RoR: Forum

" A three-year international research project ... finds that humans have natural tendencies to believe in gods and an afterlife. The Ł1.9 million project ... conclude that humans are predisposed to believe in gods...

Experiments ... suggest that people across many different cultures instinctively believe that some part of their mind, soul or spirit lives on after-death." [emphasis mine]

My first thought was who in world would pay over $2,000,000 for a study like that? The second thought was that they needed to prove that humans have 'instincts' - clearly, this is not science, but rather just evangelists dressed up as researchers.

My understanding of religion is quite different. I have been taught that early religion with its multiple gods were, in the absence of any science, the explanation of the world they lived in - so there might have been a god to explain lightning and thunder, and a god in control of the flooding of the river, and so forth. And man's role in this was to do certain rituals - like sacrificing a goat or something - and it was done to keep things running correctly - e.g., to ensure a healthy crop of new goats. In the early religions, there was no afterlife and there there was no moral or ethical issue attached to the various activities (beyond simple self-interest). Moral sacrifice and doing 'good' for the sake of being 'good' - all of that came later, about 800 BC in the early axial age if I remember correctly. When religion became a force of greater control over man by making certain actions right and others wrong that the carrot and stick had to figure more prominently. And when religious leaders began making large demands, they needed the concept of an afterlife.

Post 1

Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - 10:53am

Even if this thesis proved a true aspect of the brain's "pattern-sensing" mechanism, it would not alter the fact that reason can override the inclination to assign the proper meaning to the experience.

Post 2

Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - 2:43pm

Luke, I'd say that rather than a pattern-sensing mechanism/routine at work, it would more likely be an element of early childhood psycho-epistemology at work. We appear to be evolutionarily wired to accept much of what adults say during that period of early childhood where we are so open to new information. We gradually wean off of unquestioned acceptance of all that any adults say, but stay widely open to our parents and maybe a few trusted others, then we gradually gain control of that "open-closed" slider and, hopefully, have firmly lodged the 'filter' of reason between what is said and what we accept.

A child soon grasps, implicitly, that things have causes. Kick the dog and it reacts. It is a simplistic action-reaction type of cause-effect, but it becomes the epistemological background - all things will have a cause. And over time more and more things will be questioned in that way. "Why is the sky blue?" "Where do babies come from?"

The next step is to expand it to the level of metaphysics - to "What created the universe?" I don't see that as an explicit question that would normally arise - kids at that age are capable of abstraction, of course, but usually triggered by concretes. So, it is more that that is the mental context into which the child is receiving a description God - it is an empty mental niche that will accept a word, a concept, an answer to a question that hadn't been asked, but seems reasonable. After all, things have causes. That is as close to a reasoned approach, to a process of understanding of God that is likely to exist for a young child.

A child will, in time, arrive at the question, "What happens after you die?" And he is intending to ask what happens to the person, their self, their personality, etc., after they die - not to different from the question, "Where will we go after we go to the store?" He is still hasn't grasped that people come to an end. There is a point where they grasp that they had a beginning and then they grew. They need to complete things with an understanding that they also come to an end. It is at this point that they are going to pick up on the culture's concept of an afterlife and use those concepts and words to answer that natural question. Any kind of fuzzy pattern that would be a precursor to "afterlife" is really just a failure to grasp that we don't die, a failure that without religion, would be cured naturally as time went on. "Why won't my hamster wake up?"

We aren't born with a built-in archetype, instinct, or concept - what happens is that we are born in a world that we naturally find ourselves asking questions about. We want answers to questions. Any patterns we make use of will be in the form of saying, in effect, this might be like other things I know... and then making an answer that is similar to a previous answer. E.g., "When I kick the dog, it jumps. What will the cat do if I kick it? I bet it'll jump too." Some things fit the pattern we've learned about beginning and end. TV shows begin and end. Dinner begins and ends.

I'm reasonably familiar with how many of the religious concepts began, but I'm still waiting for them to end. After all, "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest" - Denis Diderot.

Post 3

Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - 2:57pm

Looking back on part of what I wrote ("We appear to be evolutionarily wired to accept much of what adults say during that period of early childhood where we are so open to new information") I think there is a much better way to describe that phenomena.

