Commentary

Science and the arts are commonly viewed as two distinct epistemologies for understanding human nature, and hence are erected as separate and unique pillars of inquiry. Scientific explorations foundational to modern medicine detail facets of the human body, yet fail to explain what it means to be a person. Across the chasm, poetry and the arts grapple with the complexities of human emotion and the struggle for meaning, yet rarely invoke a scientific model of understanding. Although a number of outstanding literary works use science or science fiction as content (e.g., Copenhagen, by Michael Frayn, explores a critical, historical moment in science, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein stirs the debate on the relationship between scientific experimentation and humanity), few works of art, and even fewer poems, bridge the gap between scientific inquiry and art.

Enter Rope Bridge by Nan Cohen, a former Stanford Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer in poetry. The poem describes a now classic 1974 psychology study by Dutton and Aron¹ on attribution of emotion in which young, unaccompanied men were approached by a female investigator after the subject had crossed either a low sturdy bridge or the famous Capilano Canyon Suspension Bridge in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The 450-foot-long bridge twists and bucks in the wind 230 feet above a rushing river. The working hypothesis of the study, an attractive female is seen as more attractive by males who encounter her while they experience a strong emotion (fear) than by males not experiencing a strong emotion,¹ (p511) based on theories by Schacter and Singer,² is confirmed by chi-square analysis, two-tailed t tests, and other significant P values. In Cohen's poem, the results are stated: And one by one, the men who crossed the bridge, / who did not fall, chose love for their reward.

Current neuroendocrinologic and imaging studies investigate the molecular basis of love.^3,4 Such scientific literature is replete with kill-the-mood statements: intense romantic love is importantly influenced by subcortical reward regions that are dopamine-rich, and romantic love is primarily a neural system associated with motivation to acquire a reward, rather than a specific emotion.⁴ (p61) Even the title of the study, Romantic love: An fMRI study of a neural mechanism for mate choice (italics added) indicates that candlelight dinners will not be featured. When scientific writing does stretch to include lay terminology, the writing still tends to be devoid of emotion, conforming to the dry fact and conclusion-laden nature of the bulk of scientific and medical literature. For instance, the review article, The Neurobiology of Love, concludes: love is a joyful and useful activity that encompasses wellness and feelings of well-being.⁵ (p175)

The power of Cohen's poem lies in its ease of bridging the two worlds of science and art via language. We move seamlessly from the control group, classic experiment, and the attribution of a heightened state to an enigmatic question Who would say: it is fear / the fear that sleeps in me, easily roused / from its light sleep, with wind, with ropes, with words? Tellingly, she ends the poem as a question-further inquiry, more knowledge, is needed to understand the complex interactions between fear and love. Scientific papers, such as the article on which the poem is based, likewise open the door to further investigation: A more conclusive explanation of the mechanics of the anxiety-sexual arousal link must await the conclusion of present laboratory studies designed specifically to investigate this problem.¹ (p517)

Another clever overlap in scientific/lyric language occurs in the replication of the investigator's questions within the body of the poem. Poetry is dependent not only on words but on pauses. In this section, did you find her attractive? How attractive? / __Very __Somewhat __Not at all, Cohen uses the caesurae of the questions and the blanks for tick marks to slow the reader and invite reflection.

The poem is not meant to precisely recount Dutton and Aron's study. But it does remain truer to science than many other creative works. For instance, the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) tenderly explores the neural loci of love but is rooted in science fiction. Cohen's Rope Bridge, however, successfully connects science and art with grace, lyricism, and playfulness as it meditates on one of the profound mysteries of life: love.

Audrey Shafer, MD