讲座预告 | Ernst Pöppel教授：Seeing, "Timing", and Aesthetic Apprec

“Explorations at the edge: Observations on Seeing and “Timing” with Implications for Aesthetic Appreciation”

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Ernst Pöppel, ML, Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, Germany; Guest Professor, Peking University ([email protected])

Scientific research is done in many different ways. One way is exploratory research when hypotheses are not tested as is done in confirmatory research, but when hypotheses are created. In fact, real progress in science starts with explorations, and what often happens is that the researcher is surprised by an unexpected observation. To allow this to happen requires an open mind and trusting the observations, and not rejecting them too quickly because they are outside established hypotheses. It is no question, that often luck is a critical parameter to be confronted with the unexpected; what is unexpected cannot be planned. From personal experience examples about new phenomena will be given that were not and could not be anticipated. A well-known example is “blindsight”, i.e. “seeing” on an implicit level without conscious awareness. But then came a surprise: in research together with Yan Bao from Peking University conscious “seeing in blindness” was discovered, i.e. a new phenomenon which allowed new insights into the neural basis of “seeing”. Similar “explorations at the edge” were made about “timing”: In the temporal domain of tens of milliseconds and of a few seconds “time windows” were disclosed which serve as a logistical basis for cognitive processing. “Timing” in the brain is discrete and not of continuous nature as one might expect within the context of Newtonian (or Einsteinian) physics. The time window of some 3 seconds plays also an important role in aesthetic appreciations in music and poetry, and interestingly enough also in visual art.

Prof. Pöppel studied psychology and biology and received his PhD degree in Innsbruck (Austria); his advisor was Ivo Kohler who made the longest experiment with inverting goggles ever done in psychology, more than 100 days. Already as a student he worked with Jürgen Aschoff, the founder of human chronobiology, and Konrad Lorenz, the founder of ethology and Nobel Laureate. As Postdoc he did some neurophysiological studies on the monkey and cat visual system at a Max-Planck-Institute in Munich, and then moved to MIT in Cambridge (USA) where he discovered a phenomenon now known as “blindsight”. He got a “habilitation” (a teaching degree in Germany) for Sensory Physiology in a Medical Faculty (“Dr. med. habil.”) and another habilitation in psychology in a Faculty of Science (“Dr. phil. habil.”). In 1976 he became full professor for “Medical Psychology” in the Medical Faculty of Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU), Munich. Because of his interdisciplinary profile he was asked to join as Board Member the National Research Center Jülich (Germany) with some 5000 scientists; there he founded Centers for the Neurosciences, for Environmental Research and for Mathematical Modeling. Back at LMU in Munich (after this excursion into the political realm with heavy administrative duties), he founded the “Human Science Center”, an interdisciplinary center with some 100 members worldwide, including China. Prof. Pöppel has supervised more than 200 doctoral students from more than 40 countries; some 60 of his former students and co-workers are now professors in 14 different countries (His best-known former doctoral student in the cognitive sciences is probably Nikos Logothetis). He has published more than 300 scientific papers (like four papers in “Nature”, altogether he thinks perhaps 10 good ones, including the first paper in 1967 when he still was a student). His research focuses mainly on temporal processing (“time windows”), visual perception (“rehablitation of function”), and theoretical issues (like a “taxonomy of functions” which is still lacking in psychology). Exactly 40 years ago (1979) he was drawn by serendipity into the field of “neuroaesthetics”, a growing field in recent years. On the basis of his scientific contributions Prof. Pöppel was elected to the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in Germany (ML), the Academia Europaea (London, MAE), the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (Salzburg, Austria), and the Russian Academy of Education (Moscow). He received numerous awards like honorary doctoral degrees. His Chinese connection began in 1981 with a scientific visit to Shanghai, Wuhan, Beijing, and since then he has supervised several Chinese doctoral candidates. Since 2002 he is Guest Professor at the School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences of Peking University, where he started collaborative research with Prof. Yan Bao, and the BaoLab has become his second academic base. With joint efforts in some recent publications several fundamental discoveries were communicated as on spatial attention (the “eccentricity effect”), on temporal processing (“time windows”), or on neuroaesthetics (“Eastern and Western art”). Presumably due to his long-term connection with China, he became in 2016 Editor-in-Chief of the flag English journal founded by the international publisher WILEY and the Institute of Psychology (Chinese Academy of Sciences) which is called “PsyCh Journal” (A special section of this journal called “brief communications” encourages especially “undergraduates” to published in this new journal; one goal of the journal is to make cognitive science and psychology in China easier accessible on the global level). On his personal note: Being a victim of World War II, and becoming a refugee, Prof. Pöppel has made this his political motto: “Scientists are Natural Ambassadors”. Scientists are the only ones who independent of external constraints (religions, histories, social systems, financial opportunities, or else) pursue the path to understand the world around us and the world within us.