It isn't that we are wired to accept what adults say, it is that there are a number of things that have to be learned and they take time. We have to learn that conclusions can be wrong. A baby does something many times, like waving his arms around, but then on one occasion bumps the waving arm into something that causes pain - this could occur in such a way that the conclusion was, in effect, "Hey, I thought arm waving was safe!" Other conclusions are that other people can have wrong ideas ("Dad said getting a shot wouldn't hurt, but it did".) And the awareness of being focused and that one can question the thoughts of others - "Is what she said true?" And there are lots of reasons why, under normal circumstances, the parents would be the last to be questioned.

So, it isn't so much that evolution gave us some special early openness to what others say, as it is that we have to grasp more about this business of true and false and its implications before we can move on to reasoning before accepting.

Post 4

Thursday, August 11, 2011 - 3:06am

1. Get closer to the source.
http://www.cam.ox.ac.uk/research/cognition-religion-and-theology/

2. We understand by analogy and metaphor. Myth provides that. Steve Wolfer, a professional psychologist, makes the quaint, perhaps ridiculous, claim that we are "wired" to believe things. Others speak of "programs" in the brain.

2.B. In times past, people who behaved oddly were "crack pots" or "crazy." Later, they had "a screw loose" or were "off their rocker."

2.C. These images are only recent slang for "spirit" (literally "breath"). Our word for "mind" is the same as "memory" and "measure." (When we think, we "ponder" i.e., we weigh.) But that's just us. Other people speak and spoke differently about their self-perceptions.

3. It is absolutely wrong to confuse "primitive" (non-urban; non-industrial) peoples as child-like, childish, or infantile. Whatever an adult of 800 BCE thought was the cognitive process of an adult, not the mentation of a modern child.

4. Excavations at Catal Huyuk seem to show that generations after burial, bodies were exhumed and beheaded, their heads then being mounted on a shelf, apparently for consultation. This occurred in the thousands (not hundreds) BCE. There may have been a "religious explosion" about 800 BCE, but religion is much older.

5. The origins of religion are speculative, at best. It is wrong to think that today's non-urban ("primitive") people are vestiges of our ancestry in some special way different from ourselves. In other words, if you want to see hunter-gatherers, stand in midtown Manhattan. If you want to see pastoralists, go to Wall Street. The Zulus and the Lapps long ago left their ancestors behind, as did we. If you want to trace the origins of religion begin with the fact that the NYSE lost 500 points because S&P downgraded US Treasury Bonds... but that having been properly in-augur-ated, the President has called for offerings (sacrifices) to the Gods of Money.

The subject is entirely too complicated to encapsulate in this forum. At best, we summarize what we do not believe. (Steve does not really believe that he has wires in his head.) Myself, I accept the report for what it offers me.

Post 5

Thursday, August 11, 2011 - 6:45am

As a parent of a child with Williams Syndrome, it has been objectively demonstrated to me that the brain has "wiring."

This is most noticeable when some of that wiring is physically missing, as it is with Williams Syndrome, a genetic deletion, which results in missing brain mass(classic '?' shape of skull.)

3D spatial recognition, pattern recognition, logic functions, fundamental math is largely dependent on wiring. It is possible for folks with Williams Syndrome to perform some math, but only using adaptive techniques, and only to a rudimentary level. And yet, they are wildly asymmetric, with sometimes exceptional musical and memory skills.

The brain is incredibly adaptive, but it is not infinitely adaptive; at some levels, it is dependent on wiring.

I wont repeat it a fourth time, but an easily demonstrated and reproducible experiment demonstrating the 'machine inside of man' is the checkerboard/shadow greyscale image.

We can consciously self-modify much of our wet bit wiring, but that experiment demonstrates that the wiring is there, self-modified or not.

Post 6

Thursday, August 11, 2011 - 11:21am

Michael, wrote, "Steve Wolfer, a professional psychologist, makes the quaint, perhaps ridiculous, claim that we are 'wired' to believe things."

That isn't what I said or meant. We are open to accepting new information or we are closed to new information. Our relative openness varies from time to time. When we feel at all threatened we are likely to be wide open for a way to quell that fear, but closed to anything else. When we are angry we tend to be very closed. When we are confused we are wide open for new information. But it isn't just a state that varies by mood or by feelings or by our situation. It also varies from person to person. And it varies by our stage in life. When are in the early stages of life we are vary open to new learnings.

