Philosophy and the Brain
1965; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 9; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/pbm.1965.0005
ISSN1529-8795
Autores Tópico(s)Classical Philosophy and Thought
ResumoPHILOSOPHY AND THEBRAIN ROBERT tV. DOTY* The processes by which brain produces mind are inherently covert and obstinately elusive. Man has thus been free to give full scope to poetic inventiveness in explaining his experiential being. The fact that the brain is the organ ofperception and cognition, and the consequences ofthis fact, have barely begun to penetrate the vast contrivances ofspeculation. The dreamer, encountering in full flesh the awesome dead, has no conclusion but that the dead still Uve. Those seeing the insensate form ofone who later reports conversations with the dead must surely believe that the sleeper's shade floods forth to commerce in a nether mist—and in death dreams on. So are the soul and immortality discovered by all primitive peoples [i]. Only the scientist pries profanely into the stuff of which dreams are made. A constellation ofsigns, such as rapid eye movements and low voltage, fast electrical activity ofthe brain, occurs from time to time during the course ofnatural sleep, and is identical in both man and other mammals. Men awakened when such signs appear, but not at other times, report that they have dreamed [2]. This "dream state" in animals is found to originate in activity of the pontine reticular nuclei [3], phylogenetically an ancient group ofneurons, andfrom here is propagatedselectively into other areas among them, most interestingly, the lower components ofthe central visual system [4].Where the savage finds religión, science detects but a flurry ofsignals exchanged between primitive parts of the brain. The savage, ofcourse, has no clues that a dream or anything else is produced in the brain. Language shows that the brain has persistently been equated with bone marrow, for throughout the world the same word * Center for Brain Research, University ofRochester, Rochester, New York. Thispaperis dedicated to Ralph W. Gerard, my colleague and teacher, for his 65th birthday—and to the memory of Julian Tobias, also my teacher, whose warm thoughtfulness initiated this undertaking and whose death saddens this occasion ofaccomplishment. 23 oftenservesforeach, e.g., inRussian, Dravidianand Swahili; and for probably more than 5,000 years in Chinese medicine brain and marrow have been considered together as (food) storage depots [5]. It would be fanciful to believe that the Chinese tradition originated with their progenitors [6-8], Sinanthropus, although there can beno doubtthat Sinanthropusinthe hills near Choukoutien provides the first record of man's acquaintance with his brain; as a cannibal some 350,000 years ago [8]. A cultural tradition of the Neanderthals survived essentially unchanged at Shanidar [9] for60,000years (anunparalleledachievement for conservatives); but nothing is known of their neurology. In any event, in the Orient no effort appears to have been made to localize the mind [10]. The Melanesian placed his memory in his belly and his intellect in his larynx [n]; but in most cultures the heart and diaphragm, for obvious reasons, have been the most popular loci for thought. The Egyptians reached the nadir ofconcern for the brain. Compulsively punctilious in care for the immortal soul and its future accouterment, their god-kings [12], bejeweled and entombed in gold, withered phallus erect, viscera embalmed with careful prayer, set off for the journey to the Nile ofthe sky with their brains discarded heedlessly like a shameful vomit on the sand. With such Egyptian practice persisting at least untilthe time ofHerodotus (ca. 484-425 b.c.), with no adumbration whatever in myth, legend, language, or philosophical tradition, it seems probable that the discovery ofthe role ofthe brain as organ ofthe mind was a unique event, one still likely to shake the world. Such evidence as there is concerning the discovery points uniformly to its having been made by Alkmaion ofKroton about 500 b.c. At this time Kroton was a 200-year-old city at its moment ofgreatest glory. Long famous for its Olympian athletes, in 510b.c. it had destroyed and, with zealous hatred, buried its resplendent neighbor and rival, Sybaris, in the mud ofthe Krathis. The strange philosopher-mathematician , Pythagoras, was undoubtedly an important participant in the politics ofthis era, having been in Kroton probably for twenty years prior to its conquest ofSybaris [13]. Writing 700 years later, Diogenes Laertius stated that Alkmaion was a...
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