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Richard - Gray matters (the collapse of learning)
Enjoyed the programme, always useful to be reminded of the contingency of received wisdom, i.e. where we think we reside within our body. Of particular interest was a passing reference to "the collapse of learning in the 5th, 6th, 7th centuries". Perhaps an examination of the nature and consequences of this collapse would prove a worthy topic for a future foray.
Jane - re. David in Brussels
Good points - and the part about making decisions before the brain's signals reminded me of something I read about an experiment to measure people's stress response to distressing images. They were wired up and shown a series of pictures - some were pleasant and some very upsetting. What became most interesting was the fact that the stress caused by the traumatic images registered on the skin fractionally before the picture appeared. The eyes/brain hadn't actually perceived the image but the stress response had been produced within the body. So - our plot thickens even more. Which questions do we ask here? Is the brain confined to time or perception in the solid way we presume or is our energy more volatile or numinous somehow? You know - the more I live, the more I think the single biggest difficulty I have is the lack of knowledge available to me in all respects. How are we supposed to know how to set up our stall of life with so little information? Never mind eh - it keeps us very busy trying to work it all out! There's a certain comedy that we are using our brain to try and work out how our brain works. Bless us!
Heulwen Marina Carrier: Understanding of 'the hea
As an ex- teacher, researcher, and psychologist/philosopher re ‘learning and teaching’ – I was interested in your discussion during the above programme when you and your guests were looking at conceptions of the mind, memory and inevitably at the nature of knowledge.However, there was an area which was tangentially touched on by your female guest, but not directly addressed by anyone. This directly relates to the meaning of ‘the heart’ which was largely regarded as ‘emotions’ by your contributors. In the Hebrew in the Old Testament of the Bible, it is variously translated as ‘the soul’; ‘the inner man’ ; ‘the spirit’ – and refers to the wholeness of ‘mind, emotions and will’. Thus a ‘broken heart’ is one whose experience has led them to separate off mind from emotions, and whose will for life, for Good (for God), suffers. I only came to this understanding when I reached exhaustion as an academic, was brought back to faith and spent some time studying Christian character. Thus I have now come to understand why in my research I found that learners, of what ever age, who were treated as whole persons in classrooms, (ie having mind and existing experience, emotions and will) were far more responsive and engaged in the learning process, than those who were treated as empty minds who had to have facts poured into them.If you are pursuing this topic maybe you could find someone who has a Biblical perspective on character; the mind, emotions and will, which helps us understand more about what knowledge is significant and what is passing and what role the mind has within ‘the heart’. The Book of Wisdom for example says we have, ‘a heart to think with’.
David In Brussels Brain and Body to
Despite the eminence of the contributors, I have a gut feeling that like many programmes this got on the wrong track, a Greek one. What turned my spleen, is that the pantheistic Greeks, who were they great copyists and distorters of Eastern and Western cultures, misunderstood the generally retained idea that the whole body was identified with thought and emotions. Greeks chose the heart or the head. It is not very brainy of us to assume this is correct. We reject the polytheistic premises of their thinkers. Why should they be right on their other conclusions? The Sumerians, Babylonians, Chinese and Celts had ideas that are far more inclusive. The Hebrews spoke of certain thoughts where we need to engage positively all organs, all our heart and all our soul and all our might. This was also mainstream European thought, but the people only. The foolish elites went pagan Greek. When it comes to the curious modern discovery that we make decisions sometimes seconds before the brain makes bio- or electro-chemical signals, I know of no other theory but the ancient Hebrew concepts that will adequately explain it. I was glad to hear the announcement of a second programme on the Brain but hope it will flee the Greeks.
Jane - brain
"No man is an island" and certainly, no brain is either. The well renowned scientist Candice Pert has written interestingly about cellular intelligence and response. I imagine that if we took away each bit of the body one bit at a time we could begin to understand both the intrinsic role and interrelationship of each part - eventually arriving at an understanding of dispensable pecking order but 'though this could give us an amazing amount of information, it's obviously not a viable procedure - not even on criminals - (you had to have heard the programme!) Presently we seem to have largely and correctly orientated intelligence in the brain but time will probably take us into a far more complex understanding of intelligence and its placement. Our human story is very much a 'back to the drawing board' one isn't it. What is a gut reaction? What is a broken heart or 'getting it off your chest'? These parts of the body do actually register the relevant physical sensation don't they. Ah well - on with the day. Very best wishes - Jane.
Tom Milner-Gulland - The brain
No mention of Descartes' seat of the soul, the pineal gland, nor the neaby - and absolutely crucial from a functional point of view - hypothalamus, which is where I myself reckon the seat of the soul to reside. It might be of interest that the optic nerve is part of the central, not the peripheral nervous system. This could, in one line of thinking, preclude it from being featured on the mental map that takes the form of the spatial organisation of the human sensibility and which is co-ordinated by the sense of proprioception. So visual data impresses itself directly upon the mind, and it is only because its very content suggests the location of the sensory organ that the percipient has the notion, by virtue merely of using them, of where his eyes actually are. The faculty of visualisation (upon which visual data impress themselves), may be understood as being the basis of self-consciousness, because it is through visualisation that the map of the peripheral nervous system is realised, each sensory signal being identified by the mind's momentarily visualising the body as a complete image (as in the preconconscious construct that is, in Merleau Ponty's phrasing, a 'body image'), and in my thinking this gives all sensation originating in the peripheral nervous system its basic, bodily identity, thus affording feelings of pain and so on their penetrative quality in the mind.
Catherine Thorn - something to add to "The brain:
I'd like to add a couple of points which may be of interest.First, it was long before Aristotle that ancient Greeks considered the heart to be the organ of thought. This concept can be found in Homer; for example, in Book 10 of the Odyssey line 151, Odysseus thinks in his "phren", which (according to Liddell & Scott's Lexicon) in Homeric Greek means "the parts around the heart, the breast". As the Lexicon also shows, this word "phren" is used in lots of compound words concerning the mind - and is of course the origin of our word "phrenology". As a separate point, it seems that the ancient Celts did have a special regard for the head that appears to indicate that they saw it as the seat of the mind. In his book "The Ancient Celts" Barry Cunliffe refers to the "recurring theme" of "the cult of the severed head" in sculptures found in southern France - see pages 127 to 128. He returns to consider the head in the context of religious practices on pages 209 to 210; he deduces that "to own and to display a distinguished head was to retain and control the power of the dead person". This idea also crops up in various "Celtic" legends; for instance, the talismanic power of the severed head of dead king Bran in the Mabinogion, and the ability of the severed head of the dead Cuchulainn to split the rock on which it has been placed and bury itself within it.
Dave Nicholson
Serious point.Why people bang on about Oxbridge entrance being so desirable when there are brilliant lecturers at most other Universities don’t know.The contributors today were outstanding.Jokey point.I am a Terry Prachett fan. Other fans want to get him a knighthood, I want him, Ian Stewart, and Jack Cohen, on the programme one day talking about science fantasy.I have asked before. Ian Stewart has been on. The three write Science of Diskworld books by them.Terry has invented retro-phrenology. Phrenology got a mention. With retro-phrenology you describe what characteristics you want and an expert retro-phrenologist gives you the appropriate bumps.
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