Artist Talk

This afternoon, I went to a lecture that my professor, Cristen Millet, was giving in Borland building. She talked about her work as a professional artist, telling us conceptual and historical backgrounds that are the underlying basis for her current work. Much of her art is about medical history, specifically as it relates to the female body and reproductive system. This was interesting from an artistic, historical and social perspective. Much of the scientific speculation of early medical studies was entirely wrong; for example, one medieval diagram depicts a seven-chambered uterus, each chamber designated male, female or hermaphroditic. The men who were proposing this theory of female anatomy had never actually seen a uterus; this was in a pre-dissection era, and the diagrams were based entirely upon speculation. It seems strange to me that this theory would be developed with so little basis. What is far more alarming, however, is the fact that this was considered factual with absolutely no evidence to back it up. While we surely do not have anything so absurd in modern textbooks and historical medical practices seem barbaric to our modern sensibilities, I believe that it is important to keep occurrences such as these present in our minds. People tent to regard anything that is placed under the umbrella of “science” as indisputable fact, and this is simply not true. For all of the vast knowledge that humans have acquired about the world, there is so much more that is beyond out understanding. In the future, people will certainly look back at our contemporary beliefs and some of them will be seen as misguided or wrong. I am not saying that scientific advancement is unimportant. What I do strongly believe, though, is that it is important for people to have a questioning mind. Just because knowledge is “institutional” does not mean that it is undoubtedly correct. In formal education settings like universities, “critical thinking” is encouraged, but sometimes critical thinking is presented as the ability to solve complicated or creative problems. I propose that critical thinking means to be critical of what you hear–to question and doubt and be skeptical. In that way, I think that critical thinking is vital.