>> good evening. i'm mark of bloomberg television filling in for charlie rose who son assignment. on occasion of this veterans day, we begin the program with charlie's 2006 conversation with a group of middle east veterans. paul rieckhoff, daniel anfang and david myers. >> less than #% of the population served in iraq and afghanistan in. world war ii you had 10 or 11%. when you come home, looks like most of america is looking at britney spears or madonna when you have friends in a combat environment. it affects the entire dynamic, it's different because it's such a small percentage of the overall population and the american public is so removed from it. >> we continue with remembrance

of singer songwriter leonard cohen who died thursday, age 82. charlie interviewed him for cbs night watch on this day in 1988. >> there is something that is wonderful about finishing a song you've labored on with a kind of care and intensity. you know that if you're going to be singing a song for the next 20 years, you want to be sure that you can get behind every word, and i have a lot of songs that i can still get behind because i brought that kind of attention to the lyric. >> and we conclude with nobel laureate eric kandel who talks about his new book which explores the relationship between art and brain science. >> in science, particularly brain science, we want to understand how the human mind works, what could be more central. in art, we want to understand how people respond to works about how the imagination works, how we can stimulate the imagination. one to have the things that are pleasing to people, those are really important questions.

what enriches your life. >> veterans, leonard cohen and eric kandel coming up. >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by the following: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> the war in iraq has claimed the lives of more than 2800 american troops. on this program we've talked about the war from many perspectives, journalists, generous, politicians and authors debated the reason we went to war, talked about the policy, strategy, the idea of the future years' involvement in

iraq. joke me are three men who served in the u.s. military in iraq a. paul rieckhoff, author of chasing ghost a soldier's right, founder and executive director of the iraq and afghanistan veterans of america, he served in the u.s. army in iraq from april 2003 to february 2004. also here daniel anfang, he served in the marines in fallujah in 2004, currently holds the rank of sergeant. david myers also served in the marine corps as a first lieutenant. i am pleased to have all of them here to talk about iraq as they see it, the war as they see it, the issues that they see and what those of us at home ought to know about the soldiers in iraq and the war that they are engaged in and what their own feelings and their own understanding of mission is, so i welcome all of you. >> thank you. let me, paul, begin with you.

tell me, what ought we know from your perspective about the men and women who are fighting the war? >> well, they're fantastic. i think they're really doing our country so proud in so many different ways. they are without a doubt the final force we've ever fielded. they're educated, dynamic, passionate, they're really trying to do their best every day, but they're also in a tough spot. i think they recognize that and they're trying to make do with a difficult situation, difficult operating environment, and i think a detached american public. that's one to have the things i hear consistently from people. >> rose: a detached american public. >> yeah. >> rose: detached because -- they're not personally connected. less than 1% to have the american population served in iraq and afghanistan. in world war ii, you had about 10 or 11%. when you come home, looks like most of america is busy looking at britney spears or madonna when you have friends in fallujah or tikrit operating in combat environment and that

detachment affects the way we treat veterans and view the war. the entire dynamic is different because it's such a small% of the population and the american public is so removed from it. >> rose: what would you add to this? >> echoing what paul said a, they are unbelievable individuals. i don't think i'll go through the rest of my life meeting a better group of individuals than i served with in iraq and i constantly keep in touch with them, and, you know, moving forward, i think it, you know, just like paul said, it is difficult because the american public is very detached, and there is somewhat of i think you could call it like a siphon, in terms of what's going on there on the ground. like you said before in your introduction, you've had a number of individuals here who have different perspectives than we do and i'm happy you invited us here today because we have that boots opt deck perspective. >> rose: how else is it different? >> it's really different because we're there for these extended periods of time, okay. daniel and i served in the same

regiment together. >> rose: both in fallujah together. fallujah together? >> yeah. >> rose: i know your dad and he said to me before you thought about doing this segment, you know, you ought to talk to my son about fallujah. what would i have understood if i had talked to you at that time? >> at that time, when i had immediately gotten back, i was extremely frustrated with the way we had been able to operate while we were in fallujah. >> rose: you couldn't operate the way you wanted to? >> we had certain constraints, absolutely. the city of fallujah during the march-up was basically bypassed. the objective, when we pushed up from kuwait, was to get to baghdad and secure baghdad international airport as quickly as we could and certain areas were bypassed, fallujah was one of those areas, it became a staging ground an an infestation of the insurgency.

