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| Windows Into the Brain Image courtesy NIMH |
Though frail and fallible in many ways, the human mind has invented tools for exploring the cosmos, visiting the moon, and reaching further out into our solar system. These products of the human mind have also resulted in the orbital space around our planet becoming cluttered with space junk.
The human mind has imagined and brought forth technologies and social systems that have changed the face of the earth, often with unanticipated results. Sometimes our inventions have led to the conquest of disease, greater prosperity, and a general improvement in the quality of human life. Other times, the results have been death, destruction and the expansion of human misery.
Not happy to work alone, our minds have found ways to communicate and connect, the most recent of these being the Internet -- a tool that's led to remarkable scientific collaborations and the sharing of a great many cat videos.
As we explore and seek to understand our home the earth, the heavens above, and the technology around us, we also explore and seek to understand the brain that's doing that seeking and exploring. Francis Crick tells us "It is essential to understand our brains in some detail if we are to assess correctly our place in this vast and complicated universe we see all around us." Marvin Minksky cautions us "If the brain was simple enough to be understood - we would be too simple to understand it!"
We have met the enigma, and it is us.
