Argument

The life of the pioneer electroencephalographer, William Grey Walter, initially appears to be a paradigmatic example of the process of network building and delegation identified by Michel Callon and Bruno Latour. In his professional career, Walter continually repositioned himself, moving from an unhappy beginning as an expert in the apparently useless and suspect technology of the EEG, to become a self-styled crucial mediator in subjects as diverse as medical diagnosis, forensic detection, marriage counseling, and international diplomacy. This position was achieved moreover through the construction and co-option of human and mechanical accomplices – laboratory assistants, electrical tortoises, and mechanical analyzers – which sustained his research and propagated his arguments. However in contrast to Callon and Latour’s atomistic account of scientific power and agency, this paper will extend their analysis to explore the impact of network building and delegation on domestic life, human desire, and personal identity. Walter’s engagement with the complexities of love and the human brain demonstrates how the transformative power of scientific rhetoric extends simultaneously into both the organization of the world and the subjectivity of the individual.

What would be the use of a neuroscience which cannot tell us anything about love?

Programs of the Brain (Young 1978, 143)

In the early 1950s the neurophysiologist and electroencephalographer, William Grey Walter, began to speculate on the future evolution of the human brain. Rejecting the vision of disembodied nervous systems and dome-headed descendants proposed by the populist authors of pulp science fiction, Walter instead imagined a series of linked transformations that would encompass our neural organization, technology, and society. He argued that our future evolution would be an indirect process, in which the development of new mechanisms of information storage and communication would allow the brain to shake off its mundane operations and embark instead on a process of mental growth through play and speculation. As Walter wrote:

The exteriorization of tedious or controversial reasoning will no doubt have as profound an effect upon the brain and society as the introduction of skilled and respectful servants has on a humble household. … But the future of the brain is more intriguing than a mere holiday from drudgery, for it is only when the servants of thought have done their work and retired unobtrusively to their quarters that the master brain can discover its own place and settle down to its proper work. (Walter 1953, 194; 1961, 234)