and from the first month that i got into iraq for my second deployment was february of 2004. we had done a turnover with the 82nd airborne, and fallujah was a no-go zone. we were not allowed to operate inside that area because it was deemed as being too dangerous, and that was frustrating once we first got there. then the culminating point was this blackwater scenario where these individuals ended up being hung on the west side. from that point we were able to cordon off the city -- >> rose: people working as private contractors in iraq? >> right. and then we were allowed to make an initial push into the city. before that, we were frustrated as marines that we could not go in there and do the job we came there to do. >> rose: why couldn't you go in there at that time? >> political rationale at that time probably was we were going to take a heavy loss if we went in there. i think politically, we wanted

to try and work toward a different solution in terms of negotiating with these individuals, see if we could have another alternative as opposed to going in there, and we tried that, and it didn't work. what subsequently happened was the november invasion of fallujah after i had subsequently left. >> rose: and what happened at that time? >> at that time, fifth marines along with a number of army units andout urinates picked up where we left off and moved through the city and cleared it. >> rose: which is what you wanted to do in the beginning. >> which is what we wanted to do once we got there. >> rose: it is often said, and i've heard this a thousand times, that men and women in combat have a mission but the most important thing is the people that they're fighting alongside, that that is what binds them, that's where their

highest instinct is, to work with and take care of those that are in battle with them. >> you develop this bond that you cannot find anywhere else. it's something that is so tight that you trust the men to the right of you and the men the to the left of you. you can't find it anywhere else. it's something that's very unique. >> rose: some believe that a lot of things that are good are not reported. is that something you guys feel strongly about? >> there hasn't been enough breath. they don't dig in deep. they want a 30-second sound byte, a quick story but they don't want to understand the magnitude of the story. try to explain how your buddy died in a cnn clip. there are so many emotions there it's hard to convince it down for a quick sound byte and that's part of the frustration i felt. but i think, at the same time, if you want good news stories, go to disneyland. this is a war zone and people

are dying and being wounded and i think you have an obligation to represent that and show american people the true human cost of war and i don't think nats an anti-war or pro war statement, it's a statement in the best interest of our military and soldiers to to understand the experience and the obligation of america to urns what happening there. >> i would add one of the things that very much so frustrates me is not too many of the stories of our heros are really told. i have ten to 20 of my very good friends who deserve a front-page article in the "new york times." >> rose: a story overone. captain shantash, a platoon commander during the march up and he was a commander of a kat team and they have heavy guns and humvees. they were rolling north, encountered a trench line of iraqis, came under severe fire.

he decided to take his humvee, drive it directly into the trench, disnowntd humvee, cleared the trench, killed 30 iraqis, ended up saving a number of lives of the men in his platoon. ended up awarded for the navy cross -- >> rose: highest medal in the navy. >> highest in the navy and marine corps. the only thing mentioned was a little article in his local paper. >> rose: did you believe you had the support of people at home when you were fighting? was there any question that their public country support, those who might disagree about the war but the support for you as a soldier? >> i had many people who supported myself and my platoon, per se. i had dwayne reed support us, send us packages, family, friends. i had more support, helped me through the war, a letter every day just got me through. he mentions the letters people sent him to help him get

through. very important. the soldiers, the marines overseas in theater, it motivates us and builds our morale up. it's war, no ifs ands or buts about that, but the letters and packages from home, we appreciate that. >> in america culture, people separate the war from the policy. the vets in vehement learned to separate the two. i have been treating fantastically by and large. i live in new york city and when i walk around everybody wants to shake my hand, treats me well and that's an amazing testament to the american people. because you're anti-war, i don't think it necessarily means you're against me and i think that's progress in this country and what we need to look for going forward. the support i got forward was incredible. >> rose: did you get the support you needed from the military? we hear stories about people

driving humvees have to go out and get extra protection and the humvees were not -- and this was raised with the secretary of defense. >> right, my guys didn't have adequate -- >> rose: how can that be? that's the question we need to ask. how did you send troops with inadequate body armor, no double a batteries, inequipped. we didn't have interpreters and economic and political tools to be successful. that goes to the leadership. the senior generous bear some of the responsibility, but i think rumsfeld was failing in his job and lost the confidence of a lot of people in the military and that's why in part the military times last week called for his resignation, people on both sides of the aisle called for his resignation. he failed us. you have to hold people accountable for the failures in the administration. it's about accountability. >> you were in the reserves,