When I used the word "wired" I put the word "evolutionarily" in front of it. Thus indicating that evolution has favored those whose DNA predisposed them to be open to new information when they are young to the degree that they left more offspring than those who did not.

Consciousness is our primary means of survival and it deals in knowledge which has to be learned (because we do NOT come with built in beliefs), and to learn we must be open.

Then in my next post I dug down deeper because it occured to me that the hierarchical nature of knowledge and the required progression of ideas that bridge from knowing nothing in the beginning to knowing that ideas from must be examined is a natural one and all we needed of evolution is the rational capacity.

Michael, please try to restrain yourself from associated my name with baseless assertions that I make "quaint, perhaps ridiculous" claims.
-------------------------------------------

Michael wrote, "It is absolutely wrong to confuse 'primitive' (non-urban; non-industrial) peoples as child-like, childish, or infantile. Whatever an adult of 800 BCE thought was the cognitive process of an adult, not the mentation of a modern child."

No, Michael, parallels can exist between primitive thinking in this or that adult (urban or non-uban, industrial or non-industrial) and some of the processes that are associated with children. Fear of the unknown, for example, is a natural product of ignorance whether the subject is a modern, 60 year old individual with a completely normal education and background who lives in modern, urban America, but is suffering from dementia, or if the subject is a member of a tribe whose culture is very primitive, or a child whose mind is learning about fear and what to fear.

That parallel reflects the relationship between knowledge needed to survive and the what the environment currently being experienced is presenting. There are other parallels, like our degree of self-awareness. Even though all humans have the same hardware, they self-program from different starting points. Some cultures give an excellent foundation and starting point to aid in learning to be self-aware. Some cultures have a better storehouse of knowledge than others. We each achieve differing degrees of maturity and different cultures ensure that their members will achieve differing AVERAGE levels of maturity.

The bottom line is that a childs processes, habits, skills, knowledge, and that bundle of things we call a personality all tend to mature in concert with their surroundings (and in ways that differ from child to child). And there are elements of the child we once were in each of us today. No one matures fully (whatever that would mean) or in every way. We tend to only mature in those aspects that are impelled towards change in some way or another. Other aspects don't change, sometimes because they need go no further (you can't improve much on the curiosity of child, or the capacity to laugh or play - so, if we are lucky, those stay roughly the same).

We are a work in progress - as individuals, as cultures, and even as a species.

Post 7

Friday, August 12, 2011 - 3:45pm

Mike,

3. It is absolutely wrong to confuse "primitive" (non-urban; non-industrial) peoples as child-like, childish, or infantile. Whatever an adult of 800 BCE thought was the cognitive process of an adult, not the mentation of a modern child.

I disagree. Primitive peoples are child-like in many ways. One example involves counting only to two -- just like small children (and crows) would do.

Ed

Sources:
One ... Two ... Many

The Number Warrior blog

Post 8

Friday, August 12, 2011 - 4:13pm

Ed, I agree that large numbers such as 4, 5, 6,... are a recent invention, perhaps about 4000 BCE. I have written about it extensively, in the form of reviews of the works of Denise Schmandt-Besserat whose discoveries on the origins of writing completely revolutionized our understanding both of literacy and numeracy. (You can find references to her work from me here on RoR.)

Numbering led to writing. Four, five, six,... were invented in Sumeria about 4000 BCE. But realize that French is also a "primitive" language: troi=three; tres=many. Hungarian gets to four (negy) and big (nagy). In our Indo-european languages the number "seven" comes directly from the Sumeria. (The Jews called it the Sabbath). The common Chinese (Japanese) scripts for 5, 6, 7, 8, show their "Arabic" (Indian) roots; but now we're talking about the European Middle Ages here and that is very, very recent.

Do you imagine that the decimal system is "natural" because you have ten fingers? It is only one natural way to count. Base-12 is just as easy and with one hand tied behind my back: Use your thumb for a pointer and count off the flanges (joints) three on each other other four fingers, and you have 12. Even into the 1800s, the German Thaler was divided into 12ths. The decimal system of counting (and thus coinage) is easily traced to a book by Simon Stevenius, De Thiende ("The Tenth") from 1584.

Was Aristotle child-like? Was Da Vinci a mental baby? Was Galileo primitive?

