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* The head on a beer, the eye of a storm, the arms of a river, a zipper’s teeth, the open veins of Latin America and this footnote.
* Throughout the book we will expose ‘mistakes’ in the history of psychology, science, and the philosophy of the mind. Many of these ‘mistakes’ reflect intuitions and, therefore, are replicated in each of our own histories. They are myths that persist beyond evidence to the contrary because they are based on natural, intuitive reasoning. As obvious as it may seem, I want to clarify that when I mention the mistakes made by great thinkers I do so from the privileged perspective of someone who has access to facts they did not, in other words, looking back–or forward–at the past. It is the difference between analysing a game and playing it, or playing fantasy baseball. I am working with the premise that science, and almost any human conjecture, is always approximate and is constantly being revised. Talking about Piaget’s mistake is, from my point of view, a sort of an ode to his work, an acknowledgement of his ideas, which, while not always correct, were landmarks in the history of knowledge. As Isaac Newton said: ‘If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’ This is a version of the history of knowledge that is more realistic and less celebrated than the story of the apple hitting his head and giving him sudden inspiration. It goes without saying that this book is also a homage to all my great predecessors, whose hits and misses cemented the road that so many of us now travel along.
* All parents play peek-a-boo, eliciting peals of laughter from their kids. That is the pleasure of discovering and understanding that objects do not disappear when we can no longer see them. Children are young scientists enjoying the process of discovering the rules of the universe.
* While I was doing my doctorate in New York I went up to Boston one day to visit the laboratory of Alvaro Pascual-Leone. At that time they were just beginning to use a tool called TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation). TMS uses a system of coils to transmit a very faint magnetic pulse that is able to activate or inhibit a region of the cerebral cortex. When I arrived, they were doing an experiment in which they temporarily deactivated the frontal cortex. I was tempted by the idea of experiencing at first hand a decrease in the functioning of the executive system and I offered myself as a subject. After they inhibited my frontal cortex–reversibly–for thirty minutes, the experiment began. I would see a letter and I had to think of words that started with it and then say them out loud a few seconds later. This waiting is controlled by the executive system. With my prefrontal cortex inhibited it was impossible for me to wait. I started naming the words compulsively, at the very moment they came into my head. I understood that I was supposed to wait before saying them, but I just couldn’t. This experience in real time and in a sort of disassociation between the first person–the actor–and the third person–the observer–allowed me to directly understand the limits of what we are able to do (limits that go beyond our desire and willpower) in cognitive domains that are apparently very basic. It is extremely difficult, if you do not experience it for yourself, to imagine being unable to do what almost everyone does simply and naturally.
* The gaze is also one of the most revealing elements of adult thought, of how we reason and what we yearn for. It not only serves to acquire knowledge, but also speaks of who we are. But, unlike small children, adults know that their gaze can give them away. That is the origin of the shyness that is so clearly expressed
in one of the most spectacular laboratories for the study of human microsociology: the lift.
* For example, hearing our own names is a magnet for our attention.
* He was tired of being distracted by other people talking about Kevin Costner’s films.
* Kaspar Hauser was a German boy who claimed he had been raised in total isolation in a dark basement. He was found in 1828 wandering the streets of Nuremberg unable to speak but a few words in German. It is believed that he was sixteen years old at that time. This case, as with similar examples of feral children, remains controversial to this day, and many cases have been shown to be poorly documented and fuelled by literary narratives. Hence, the hard conclusion that language cannot be learned if it is not practised early in life may have to be softened. (See Adriana Benzaquén’s book, Encounters with Wild Children: Temptation and Disappointment in the Study of Human Nature (McGill–Queen’s Press, 2006)).
* TheancientGreekswrotelikethiswithoutwordsanditwasallonehieroglyph.
* Juanjo Sáez, in his lovely book El Arte, says: ‘I read an interview with Julian Schnabel, artist and film director. He bragged that he started drawing at the age of five. As if he were some sort of precocious genius! What a phoney! We all draw when we’re kids and then some of us give it up and others don’t.’
