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Poetry

Thought Experiment

by Carol Hart

There’s a well-known one that goes like this:
Mary lives in a black-and-white room, learning
about the world from black-and-white books
and from a monitor that shows the world
in black-and-white, explained by lecturers
who I suppose are also her examiners.
Because Mary is stipulated to be brilliant
and to understand all of neuroscience.
It’s known as the ‘knowledge argument’:
It asks whether experience is
explained by factual properties or not,
pivoting on the moment she’s released.
Does Mary then learn something new
over and above all possible knowledge
regarding brains and eyes and spectral light?

The question asked is one I brush aside
as trivial. I’m too wrapped up in Mary.
I’m invested in her story. I am, if only
momentarily, Mary. Wanting to know why
the door never opens till it’s much too late.
Mary felt contentment in her room.
The shadows flickering on the screen.
They emanate from others who inhabit
black-and-white rooms with monitors and books.
They are her friends, they are her enemies.
If they nod, as if in answer to her words,
if they seem to smile, however faintly,
Mary trembles with a secret passion.
There’s beauty in the subtle tones of gray
flowing across the monitor. There’s beauty
in the words that march in ordered ranks and
files across the pale monotony of paper
within a room of rectilinear sameness,
(books, monitor, chair, table, and bed)
where knowledge is reduced to formulas
and laws – difficult, but definitive.

Okay, it’s my thought experiment now:
I’ll stipulate that the door opens onto
a lush garden, blooming outrageously,
visited by flamboyant butterflies and birds.
Mary steps out – No, an unseen force must
push her out, must break down the walls
where she attempts to hide, compel her
to perceive what’s been unknown till now.
She is expelled, thrown overboard, into
the nauseating riot of the world – not just
color, though color would be enough – but
the welter, strife and strangeness of life’s forms.
Does Mary learn a new thing? No.
Her mind empties like an open drain.
She wants only to get back into the room,
slam the door shut. But the room is gone.

I pity Mary – although I put her there.
The black-and-white nuns who schooled me
said, ‘A sin in one’s thoughts is as bad
as a sin in deed.’ Which would render me
culpable for the cruelty of Mary’s being
imprisoned in my gray matter, furnished
with only a coarsely pixelated sense
of what’s out there beyond these narrow bounds.

Carol Hart has a PhD in English Literature, was employed as a freelance science writer for many years, and has since happily retired to write poetry and fiction.