I agree 100% that babies have their limits, as we all do. However, you were socialized to base-10 arithmetic before you consciously knew what happened. It was not a "natural development," like growing that beard. It was a very recent social process. (And my wife and I often exchange birthday greetings in hexadecimal.)

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 8/12, 4:21pm)

Post 9

Friday, August 12, 2011 - 5:12pm

Michael,

Ed was saying that there are some child-like qualities to be found in primitive people.

Why would you imply that Aristotle or Galileo are of primitive cultures or times? "Primitive" refers to people whose culture lacked writing or technology or philosophical systems.

Am I getting that right, Ed?

Post 10

Friday, August 12, 2011 - 7:16pm

"Primitive" refers to people whose culture lacked writing or technology or philosophical systems.

Am I getting that right, Ed?

Yes, Steve.

When I said primitive, I meant uncivilized folks such as those mentioned in my link to the blog of the Number Warrior: the Australian Aborigines and the Piraha people of the Amazon (and you can throw in the Turkana nomads from Africa ). These people are arrested-development tribalists who, in many ways, are child-like. They are also very often dangerous -- like kids would be, if they were as physically powerful as adults are. The study of the Turkana shows this aspect well. Just like little spoiled kids, they forcefully take things from their peers -- not having the adult-like understanding that you can/should produce and trade with others. They are morally-inadequate people.

The real tragedy is the recent (August) upsurge in such tribalist thinking/acting among people who were born in civilized, or at least semi-civilized, culture -- such as the immoral rioters in London, and the immoral race rioters at the Wisconsin State Fair.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 8/12, 9:24pm)

Post 11

Saturday, August 13, 2011 - 7:09am

I read the Wisconsin State Fair article Ed linked. It made some good points. I did notice a respect for religion and churches and "school hallway discipline" that I found unsettling. But that is not an Objectivist site. I suppose an Objectivist world would have community centers that would take the place of churches, though.

Ed's remarks about adults with childish views reminded me of a tussle in which I found myself this week. A new Facebook group formed more than a week ago for people from my hometown (population 800) to reminisce. Evidently I was the only one to leave behind faith for reason and to lose respect for "traditions" like paddling and other abusive punitive practices of "schoolchildren misbehavior" as well as the people who practiced them. My critical remarks about these were roundly condemned. Their fairy tale views of existence remind me of those of children.

The saying is true: "You can't go home again."

I find it hard to excuse the amount of evasion even "average" people in a small town have to perform to cling to supernaturalism given the vast knowledge surrounding them. When I think about the time and effort squandered in mysticism that could be spent on productive activities, as well as the involuntary servitude of children in service to the mystical notions of parents and teachers alike, along with the undue limits and hardships brought because of these prevailing attitudes, I get really angry! I need to engage in some self-therapy for this tragic loss.

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 8/13, 9:53am)

Post 12

Saturday, August 13, 2011 - 10:11am

I am sorry for your loss, Luke.

It is like a partial death, after you free yourself from mysticism while others in your life fail in that same regard. It is like a new wedge is between you and them, preventing any complete and total psychological intimacy. I have a 1st-degree relative, for instance, who watches TV evangelists all day, never leaves the house except for groceries or doctor appointments, and hasn't worked in at least 2 decades.

This person is breathing, but not fully alive. It is really very tragic. In a milder way, it must be what it's like to live with someone with Alzheimer's disease. A family friend had Alzheimer's before he died. He was breathing, but not fully alive. In both kinds of cases, the mind becomes so diseased that full, human living becomes impossible.

Ed

Post 13

Saturday, August 13, 2011 - 1:14pm

Take this as a closure, and move on - because nothing is static and all dynamic, you can't go home again because there is no 'home' to go home to..........

Post 14

Saturday, August 13, 2011 - 7:48pm

Steve: Ed was saying that there are some child-like qualities to be found in primitive people.
Why would you imply that Aristotle or Galileo are of primitive cultures or times? "Primitive" refers to people whose culture lacked writing or technology or philosophical systems.

Ed: When I said primitive, I meant uncivilized folks such as those mentioned in my link to the blog of the Number Warrior: the Australian Aborigines and the Piraha people of the Amazon (and you can throw in the Turkana nomads from Africa ). These people are arrested-development tribalists who, in many ways, are child-like.