* … in which we live.
* Translation by Eleanor Worthington.
* Rousseau’s ideas in Émile drew upon the views of Plato. Education must begin with music, gymnastics and other practical matters that train the virtues of a good citizen, in his Republic. Only after having walked that long road is one ready to understand the episteme, true knowledge. Hegel also advocated educating first through action and only afterwards through discourse. Knowledge is acquired through experiences lived during the day, and theory awakes only as dusk falls, like Minerva’s owl. This idea has made itself felt in authors such as Paul Tough and Ken Robinson, who suggest that education should be focused less on knowledge (mathematics, language, history, geography) and more on practice that promotes virtues such as motivation, control and creativity.
* This is the cry of children under eighteen months old when a toy is taken from them. This is the expression of the only argument that underpins their ownership: their desire for it.
* As an economist, Paul Webley, says: ‘Childhood is another country and they do things differently there. What is required to interpret this culture are local informants. This suggests that child collaborators are vital, and that without them we many find ourselves left outside the gates of the playground, staring in.’
* Of course, we didn’t use those words in the experiment, in order to avoid suggesting preferences through language. Each character had a name and the gender of the borrower or thief changed for different children, so that we could ensure there was no bias in our research.
* In the book in which Churchill gives his views on the Second World War–and which earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature–he doesn’t mention this now controversial story. Actually, Churchill doesn’t talk about any intelligence operation, after realizing the mistake he had made by revealing information in his book on the First World War, which ended up being useful for the Axis during the Second World War.
* Pheromones are the mediators in a chemical communication system–like our sense of smell–that is specific to species and affects automatic brain functions. Rodents have a specialized system for pheromones called the vomeronasal organ. How (and whether) pheromones work in humans is still disputed and they are usually considered unconscious odours. But this is an imprecise and erroneous definition, since the same molecules of the olfactory system, in small doses, can induce behaviours without conscious awareness. Perhaps the pheromone parties are just odour parties. But, of course, that doesn’t sound as glamorous.
* ‘I can resist anything except temptation’, as Oscar Wilde said.
* That was not only how the generals thought, but how we all do in general.
* Coils that generate magnetic fields can be used to silence or stimulate a region of the cerebral cortex at a particular moment in time. For example, this technique could be used to stimulate the Broca area, which coordinates language articulation, and induce an unstoppable verbosity.
* As Groucho Marx famously said, ‘Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.’
* From The Simpsons:
Homer: My name’s Homer Simpson, I’d like to sign up for something.
Mrs Blumenstein: Well, we have an opening on the debate team.
Homer: Debate, like, arguing?
Mrs Blumenstein: Yes.
Homer: I’ll take THAT, you DING POT! Just warming up, Mrs Blumenstein.
Mrs Blumenstein: This year’s topic is ‘Resolved: the national speed limit should be lowered to fifty-five miles per hour’.
Homer: Fifty-five? That’s ridiculous! Sure, it’ll save a few lives, but millions will be late!
* This also happens in our society, in the case of someone who prefers to pay for something rather than take on the commitment and debt involved in accepting a gift. The most exaggerated example of this is expressed by the Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito as the idea that life is a gift that commits us for ever.
* Con-, as a prefix, means ‘together’. So corruption is several people breaking. You cannot be corrupt all by yourself.
** In this case I am referring to the map developed by Transparency International. It doesn’t directly measure corruption, but rather its perception in each society.
* My humble homage to the famous book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter (published in the USA in 1979 by Basic Books, and in the UK by Penguin Books in 1980), that inspired a generation of scientists–myself included–to take the leap from more analytical and quantitative disciplines into the adventure of the brain and human thought.
