Merlin Donald makes in his book
"A mind so rare" (p.100) an interesting
comparison of astronomy with neuroanatomy:
"The brain's three-dimensional complexity
makes its examination and its visualization
very difficult. In comparison, the ancient
astronomers had it easy. They recorded and
rerecorded the same familiar pattern of points
of light in the night sky for thousands of
years. Their database was stable, reappearing
in the same cyclic configuration over and over,
night after night, year after year. They had
the leisure to try one geometric solution,
then another, and then another for millennia.
All the while, well into the ninetenenth
century, their theories evolved, but their
basic database did not change very much. One
is tempted to wonder, What took them so long?
Compare the simplicity of their task with
the dilemma of a modern neuroscientists trying
to construct a model of a living brain. Unlike
the relative stationary stars, patiently
emitting light for the leisurely delight of
endless generations of peripatetic astronomers,
the electrical patterns of the brain are
constantly moving, changing, flashing codes and
rhythms that are harnessed to the actions of
living organisms. It is as if the stars of the
astronomers had come to life, moving around,
bursting and recombining into various functional
clusters, their actions embedded in, and
determined by, countless undeciphered codes.
Unlike the near vacuum of interstellar space,
the neuronal heavens are alive and intelligent.
They have their own mind, so to speak.
This makes the brain hard to study. It is a
world of incessant activity and filled structural
detail, including cells, microtubules, chemical
and electrical pathways, an infinity of structures,
depending on what scale of anatomical analysis
we might want to single out. When we view a
magnified image of a clump of neurons, depending
on the scale we choose, those innocent-looking
black blobs and strips in the picture might
reflect the presence not only of single neurons
but of entire globular clusters of neurons, known
as nuclei and ganglia, or of the tangles of
interconnections, neural plexuses, that link them
together. Each cluster is a world unto itself,
which its own unique connections. And on it goes.
Nothing in the universe, natural or man-made, is
more beautiful or mysterious."
-J.
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