right? >> rose: yeah. speaking from first marine division and my battalion, we had all of the personal body armor we needed and could possibly carry. >> rose: did you feel safe if you were on a humvee that the humvee had the kind of armor protection thaitd needed from rodeside -- >> it gets to a certain point, i think, and these guys are building these improvised explosive devices today with an incredible amount of power. >> rose: more and more sophisticated. >> yes, and it gets to a certain point where no matter how much you have on this hum vehicles it's not going to help. i know a number of our tank commanders who have humvees and -- >> it's not just about body armor for a couple of guys or platoon. it was widespread logistics and procurement failures and it took an outcry of the american public, the people and veterans coming home to get it fixed.

rumsfeld was dismissive and said you go to war with what you have. the armored humvee factories could have done more. it goes back to the initial issue of detachment. the american public doesn't know our american soldiers. most people in the country never met a soldier who had been to iraq and that detachment had to do with it. >> as far as the body armor, i felt, you know, we had equipment, a right amount of body armor. there is only so much we can carry as soldiers. i felt that was okay. as far as the marines on deck or the soldiers on deck, i didn't feel it was enough. i didn't feel like we had enough men on the ground. my platoon had a hard time filling positions. that was my big problem. >> rose: having enough?

enough member on the ground filling positions. >> just to add to that, you know, there is marine corps doctrine and i'm sure it's in the army field book as well that a it takes a certain amount of combat power to take an objective. it takes a lot more combat power to hold that objective once you're there. so we went into iraq and we took the objective, we took baghdad within a number of weeks, and since we have been there, i completely agree with paul, we needed, and i know senator mccain is pushing the issue for more troops. >> rose: 20,000 he's calling for minimum. >> that's middling around the edges. if you want a comprehensive strategy, we've got to get serious about what it's going to take. the criticism i hear constantly in the military and from the members is we've done this halfway. the longer out gets the harder it gets. we need hundreds of thousands not tens of thousands:

>> rose: what do you think would have happened -- there is a famous controversy with a general in which he testified they would need 200,000, 300,000 troops and the conventional wisdom is that was sort of the end of his army career, he was chief of staff of the army at that time. general powell has often said we've needed more troops going in there. is it all your beliefs that, in fact, one of the things that's been wrong with the iraqi war is we didn't have enough men and women on the ground to do the job? >> during the march-up, we had what we needed and took the objective. >> rose: until saddam was over. >> yes. post-, there was not enough thought process by tommy franks, donald rumsfeld or our leaders for what's this aftermath going to look like. my personal opinion, i came back from my first tour and thought i'm probably not going back, pretty much tone and we had a

great welcome from the majority of iraqis and i didn't think it would morph into what it has, but we have not reacted to that. we went with enough combat power to take the objective. we have not reacted to what's been going on in terms to have current threat, and i do believe we need absolutely just like paul mentioned increase it not by incremental but significant amounts. >> fitz going to work. i'm not saying it will. but we really need to hold the -- minor changes that are rhetorical or political. you have to talk about comprehensive solutions and the longer which wait the harder it gets. the window of opportunity was summer-fall of 2003 and ever since then it's been fighting uphill. >> rose: they weren't in control. >> they disbanded the iraqi army, didn't control the situation and started to go downhill. >> rose: i wanted to come the rum feld. do you think his resignation was a good idea? >> i think it should have happened two years ago.

>> i totally agree with that. rumsfeld underestimated what we needed in iraq and i believe he didn't take care of the troops like he should have. like you mentioned about the poor specialist that he ignored. that's unacceptable. >> you have an obligation as a combat leader to go down to the lowest level, to talk to the sergeants, the privates and find out about the ground troops we call the military is that what would have they heard? >> exactly what the sergeant is saying, we didn't have enough people, didn't have the tools to be successful. that's the frustration i hear within the military with rumsfeld and others. we no general batiste who compland it did division inside iraq wasn't listening. in many ways he set the military up for failure. i don't want to see the rhetoric change where you blame the generous. true commander-in-chief or not and if you are take charge and start to fix the situation here.

