Mathematics Rising

Most of us begin drawings with lines.  And even though those lines may not be in the subject of a rendering, they are nonetheless perceived.  Some of the visual information we use to re-present our experience in a drawing is also used in mathematics, geometry in particular.  A difficult question to answer  but an interesting [...]

I just heard Radiolab’s show on words (you can listen here).   The show explores just how much of our experience is born of language.  It begins with experiments which seem to reveal that until we can bridge islands of our experience with phrases, we can’t actually think.  This may be a difficult argument to make [...]

I just read through a series of blogs generated by an article in the journal Neurosurgery, in which two neurosurgery researchers at Johns Hopkins University argue that an anatomically accurate image of the human brain is hidden in God’s neck in one of Michelangelo’s frescos.  I was struck by how little the reports and blogs [...]

Advances in neurobiological research often demonstrate how very difficult it is for us to get a good look at ourselves. Effective analytic tools in the sciences usually rely on defined categories such as organic and inorganic; animals and plants; protons, neutrons and electrons; voluntary action versus involuntary action; motor skills versus thinking skills. But refinements [...]

It has been understood for some time that metaphor provides a sensory anchor to abstract ideas.  But, more recently, cognitive psychologists have looked at how active the role of metaphor may be in thinking.  In a recent article on Boston.com, experiments are cited which explore the extent to which metaphor shapes thought. The article cites [...]

Now we can identify the number the brain is identifying! An article in Science News reports on how neuroscientists are able to determine the quantity of dots a person is looking at by looking at their brain activity patterns using an MRI. The study also revealed that the patterns that correspond to some number of [...]

My introduction to Semir Zeki came in 1992 with a special issue of Scientific American called Mind And Brain. I still have the magazine with the lines I highlighted. I was excited when I read it. Something new was happening. Here are some of the passages I marked: “The past two decades have brought neurologists [...]