You (plural) are not being rigorous. Your definitions are changing. First of all, even if we agree that "primitive" are those who do not have writing, all peoples have "technology" i.e., tools. In fact, survival for the Aborigines of Australia, as for the Innuit and Eskimo among many others would be impossible but for their tools.

As for "philosophical systems," what you want to do is replace religion, to say that primitive people have religion, but that civilized people have philosophy. I might be willing to agree. You might not. In other words, by your standard, the works of Thomas Aquinas are primitive, but the works of Confucius are civilized. Thus, we should eschew the former and embrace the latter. But that would violate a Randian mandate that Catholic Scholasticism is Good, and Oriental Statism is Bad. I think you guys have confused yourselves and each other.

I agree that we are surrounded by "arrested development tribalists" but I point out that they have writing, technology, and philosophy.

My reply to Ed focused on his erroneous claims about number being the sine qua non of civilization. I agree that the invention of numeracy led to literacy. I only point out that numeracy is very recent and incompletely absorbed into our culture. Thus, even in modern French, the word for "three" is cognate to the word for "many" which Ed offered as a standard for differentiated civilized peoples from primitives. I might be willing to tag the French as savages, but I would then have to watch closely lest Ed or Steve follow the grammatical rule for "et cetera" which says that you must name two cases before generalizing. "The works of Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, The Romantic Manifesto, etc., explain reality."

So, I challenged Ed (and Steve) by pointing out that Ed's definition would make Aristotle, Da Vinci, and Galilieo "primitive."

I encourage anyone interested in any of this to read Shakespeare in the Bush by Laura Bohannan here. This anthropologist is among "primitives" and she tells them the story of Hamlet. "Hold on," the old man says. "We know there are no such things as ghosts." Ah, but they have seen Zombies. Zombies are real. You scoff, but in De Rerum Deorum (About the Gods) the Roman legalist Cicero says, "We know the gods are real because people have reported seeing them, and the senses are valid." Was Cicero not a literate philosopher with technology?

Post 15

Saturday, August 13, 2011 - 9:06pm

Mike,

Quit being such a linguistic analyst. You are focusing entirely on borderline cases, I suspect, either because you are being a contrarian or for even worse reasons. It's like I'm arguing that it's more dangerous to take walks at night. And then, instead of addressing my point, you accuse me of not being "rigorous" and of having a "changing definition". Alas, I have not parsed out exactly what night is?:

Is 6:00pm a time that is rightfully called "night?" What about 5:59pm? Is 7:00pm a time wherein everyone concerned would be willing to agree that the time aforementioned is rightfully categorized under the heading of "night time?" Or is it only times that occur after 8:00pm -- that we could come together, and all agree, are times rightly considered "night times?" What about the people that don't believe that night has started until after 9:00pm?

It's absurd.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 8/13, 10:11pm)

Post 16

Saturday, August 13, 2011 - 10:43pm

Mike,

In fact, survival for the Aborigines of Australia, as for the Innuit and Eskimo among many others would be impossible but for their tools.

I agree, but tools are irrelevant, because they can be had and used before civilization (i.e., by primitive savages).

As for "philosophical systems," what you want to do is replace religion, to say that primitive people have religion, but that civilized people have philosophy. I might be willing to agree. You might not. In other words, by your standard, the works of Thomas Aquinas are primitive, but the works of Confucius are civilized.

Now you are engaging in fallacy. The 'primitive vs. civilized' continuum was originally in reference to men, and now you are taking it out of context and using it in reference to the writings of men. The missed elephant in the room, then, is that in all referenced cases there are these philosophical writings -- these evidences of civilization -- and then we are assumed to have contradicted ourselves, because we are assumed to have made firm categorizations not just between men, but between the various writings of men.

But that would violate a Randian mandate that Catholic Scholasticism is Good, and Oriental Statism is Bad.

C'mon, Mike. Rand, herself, wouldn't agree with that conclusion, or even with that method of argumentation.

She'd admit, perhaps, that there are more things she likes about the politics of Catholic Scholasticism vs. the politics of Oriental Statism, but she wouldn't say that one philosophy is always a good philosophy and that the other is always a bad philosophy. In using this coy example, you're not respecting her depth as a thinker. You're taking a conclusion out of context, and using it as a rhetorical ploy. If Rand said something is good (never mind how she got to that conclusion, or in what context it is good), and if we say that something is bad (never mind how we got to that conclusion, or in what context it is bad), then we're not being "rigorous."