>> i think that's the last thing we want is this to become a war of escalation which, you know, i've done a little reading, obviously, but that's what the perceived problem in vietnam was, it was a war of escalation. we didn't come in with full force with everything we had to take care of that problem, and i know deep within my heart that if we do that here, we can win. >> iraq's never going to look like new jersey or texas. we need to seriously downgrade our expectations. now what we're doing is geopolitical triage. we have to think about iran, the turks and our geopolitical stability and downward manager what we're going to get out of iraq. it won't look like president bush told us. >> rose: you think it was a mistake to go in? >> i do. i think it's weakened us and hasn't made us safer. the president always said we have to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here. what if we have to do both is this. >> rose: why did you go into

the marines? >> i joined 9/11. i was a high school senior. i was the staten island. i looked outside my school building and saw the twin towers were hit. i left school with permission from my parents. my father was a new york city police detective. he came running home to get his weaponry and told me, i'm not going to be home for a couple of days. i didn't see my father for five or six days. i said to myself, you know, i don't want this for my kids. let me take a stand here and now. ly de-- i will devote four years of my life or whatever it takes to ensure the safety of the american people. i felt my children should live in a safe -- >> rose: and you were how old? 17 years old. and now i'm 21 today. >> rose: and do you look back on that time as one of the most important things you did and something you would do over?

>> without a doubt, i would do it over. would ity through it more? definitely. would i do it over? i would. i feel very patriotic for doing what i did. i feel like i've, you know, helped the greater -- you know, the greater cause. >> rose: how did you end up in the marines. >> ended up in the marines from bucknell university, graduated, and just wanted to do something different. >> rose: the year was. 2001. ended up going to officer can at that time school before september 11th, it happened. >> rose: so you were in there before. >> right, in the pipeline before 9/11. i just wanted to do something different. it was a challenge. you know, i certainly did not want to sit behind a desk and get a finance job like the majority of my friends. >> rose: and your father. ight. >> rose: and you served two tours. >> two tours. >> rose: each one a year or how long? >> each one roughly eight months. >> rose: and you?

1998, i joined the army reserves after i graduated college. i wanted to serve. >> rose: did you really? i wanted to give something back. my father had been drafted during vietnam, my grandfather during world war ii and spent two years in the south pacific, and i felt like if i didn't do my part i was kind of free loading as a citizen, i wanted to give something back and i wanted the challenge piece. i wanted to jump out of airplanes and blow stuff up, i think that was part of it, but i also wanted to test myself and i think that military service is an honorable thing, something that had been a tradition in my family and i wanted to do my part. >> rose: beyond the idea of brotherhood, sisterhood, what's the most important thing we could never understand about combat unless you have been there? >> in the middle of the firefighter, the mortars dropping and all of the chaos and adrenaline returning through your body and this fear you witness some pretty incredible and some pretty heroic and

wonderful actions. a corporal of mine in my platoon running from out from under a bunker to -- in the middle of a barrage of mortars to grab one of his bodies and pull them back to safety, and that is just one of the images in my life that i will never forget, and there's an absolutely horrible and disgusting aspect to war but there is that tiny bit of just amazing piece of bravery that you witness when you're there and that you will never forget. so i think that might be one of the toughest things there. >> rose: there are many things to be said which we cannot say in the amount of time that we have except thank you for all the things you've done. paul rieckhoff's book is chasing ghosts. daniel anfang sergeant in the

marine corps, and david myers first lieutenant u.s. marine corps now business school in new york. thank you all. >> thank you, sir. >> rosehe has been called a poet laureate of outrage and despair for more than 20 years. canadian leonard cohen has been writing and singing songs with a passion of longing. he was at the forefront in the '60s and found him sft in the midst of another renaissance, out with "i'm your man," first major label album in ten years and getting critical acclaim. we look now at the video version of one of the songs from the album. first we take manhattan. ♪ they sentenced me to 20 years of boredom ♪ ♪ what kind of chains ♪ i'm coming now ♪ i'm coming to reward them

♪ first we take manhattan ♪ then we take the men >> rose: joining us leonard cohen. welcome back, i should say. >> thank you for having me over. >> rose: why ten years? it's been ten years in this country because my record company neglected to put out a couple of my records, but, you know, i have been still moving around europe and playing now. >> rose: what's it like during the lull period? do you notice a difference? >> i don't notice it because you don't really live according to your chart position. one continues to do one's work. >> rose: and do the audiences still want to hear the favorites? >> yes, i like to sing the old

