Reflections About Brain

Reflections About Brain

The brain is a tissue. It is a complicated, intricately woven tissue, like nothing else we know of in the universe, but it is composed of cells, as any tissue is. There are, to be sure, highly specialized cells, but they function according to the laws that govern any other cells. Their electrical and chemical signals can be detected, recorded and interpreted and their chemicals can be identified; the connections that constitute the brain's woven feltwork can be mapped. In short, the brain can be studied, just as the kidney can (David H. Hubel, neuroscientists).

Suppose that there be a machine, the structure of which produces thinking, feeling, and perceiving; imagine this machine enlarged but preserving the same proportions, so you could enter it as if it were a mill. This being supposed, you might visit inside; but what would you observe there? Nothing but parts which push and move each other, and never anything that could explain perception (Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz).

Now, for the first time, we are observing the brain at work in a global manner with such clarity that we should be able to discover the over-all programs behind its magnificent powers (J.G.Taylor B. Horwitz and K.J.Friston).

The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stood there from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest. Just so the world of each of us, howsoever different our several views of it may be, all lay embedded in the primordial chaos of sensations, which gave the mere matter to the thought of all of us indifferently. We may, if we like, by our reasoning unwind things back to that black and jointless continuity of space and moving clouds of swarming atoms which science calls the only real world. But all the while the world we feel and live in will be that which our ancestors and we, by slowly cumulative strokes of choice, have extricated out of this, like sculptors, by simply rejecting certain portions of the given stuff. Other sculptors, other statues from the same stone! Other minds, other worlds form the same monotonous and inexpressive chaos! My world is but one in a million alike embedded, alike real to those who may abstract them. How different must be the worlds in the consciousness of ant, cuttle-fish, or crab! (William James).  

Here we stand in the middle of this new world with our primitive brain, attuned to the simple cave life, with terrific forces at our disposal, which we are clever enough to release, but whose consequences we cannot comprehend (Albert Szent-Györgui).

Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thoughts. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness, are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others (William James).

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom (Bertrand Russell).

Feel the fear and do it anyway (Susan Jeffers).

Witchcraft and the supernatural in general pertain to Gothic mysticism.  Photo by Elena.