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Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a read more
Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. ('What else could it be?') I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and I am told some of the ancient Greeks thought the brain functions like a catapult. At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer.
As memory may be a paradise from which we cannot be driven, it may also be a hell from which read more
As memory may be a paradise from which we cannot be driven, it may also be a hell from which we cannot escape. - Aphorisms and Reflections.
Now as of old the gods give men all good things, excepting only those that are baneful and injurious and read more
Now as of old the gods give men all good things, excepting only those that are baneful and injurious and useless. These, now as of old, are not gifts of the gods: men stumble into them themselves because of their own blindness and folly.
Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of read more
Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.
We are not ourselves
When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind
To suffer with the body.
We are not ourselves
When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind
To suffer with the body.
No child is born with a really cold heart, and it is only in proportion as we lose that youthful read more
No child is born with a really cold heart, and it is only in proportion as we lose that youthful heart that we lose the inner warmth in ourselves.
Courage is not a virtue or value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundation that read more
Courage is not a virtue or value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values. Without courage our love pales into mere dependency. Without courage our fidelity becomes conformism.
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
