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 a story on NPR’s All Things Considered that centered on when we became mentally modern human beings.  In our evolutionary history, the show argues, the appearance of symbolic thought marks the genesis of uniquely human developments more than say, standing upright.  And I agree.  On a daily basis, we move more from [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Our family lived in France for the last six months and at the end of that time we had the chance to visit family in Florence. Since we drove to Florence we could stop at Pisa along the way.  I found Galileo all around me. Dava Sobel’s book, Galileo’s Daughter, once drew me in and [...]