* There are other types of strangeness that can be achieved by time manipulations. Bill Viola, in a video installation from 1955 called The Greeting, re-created a Mannerist painting. At first glance, it appeared to be an image of three women. When you look more carefully you realize, almost by chance, that the women are getting closer. But it all happens so slowly that it is impossible to associate the images with the movement. After ten minutes, the women are hugging. It has been said of Bill Viola that he doesn’t introduce images into time, but rather time into images.
* An excerpt from the second night of Borges’s Seven Nights. ‘I met up with a friend, a friend I don’t know: I saw him and he had changed so much. I had never seen his face but I knew that that face couldn’t be his. He was very changed, very sad. His face was marked by sorrow, by illness, perhaps by guilt. He had his right hand inside his jacket (this is important in the dream). I couldn’t see his hand, which was hidden over his heart. Then I hugged him, I felt that he needed my help: “But, my poor So-and-so, what happened to you? You’re so changed!” He replied, “Yes, I’ve changed a lot.” He slowly pulled out his hand. I could see that it was a bird claw. The strange thing is that the man’s hand had been hidden from the very beginning. Without realizing it, I had prepared that invention: that the man had a bird claw and I could see how terrible his change was, how terrible his fate, how he was turning into a bird.’
* Naming is an art; sometimes a terrible art. The term vegetative is already revealing: it presupposes an organism that carries out its life cycle without being a true protagonist in its own actions. The organism has a metabolism, regulates its vital functions and even has some automatic emotional responses, but nothing that is represented by an agent–a being–who controls the life of its own mind and body.
* This should not be misinterpreted to mean that this is the brain’s tennis region. No such thing exists. This region carries out a function of muscular activity coordination and, of course, would also activate when imagining a dance, a dive or a game of jai alai.
* The buup, obviously, otherwise Bouba (see here) wouldn’t be
what it is.
* The etymology of the word infant–the prefix in and fari, to speak–is precisely that, speechless.
* In some cases–fortunately very rare–this connection with the body during sleep can be very severe. A dramatic example was a Welshman, Brian Thomas, a Good Samaritan and devout Christian, who, in the middle of a nightmare in which he believed he was fighting against a burglar, strangled his wife to death. When he woke up, devastated and confused, he called the police to tell them that he had murdered his life partner of forty years.
* Merits that could be duly compiled in a CS, a curriculum somnii.
* Désolé.
* A Hard Day’s Night.
* Luis Buñuel clearly took a side in this debate: ‘Dreaming while awake is as unpredictable, important and powerful as doing so while asleep.’
* The timetable of a book is strange. The reader’s present is the author’s past. Gerald Edelman died in May 2014, after this page was written and before it was read. I chose to maintain the present tense, from the perspective of when Edelman was still expressing his ideas, which remained clear and thought-provoking to the end of his days.
* While a single word, dream, can refer to many different things–an oneiric representation, an aspiration, a fantasy–marijuana is a case of the opposite process, born from the taboo and shame of naming something. So a single meaning is expressed by a multitude of words: pot, weed, grass, ganga, dope, herb, chronic, reefer, skunk, Mary Jane.
* We know that there are more receptors, although they have yet to be found, because when the CB1 and CB2 are blocked (when the locks are covered up), cannabis continues to produce physiological and cognitive effects.
* It is Paracelsus’s formula, valid since the fifteenth century: the only difference between a poison and a remedy is the dose.
* The relationship between drugs and professional success can also take the opposite route. A text that some believe to be apocryphal tells the story of Adrián Calandriaro, who after composing two highly imaginative records sought to resolve a long period of musical drought and locked himself up with a notebook, a pen and 2,000 hits of lysergic acid. Calandriaro stayed tripping from 14 May 1992 to mid-April 1998. In that period he studied odontology, set up a consulting firm, married, and had two kids, a dog named Augusto and $2,000,000 in a bank account in Uruguay. He’s happy, but misses music a bit (Peter Capusotto, the book).
The Secret Life of the Mind Page 27