songs. usually, i'm asked for them. sometimes it's different to enter into a song you have been singing for 20 years, but it's important to find the door. >> rose: enter into it, what do you mean? >> well, for instance, last night, the audience asked me over and over again to sing suzanne. >> rose: of course, they did. and, you know, there was a point where i felt, okay. >> rose: do you purposely tease them in a sense? >> no, no. >> rose: knowing you're going to have to do it but wanting to hold out as long as possible? >> well, it isn't that severe an ordeal, you know. it's a pretty good song snownot an ordeal but in the sense knowing in the end it's your responsibility to them, to an audience, if you've written a song and performed a song and sage a song that has registered. did you write that? >> yeah. >> rose: that's the probably most popular song you're known

for. >> yes. >> rose: therefore you know they want to hear it i. would think an artist would owe that to an audience. ere would be no point in refusing to sing a song people like. >> rose: but if you sing it the third song in your performance that evening, in a sense, you want to hold it out till the end. >> the position of every song has to be carefully determined in a concert set. >> rose: what goes into that determination? >> it's mostly instinctive, but a lot of it has certain technical considerations. you don't want to put three up-tempo songs all together. >> rose: is it written somewhere? do you have it hidden on stage? >> it's engraved in the heart but i do have a set list pasted on the floor beneath me. >> rose: i went to a performance backstage and the whole play list was right there. i knew, if you play every night on tour and you change, you have to have a recollection of where to do. and technical considerations

because we're working with synthesizers and programs so that players have to be aware of what song is coming up. >> rose: you are what, now, 50? >> 54. >> rose: do you still train your voice? do you still work with your voice? >> i try to smoke quite a lot and drink to deepen it. >> rose: right. ( laughter ) >> i never had a voice. i never thought i had a voice. >> rose: you have a deep voice. >> it keeps getting deeper. >> rose: because? 50,000 cigarettes. >> rose: you still smoke? i started again for the tour. >> rose: why? there is just that moment on a tour where i'd been reaching for a cigarette for 30 years and just kept doing it. i had quit for some time. >> rose: because of the cancer scare? >> just generally wanting to get on the bandwagon of health. >> rose: i would think a tour for someone like you who really has a one-to-one relationship with an audience in a sense, it's not a razzle dazzle, it's

you and the audience and the long you know they want to hear, would be fun, would be enjoyable, would be satisfying, would be confirming. >> well, i love touring. the preparations are difficult, but once you get on the road it's like living with a motorcycle gafnlgt you'reñr free from decisions and alibis. you know the whole day funnels down to the moment where you step out and there is nothing else to be considered. >> rose: like a television show. >> i know whereof i speefnlgt there is nothing that's going to stand in the way of that moment. >> rose: if suzanne is the audience favorite, what is yours? >> i don't know if it's the audience's favorite but it's the most familiar song and their right to insist they hear it. i think it varies from night to night in terms of how well the song is played and sung. >> rose: yeah, are you the least bit surprised at your continued survivability and

acceptance and success? >> of course, i'm happy to be able to stay in the game, but when i started this work on this record, i always thought i was in for the long haul. >> rose: and thought you would be successful in what -- and would have a career? >> i never thought of it in terms of a career. i always wanted to be paid for my work, but i didn't want to work for pay. >> rose: that's a good way to have putting it. and you don't work for pay now? >> of course there is an economic consideration -- >> rose: but you don't work for pay. you don't have to do this. >> you know, there are certain private obsessions that really determine what your life is, and a lot of my life is concerned in turning out a certain standard of work, and as long as i can keep up a respectable standard. >> rose: why do you think you're more appreciated in europe than the nats?

>> i used to say because they don't understand the words over there. i don't know. ( laughter ) >> rose: that if you're saying french in france, they wouldn't appreciate you as much. >> i don't know, in america there are very simple and perhaps even refreshing market laws and if you don't satisfy those laws, you just don't perform in the market. >> rose: yeah. and it's been determined that i am not a mainstream singer and, therefore, the market is not as receptive, but i can't -- i can't don a check of neglect and go into a sense of obscurity. i've had a modest worldwide career for a long time and i can't complain about that. >> rose: i wouldn't either. tell me about the new album. some say it kind of hearts back to country western. >> well, i started off in a country western band in montreal 35 years ago called the buckskin boys.

