Neuroscience has contributed so much in just a few decades to how we think about human nature and how we know ourselves. - Jonah Lehrer

A few years ago, Tor Wager, a neuroscientist at Columbia University, wanted to figure out why placebos were so effective. His experiment was brutally straightforward: he gave college students electric shocks while they were stuck in an fMRI machine. (The subjects were well compensated, at least by undergraduate standards.)

It is ironic but true: the one reality science cannot reduce is the only reality we will ever know. This is why we need art. By expressing our actual experience, the artist reminds us that our science is incomplete, that no map of matter will ever explain the immateriality of our consciousness.

"Harlow would later write, "If monkeys have taught us anything, it's that you've got to learn how to love before you learn how to live.