Fallacious.

My reply to Ed focused on his erroneous claims about number being the sine qua non of civilization.

My claim was only that a lack of counting was evidence of child-like-ness. I also mentioned that repeated violence (e.g., raids on neighboring tribes) is evidence of child-like-ness.

Thus, even in modern French, the word for "three" is cognate to the word for "many" which Ed offered as a standard for differentiated civilized peoples from primitives.

See above.

So, I challenged Ed (and Steve) by pointing out that Ed's definition would make Aristotle, Da Vinci, and Galilieo "primitive."

See above.

I encourage anyone interested in any of this to read ...

I skimmed it. It's existential. It is supposedly another argument against a commonality of human nature, and it fails (as have all other arguments of the sort).

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 8/13, 10:48pm)

Post 17

Saturday, August 13, 2011 - 11:14pm

Michael, you accuse Ed and I of not being rigorous. But you aren't carrying on an honest argument - you hide behind nit-picking, dropping context, and putting words in our mouths.

Everyone here has an adequate grasp of what is meant by a primitive culture within the context we are discussing. We are not debating some fine point of advanced anthropology.

You persist in putting your ideas of what you think we think out there as if they were fact, which in my case you are totally off base. For example you said, "As for 'philosophical systems,' what you want to do is replace religion, to say that primitive people have religion, but that civilized people have philosophy."

I didn't say that, I don't believe it and it is foolish on it's face. There is no society on earth today that doesn't practice one or more of the major religions - do you think I would say that we have never been anything but primitive? Nonsense. I don't care if you want to make foolish statements of your own, but don't attribute them to me.

You said, "In other words, by your standard, the works of Thomas Aquinas are primitive..." Again, that is NOT my standard, or anything I've asserted. If you can't argue honestly, just don't waste our time.

Do you think that Cicero, Aristotle, Galileo and Da Vinci are primitives or live in a primitive culture? I don't. I seriously doubt that Ed does. Please don't make up arguments that you try to stuff in my mouth to make it appear I'm confused on this issue (which is what you claimed).

Speak for yourself, Michael. Tell us your thoughts, and spare me the lectures on word derivations, or excavations at Catal Huyuk - just give us your assertion, no ad hominem, no pretending you know what I think.

Post 18

Sunday, August 14, 2011 - 4:39am

SW: "Do you think that Cicero, Aristotle, Galileo and Da Vinci are primitives or live in a primitive culture? I don't. I seriously doubt that Ed does."

We are in accordance on that: they did not. The central problems are the definitions of "primitive" and "culture." Deeper questions of "human nature" also run through our disagreements.

The invention of the city was as significant as the control (and making of) fire. It changed us. But it did not change everything. The difference between "primitive" and "civilized" peoples might easily be writing. But we know that illiterate people live within literate cultures. And non-literate people can still be socially "nice" rather than being looters. And we know that literate societies can be savage. It is easy to claim that large numbers (4,5,6,...) delineate civilized people from primitive. But the Bible has entire book of Numbers. So, there must be some other factor(s) or relationship(s) to be explained. I do not have an answer. But I also know that you do not.

This all goes back to the original post. As atheists you want to reject the claim to gods and the afterlife. As volitionists you deny "predisposition" ("instinct"). I believe that human societies without fire are rare, even if you can find one. But that does not mean that humans are "predisposed to accept fire." The widespread acceptance of religion - including the idea that humans have an ineffable inner quality (soul; spirit), which is also a tenet of Objectivism - is a different question, entirely.

I believe (as Luke pointed out) that pattern-matching and pattern-making are significant brain functions. That is why I object to talk of "wiring" (our electronic metaphor), as I do to "crazy" (ceramics era) or "off your rocker" (steam engine). Smart people are "sharp" (stone age) or "brilliant" (fire age). These metaphors are all limited. We are not "wired" any more than we are "inspired" (breathed into). It feels like an answer; it is emotionally important. But it is not empirically testable.

I once read a quip that the brain is a gland. Enzymes are called "lock and key mechanisms" and that might seem like a machine-age metaphor, but for the fact that shape is critical to those chemical interactions. One person perceives a pattern that another does not. Oftentimes that can be communicated. Too often, it cannot.

Post 19

Sunday, August 14, 2011 - 9:31am