i've always liked that element. i think country music is one of the most sophisticated strains of music we have in america. >> rose: why? well, it's a kind of minimal music where there's a good emphasis on the voice, on the experience in the voice, and i love to hear the stories told in country music. >> rose: i do, too. but it's sophisticated because it's raw, because -- >> no, because the hearts and minds that produce this music are very sophisticated. we have this motion that because it's from tennessee and there are some cotton farmers singing it that -- >> rose: i don't have that notion at all, but i'm interested what you think it does that reflects sophistication. >> it's just the refinement of very complex situations into very cokent and heart-touching phrases. the technical considerations of country music are very

demanding, and the great singers, the great writers like hank williams are as important as any other writers we have. >> rose: do we still -- you know, what's interesting is the trend now is back, randy travis and some of those guys, are really, in a sense, looking for those roots. >> well, you know, the roots have always been there, and for millions of people, the roots never withered. fad styles move away from one music art to another, but that kind of music has always been there. we call it folk music. that is our music. >> rose: where does blues fit in? >> well, you know, you've got to earn the right to sing the blues, you know. >> rose: yeah. they fit in whenever the heart is full enough and the

heart is willing, you sing the blues. not my strain of music, you know. i wouldn't touch that kind of music. >> rose: because if. it's not really my tradition, but i rov love it. >> rose: have you seen clint eastwood's film charlie park? >> i haven't seen it yet. >> rose: they say it's the best film ever made about a jazz artist. how is the writing experience for you? >> it's a desperate kind of experience. >> rose: never gets easier is this. >> well, no. there's said to be two school of writers. one school where you work three months on a paragraph, and the thomas wolf school where you write 30,000 words on the top of the refrigerator every night. unfortunately i'm in the former category. >> rose: i'm on the later. the idea of working three months on a paragraph or writing and

laboring on one paragraph before you move to the next is just painful to me. >> it's a severe enterprise, but there is something that is wonderful about finishing a song that you've labored on with that kind of care and intensity. you know that furr going to be singing a song for the next 20 years, you want to be sure that you can get behind every word. i have a lot of songs i can still get behind because i brought that kind of attention to the lyric. >> rose: because you knew what went into fashioning the words and the paragraph. >> well, i have to write down everything i throw away, so by the time i get down to six verses in a song, i've thrown away 60 or 70 completed songs. so the ratio is about ten 2001. >> rose: what's the difference in writing poetry versus prose? >> i'm not sure if there is a difference. i'm not sure we know what poetry

is today. certainly that the lines don't -- the words don't come to the end of the line makes it poetry. poetry has rhythm, authority, music, but prose can have that, too. sometimes a paragraph in the "national geographic" will have that kind of stunning simplicity and clarity that we associate, you know, with great verse. >> rose: yeah, it really is that. stunning simplicity and clarity. >> but we don't have to be limited about that because sometimes we like complexity and we like puzzles and certainly modern poetry gives us a lot of that. >> rose: any book that you continue to go back to and want to read? for example, i think it was carlos fuentes said to me on this broadcast that every few years or so he reads cervantes. >> yeah, oh, it takes a few years to read cervantes.

i suppose the book that i go back to most often is the bible, the king james version of the bible. >> rose: why? the language, the authority, the? >> mag i have in sense of the -- the mag i hav mag i have magnifa literary level, has value. but to read the psalms of king david is the poet of every writer. >> rose: are you a religious man? >> i wouldn't think so. you wouldn't want to advertise yourself that way on national television. you would never be able to get a date. >> rose: what kind of date? ( laughter ) well, thank you very much. a pleasure to have you here. much success with the album. hope you will come back.

always welcome on this broadcast. >> you've very kind. thank you very much. >> rose: eric kandel is here. he is my colleagues on our brain series and a former nobel laureate. his new book comploars a relationship between art and science. it considers how science can help us to perceive, appreciate and understand great works of art. it is called reductionism in art and brain science, bridging the two cultures. i am pleased to have eric kandel back at this table. >> i'm delighted to be here. thanks for having me. >> rose: so both of them are concerned, science and art, with the deepest questions about human existence. they share that. >> absolutely. >> rose: concern. but we think of them as separate. >> c.p. snow. >> rose: yes. and this book is designed to show it's not as separate as we think and why.

