Dr. MacNare quite often stood behind Adam where he could watch the rat
body through the transparent skull case while Alice engaged Adam's
attention. Alice did the same, at times, but she finally refused to
do so any more. The sight of Adam the rat, his body held in a net
attached to the frame, his head covered by the helmet, his four legs
moving independently of one another with little semblance of walking or
running motion nor even of coördination, but with swift darting motions
and pauses pregnant with meaning, brought back to Alice the old feeling
of vague fear, and a tremendous surge of pity for Adam that made her
want to cry.
Slowly, subtly, Adam's rat body became to Alice a pure brain, and his
legs four nerve ganglia. A brain covered with short white fur; and when
she took him out of his harness under opiate to bathe him, she bathed
him as gently and carefully as any brain surgeon sponging a cortical
surface.
Once started, Adam's mental development progressed rapidly. Dr. MacNare
began making notes again on June 2, 1957, just ten days before the end,
and it is to these notes that we go for an insight into Adam's mind.
On June 4th Dr. MacNare wrote, "I am of the opinion that Adam will
never develop beyond the level of a moron, in the scale of human
standards. He would probably make a good factory worker or chauffeur,
in a year or two. But he is consciously aware of himself as Adam, he
thinks in words and simple sentences with an accurate understanding
of their meaning, and he is able to do new things from spoken
instructions. There is no question, therefore, but that he has an
integrated mind, entirely human in every respect."
On June 7th Dr. MacNare wrote, "Something is developing which I
hesitate to put down on paper--for a variety of reasons. Creating Adam
was a scientific experiment, nothing more than that. Both the premises
on which the project was based have been proven: that the principle
of verification is the main factor in learned response, and that,
given the proper conditions, some animals are capable of abstract
symbol systems and therefore of thinking with words to form meaningful
concepts.
"Nothing more was contemplated in the experiment. I stress this
because--Adam is becoming deeply religious--and before any mistaken
conclusions are drawn from this I will explain what caused this
development. It was an oversight of a type that is bound to happen in
any complex project.
"Alice's experimental data on the effects of opiates, and especially
the data on increasing the dose to offset growing tolerance, were
based on observation of the subject alone, without any knowledge of
the mental aspects of increased tolerance--which would of course be
impossible except with human subjects.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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