Chapter 15
The Shrinking Black Box of Human
Biology
Lynnette Leidy Sievert and Daniel E. Brown
Black Boxes and Human Biology
A“black box”refers to a situation where exterior appearances disguise what is
happening in interior spaces. A black box is mysterious because, although there are
observable inputs and outputs, the internal mechanisms and functions are invisible
—hidden from observation and measurement. Data are concealed where an
observer cannot enter or reach. A black box cannot be opened. Guesses are made,
based on the inputs and outputs, but something unknown happens in between.
A black box is a temporary construct used by scientists to describe a process that
they do not fully understand. When thinking about human biology, our bodies and
minds are the black boxes, with measurable pieces and parts, but sometimes the
outputs are unexpected and not fully explained.
This metaphor of a black box can be quite apt when we talk about pain. In
response to painful stimuli (input), there is a reflexive motor withdrawal of the hand
and a sharp“first”pain, followed by a diffuse“second”pain. Heft and Robinson
(Chap. 6 , this volume) explain how information about thefirst pain is encoded by
small, myelinated Aδperipheral nerves, and information about the second pain is
encoded by unmyelinated C peripheral nerves. The black box is relatively well
understood in the sense that the nerves have been identified and it is known that
information travels at different rates across the two types of nervefibers (Fig.15.1a).
The metaphor of a black box is more complicated when we measure two different
types of output, such as physiological change and perception. For example, meno-
pausal hotflashes are a heat dissipation response that involves vasodilation and
L.L. Sievert (&)
UMass Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
D.E. Brown
UH Hilo, Hilo, HI, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
©Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
L.L. Sievert and D.E. Brown (eds.),Biological Measures of Human
Experience across the Lifespan: Making Visible the Invisible,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44103-0_15
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