March 30, 2004
Thinking about thinking
They’re thinking about thinking again.
And the thinkers, faced with having to use their own thinkers to do this sort of thing, are having trouble. They’ve discovered that the brain is not a logical organ at all and that even to talk about it they’re having to depend on metaphors (NYTimes, 27.3.04).
“The brain confabulates,” says neuroscientist Gerald Edelman. Or, as he explains, it associates diverse sensations, defies contradictions, creates coherence, and even seeks explanations for its own unfathomable behavior.
I wonder, did the brain think up logic just to confuse us, so it could then go on its merry way writing poetry? Whether it did or not, it does. So leave it to the scientists to discover myth as a way of knowing, all the while the religionists are rediscovering literalism as a way of doing away with myth.