of the rest of culture, science tends to presume that there are "norms" and all deviations from the norm are "disturbances."  And knowledge can certainly advance with such presumptions. Perhaps though its time to reflect on the recurring pattern of discovering that "norms" are a human construction, and that over time one discovers that it is not norms but variability that is the rule? (sex/gender, healthy versus cancerous, healthy versus infected).  Do we actually need to presume the value of "generalizations" to do science?  Is it essential to science to try and get reliable rather than "noisy" results?  Might we instead do equally well advancing understanding by starting with variation?  The issue is particularly important since the generalizations science starts with often become (or reify) cultural norms and, in so doing, may make perfectly "healthy" individuals unhealthy.   A "practical" approach may help sometimes but may also often create problems that a more "philosophical" approach might not.    

This idea of generalization being contrary to science has been plaguing me, especially when we have been discussing the use of classification in science. Things in the natural world with similar characteristics are usually grouped and defined into classes. The act of identifying and categorizing similar objects into classes is known as classification. The relationships of classes can be organized into a class hierarchy using generalization and variation concepts. The technique of generalizing is an important technique in handling the infinite variation present in the natural world. This is not to say that generalization is the paramount technique, I think of it more as a starting point in order to facilitate understanding of the relationships and laws in the natural world without having to invent new theories for each variant.