About Art Aeon
Art Aeon is the pen name of Myong Geun Yoon, born in 1939 in Seoul, Korea. He studied physics (BSc in physics, Seoul National University, 1962). In 1962 spring, he had an unexpected opportunity to study biophysics at the University of California with the guidance of Profs. C.A. Tobias and H.B. Jones. But it was aborted due to compulsory military service in Korea. During his dark three years in the Korean Army, Profs. Jones and Tobias kept encouraging him. At last, he came to UC Berkeley in summer 1965, revived with a life-changing Donner Predoctoral Fellowship in Biophysics.
Studying Sciences
Under the inspiring guidance of Profs. H. B. Barlow, G. S. Stent and O. Chamberlain, he completed his PhD in biophysics in spring 1969. It aimed to find the maximum sensitivity of visuoneural transduction of each ganglion cell in the cat’s retina by measuring the minimum number of photons required to elicit statistically reliable changes in the pattern of neural signalling by collecting post-stimulus time histograms of the frequency distribution of action potentials (the language of nerve cells) in each tested neuron at a given level of background light input (visual adaptation level). Under the dark-adapted condition, the sensitivity approached the quantum physical limit. The dynamic changes in the sensitivity of the same neuron were also studied over a range of billion-fold changes in background light input. This required continuous neurophysiological recording of neural signalling from each neuron for many hours (3 – 9 hours) to complete one to three repeated tests for each neuron, as if it were a human subject in a psychophysical test. The results revealed that the cat’s retinal ganglion cells tell its brain what they see, obeying the Weber-Fechner Law of human psychophysics.
He pursued his postdoctoral work in brain research (1969–1972) in Prof. R. W. Sperry's lab at Caltech. He studied specificity in embryonic development and plasticity of neural reorganization in the goldfish visual system, in response to various experimental manipulations (e.g., ablation or disconnection of various parts).
In 1972, he moved to Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, as a member of the Faculty of Science. He held a Killam Research Professorship, which freed him from undergraduate teaching and administration. He performed challenging experiments (e.g., reimplanting dissected brain tissue after a rotation or inversion of cytoarchitecture, or reciprocally transplanting tissues between optic tectum and cerebellum in the same goldfish).
From 1979-1986, he pursued neurochemical experiments at Dalhousie in collaboration with Prof. L. Benowitz at Harvard Medical School. After sincere efforts, he learned a stark reality. He could not recruit any new graduate students, let alone postdocs, to his lab. It lacked the needed infrastructure for neurochemical experiments; the required radioisotopes were too expensive for several tests and retests. His health deteriorated rapidly. He struggled to find a new path in his life.
In his memoirs: Tribute to Mentors and Friends
Adventure in Reading Classic Books
In 1987, he had a sabbatical leave at Cambridge University. He audited inspiring lectures in theoretical and pragmatic linguistics, Homeric narrative epics, Greek philosophy and tragedies, and Dante’s poetry. He acquired a selection of classical books (e.g., Loeb Classical Library’s Greek and Roman series, Dante, Shakespeare and Milton’s poetic works). After the crucial experience at Cambridge University, he stopped his brain research. But he kept learning and teaching about the human brain’s unique ability to use arbitrary signs (e.g., language, mathematics, symbolic depictions, etc.) for mental representation (e.g., recognition, thinking, planning, imagining, self-awareness, communicative intention, etc.) and recent scientific research on their specific breakdown due to damage to particular neuroanatomical structures of the human brain (e.g., F-MRI, PET scan, CT-scan imaging of various types of aphasic patients’ brains).
During the summers (from 1988 to 2002), he immersed himself in perusing the classical books he collected from Cambridge and also explored reading some classic books (in English translations) from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and India. He also began writing his naïve, personal response to each book, which inspired him, heart and soul.
In his memoirs: Pilgrimage into Classics
Publishing Books
Since retiring from Dalhousie University in 2003, he has devoted himself to publishing his personal creative writings from 1987 to 2022 (which had evolved through countless, soul-searching revisions) under the pen name Art Aeon. He has established a small, independent publisher, Aeon Press, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
In his memoirs: Writing Simple Songs on Nature, Writing Narrative Poems on Classic Themes, Musing on Homeric Epics