There is a wonderful article in Aeon by Robert Epstein in which he discusses how the discoveries or inventions of mankind have been poorly used/abused in the metaphors used to describe the brain. It’s a fascination exposition of what he refers to as “(o)ur shoddy thinking about the brain”. In his essay, he gives a detailed rundown of the AI expert George Zarkadakis’s “six different metaphors people have employed over the past 2,000 years to try to explain human intelligence” which are in Zarkadakis’s 2015 book In Our Own Image. For example,
- The Adam and Eve theory where an intelligent god gives us a soul;
- The “hydraulic model of human intelligence” arising from the invention of hydraulics in around 3BCE that lead to “the idea that the flow of different fluids in the body – the ‘humours’ – accounted for both our physical and mental functioning” which, Epstein says, “persisted for more than 1,600 years, handicapping medical practice all the while”;
- The development of small machinery in around the 1500s led to René Descartes’ view that we are complex machines.
Dr Epstein argues that the evolution of how we have thought of our human consciousness and the metaphors we have borrowed to do so have mirrored contemporary human invention so it was inevitable that, with the invention of the computer, our brains would inevitably be compared to these creations. He tells us this “launched what is now broadly called ‘cognitive science'” He then goes on to argue that our brains are not computers.
I am less interested in what we call the brain that I am in what the brain can do. And no matter what metaphor we have historically applied to the brain, the interesting part about the organ is thought. And what is of interest to me personally is how I can think better. And how this blog is helping me to do so. I find, as I think in order to write this blog, that none of these historical metaphors are useful to me. I find a much older metaphor applicable: that of fire. In order to write each day, I am having to feed a fire and keep it burning. I am having to stoke and hope. Prod and pray. That something catches and allows me to put down an idea and build it into something that warms or illuminates. I have no idea whether I am successful, but I do know keeping it alight takes a constant daily vigil.