c.p. snow made the point that humanity is concerned with art and literature are in a different world than science is concerned with the nature of the universe, and tha that's because scientists and humanists have different aspirations and different goals and use different methodologies to get there. and in this book i make the point that, in certain instances, this is not the case, for example, in brain science -- and we've seen this in the program we've done together -- the goals of the scientists are very humanistic to understand the nature of schizophrenia, to understand consciousness. these are all important humanestic questions. in addition, painters, artists often use experimental approaches. so very much like scientists, you know, painter can try different things to see whether they're getting exactly the kind of impact. >> rose: well, i think it was

richard serra who said to me once and may have said it at this table when you were here, said it to me a number of times, but that art is about making choices. and then moving on. >> absolutely. >> rose: you choose this color, and then you move on. >> absolutely. >> rose: you make another choice about where this line goes. >> yes. >> rose: science is about choosing, making choices. we'll try this. >> yep. >> rose: and then we'll try this. >> solving problems is the way serra puts it. >> rose: yeah. and this is the point i try to make here is this became very clear with the abstract expressionist. >> rose: what do you mean by reductionism? >> by reductionism, i mean taking a complex problem and selecting one component that you want to study in great detail, and many of these artists folk on one particular thing -- color or flatness in jackson pollack, and special -- >> rose: and how does that relate to what you did in terms

of memory? >> well, what i did was to take a complex problem like memory -- >> rose: yes. -- and say to myself, you know, studying your memory would be very difficult. but what happens if i take the simple case of animals, very simple case of memory in a simple animal, i might be able to make progress that way, and i took a very simple animal, marine snail, that had very few nerve cells, each of which was very large. i could work out a neurocircuit of behavior, produce a change in that behavior as a result of learning and see exactly what happens. and my colleagues and i found that learning involves changes in the strength of synaptic connections, how nerve cells communicate with each other. so that's a simple example of reductionist approach. that's used repeatedly in all molecular biology. using reductionism in science is

nothing new. using reductionism in art also is not new but people didn't think of it in those terms. >> rose: you have said that science and abstract art, specifically abstract art. >> because abstract art in some ways is more e experimental and allows the artist to play with your imagination where it focuses on certain aspects of things. so in aspect of art, roscoe will focus on color, jackson pollack will focus on the splattering of paint on the canvass, and, so, they will focus on specific things, sort of simplifying the task and allowing the imagination freedom to wander. and one of the wonderful things about abstract art as to figurative art is the viewers responds to it very differently. >> rose: abstract art and science address goals that are central to humistic thought. what are those questions?

>> in science, particularly brain science, one would understand how the human mind works, what could be more central. in art, you want to understand how people respond to works of art, how the imagination works, how we can stimulate the imagination. what are the things that are pleasing to people. those are really important questions. what enriches your rife. > -- your life.>> rose: take a s slide. that is turner. >> i love this turner. this next sequence really outlines the whole task before us. so turner was interested in ships at sea and how they confronted the natural forces, the storm at sea, the clouds, the waves, and these ships struggling in order to handle themselves under those circumstances. and this is a very figurative, beautifully detailed depiction. he now returns to the scene 40

years later and he has done away with much of the detail. you barely recognize the fact that it's a ship because you see the mast, and you see that a lot of the detail is gone, but you still see the ship struggling against the force of nature, against the waves, against the sky, and, in some ways, because it leaves more to the imagination, it affects you more powerfully. and this is a very interesting thing about this work of art, and abstract art in general. there are processes that are involved in how you and i look at art. one is called a bottom-up process and the other is called a top-down process. so when i look at you, for example, all my retina sees is the light bouncing off your face, the photons bouncing off your face. that is clearly insufficient for me to recognize charlie rose.

i recognize him with great facility and so does everyone else. so there must be other sources of information, and there are. bottom-up and top-down. bottom-up is our visual system is involved in over hundreds of thousands of views and brought to bear in built-in clues that it uses automatically. if i see a source of light, i immediately assume it's above because the sun is above. if i see a person larger than the other, i assume he's closer than the other person. there's a built-in mechanism whereby we make guesses but correctly 90% of the time and that's why everyone recognizes you despite the fact all they see is no tons bouncing off your face. but in addition to this built-in meek simple there's a top-down mechanism. we learn different things, have different experiences, we've seen different works of art and different people, and that acquired experience bears down and enriches us.

