The brain is made of neurons!
April 7th, 2008
On April 1, Eliezer Yudkowsky (pictured) released an announcement that the brain is made of neurons.
In an amazing breakthrough, a multinational team of scientists led by Nobel laureate Santiago Ramón y Cajal announced that the brain is composed of a ridiculously complicated network of tiny cells connected to each other by infinitesimal threads and branches.
The multinational team — which also includes the famous technician Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, and possibly Imhotep, promoted to the Egyptian god of medicine — issued this statement:
“The present discovery culminates years of research indicating that the convoluted squishy thing inside our skulls is even more complicated than it looks. Thanks to Cajal’s application of a new staining technique invented by Camillo Golgi, we have learned that this structure is not a continuous network like the blood vessels of the body, but is actually composed of many tiny cells, or “neurons”, connected to one another by even more tiny filaments.
“Other extensive evidence, beginning from Greek medical researcher Alcmaeon and continuing through Paul Broca’s research on speech deficits, indicates that the brain is the seat of reason.
“Nemesius, the Bishop of Emesia, has previously argued that brain tissue is too earthy to act as an intermediary between the body and soul, and so the mental faculties are located in the ventricles of the brain. However, if this is correct, there is no reason why this organ should turn out to have an immensely complicated internal composition.
It will be fun to see where these insights lead.
Photo by David Orban
April 25th, 2008 at 1:10 am
Nemesis, Bishop of Amnesia, realized centuries ago (unimportant to remember) that the body and soul are one.
Jokes aside, denial of the ultimate reality of the material world is perhaps the most significant Platonic, Christian heresy. It accounts for those who trip over their unthinking faith, whether on their way to the polls or the laboratory, or anyplace else.
While St. Thomas Aquinas wedded Christianity to Aristotle and thus to modern scientific method, his insights have yet to be perceived and developed by those who cannot conceive of the fact that spirituality and reason are expressions of the same reality. Will it be a surprise if new understandings of the brain embrace and account for moral, and other so-called ’spiritual’ concerns? Among those shocked will only be those who are still struggling to marry Plato to Aristotle.