when it comes to this, the vaguer it is, abstract art, the more you rely on top-down processing. one of the reasons abstract art is so pleasurable for people is because top-down processes involve the imagination, the creativity, and that is very pleasurable for most people. >> rose: the next slide is a decuny. >> yes, william decuny, generally considered america's greatest artist next to picasso matisse, painted this of the woman in the '40s he was to marry years later. this is a figurative depiction. but if you look at her right arm, it's abstract and the right side of her face is abstract. so a mixture of abstract and figuration. within a short period of time, decuny became an extraordinarily

powerful abstract. this is one of his greatest painting excavation. it's a mix of cubism and surrealism processes. what's true for him and many of his paintings is despite the fact it's very abstract and causes you to spin and and move,th a new york type painting, you have different elements. first, he often paint particularly women, but even in his abstatic paintings you can often see figurative elements in it. >> rose: next slide, jackson pollack. >> he's extraordinary. trained by a benton, a midwestern painter, and, you know, started off doing reasonably interesting work, but then he saw picasso's work and got interested in doing something more radical. he decided that he wanted to paint in a completely new way. he took the canvas off the wall,

put it on the floor and started to splattered paint on it and he could walk around and splatter in different directions. no one had ever done this before. this just absolutely blew everybody away, and decuny who is both his rival and friend said jackson pollack has really blown the conventional idea of a picture completely to hell. this is a completely radical depiction of a work of art. >> rose: okay, the next one is mark roth. >> what's interesting about all these people, you can trace them as they move from figuration to abtraction. roscoe said everyone is paying attention to line and form. what about color? color is so interesting, sensual, spiritual, and he began to play with color. what you can do by looking at

it, you have to see it in real life, is to see there is depth to it. he has layers with the top off for example, the orange here, he has layers of paint and translucent lay on top and as you sit in front of it you really sees the depth of the painting and i sat in front of these things and had a spiritual reaction everyone has. i said, you think you're reductionist? you're nothing. this is extraordinary. the physical response somebody has to something like this. nobody ever went to the rothko chapel in houston, you see the dark paintings, he was depressed at the end of his life, you stand in front of him and see practically nothing. after a while, you see a little movement and you don't know if the movement is in the image or you. it's very powerful, a fantastic artist. >> rose: the next one is alex -- >> one of the interesting things about the abstract expressionist is not only did they influence each other and the world but they influenced figurative

artists. for a while it seemed the figurative artist was dead. people were saying unless you do abstract you're really not in the action. but alex katz didn't go along with that but was very much influenced by the abstract expressionist. the paintings are completely black, no per suspective, a very simple battleground in this case bring and he's interested in depiction. he's not interested in conveying the message. he just wants you to get the idea of the painting. >> rose: katz was influenced by warhol? >> cats influenced warhol. >> rose: what about music and writing? do you see reductionism there? >> yes. >> rose: give me an example of that. shermburg who revolutionized music, made music a total, sort

of simplified it -- atonal and simplified it a great deal, it is not from a perceptive point of view as attractive as abstract art, so that form of music has not caught on, but certainly people simplify music in a variety of ways in order to make it more attractive for a person. >> rose: you have said that art, and you explained it in this conversation, has made you a more sensitive human being. >> oh, absolutely. enriches your life a great deal. first of all, you see people, you see scenes that you would not normally experience. and also allows you to get a more insight into yourself, what you respond to, what moves you. and i don't know whether you find this, my guess is you do, i get the shallowest idea that's original i get pleasure out of it. when you look at a painting, particularly abstrarkts that allows you to put your own ideas into it, i think it's very satisfying and the people who

enjoy abstract art, i think they do it because it recruits their creative processes. >> rose: and who was ernst crist? >> regal was the first that said art will die unless it's more scientific. science relates itself to psychology and it's how you the beholder responds to a work of art. he said a painting is not complete until the artist paints it an and a viewer responds to . this is obvious. but no one put this in print and thought about it. how does the beholder respond to a work of art? crist took that problem on and when you and i look at the same painting we see it somewhat differently. what does that mean? that each of us is undergoing a creative process, that behold the recreates in their own head to a very modest degree the

image that they see. and that's one of the reasons it's satisfying to the viewer. ganbush realized all you see is photons and he developed this idea that came from hem holts that we should pay attention to bottom up and top down processing, so the current, modern way we look at works of art from an experimental, psychological point of view is like this. and now, of course, the next step is, and people are trying to do this and i'm beginning to explore this with colleagues of mine, is to see what happens if you image a person while they're looking at three of these paintings. they're figurative, intermediate and abstrarkts what is happening in their brain as they shift from figure regulation to abstraction. >> rose: reductionism in art and brain science: bridging the two cultures. eric kandel. thank you for joining us.

see you next time. for more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

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