Wolfgang:

Looking back, I see I was a bit rude, and I owe you an explanation, if only a short one.

I cannot disagree with what you have spent your love doing and enjoying. Nor can I disagree with you love of discovering better explanations which fit more data better and which may even predict unexpected data, as the Periodic Table did when it was first constructed.

I am not unfamiliar with psychology. I find the studies of neurological function, and similar physical analyses of human behaviour fascinating.

I think, though, that I was using the term "human beings" in perhaps a broader sense than you may be accustomed to because I believe that the Skinnerian principle of limiting the sphere of study to the physically observable is a degradation of the real promise of "psyche+logos". It abandons any recognition of the "psyche" side and limits its "logos" to the physical side.

It is my conviction that doing this ignores the actual source of the very best in human beings, which is not their animal construction but the much wider dimensions of their spiritual abilities. I am not convinced yet (although I am still open to ideas) that it will ever be possible to explain in molecular or electronic terms the transition that occurs when material signal becomes perception. I know both subjectively and from lengthy personal study that there are very few people who believe that their perception is just another click in a series of stimuli rolling through a chain of physical connections. The usual escape for this paradox, from a materialist viewpoint, is to assert that the change from transmission to perception can be explained in purely physical terms, but the phenomena is hidden in the complexity of brain and nerve structure that we have not yet plumbed. I believe that a different explanation is in order, one which is not merely quantitative but which accounts for the qualitative lap, the difference in very kind, between electrical transmissions no matter how myriad, and perception. And this does not even begin to raise the issues of how perception becomes understanding, insight, or a feeling for an environment or another person, let alone the occasionally extraordinary leap made by intuitive "awareness".

I believe that resolving the mysteries of the human body, CNS and brain in particular are an honorable and worthwhile service. I do apologize for seeming abusive about them. The only abuse I have seen from that general line of research is the semantic one of asserting that the material constructs which you have studied at such length are in fact what a person "is". Such a model, in my opinion, ignores a great deal of information and if the model is communicated from authority actually does do harm. Here is why.

The power of suggestion in human interactions is well documented. The placebo effect (as it is called in medical experiments) is dismissed as a way to account for some anomalies in a test of drug effectiveness. The funny thing is that if the placebo effect were to be understood and replicable, it could be the most effective drug on the market. But when the power of suggestion is used in a negative way, it can have a corrosive effect on individual ability, clarity of thought, and understanding. To provide an image of what I mean, consider a thought experiment. Two six-year-old children -- gender irrelevant -- each with the full measure of health, curiousity, imagination, creativity, the peculiar sense of justice and play that children enjoy. Both of them have fathers whom they love and admire and hold in awe to some degree.

ONe of them is taught by his/her father, "Science proves that you are just like the animals, except for the number and construction of your brain cells. Humans are just a more advanced kind of animal, is all. All your thought is an electromagnetic array within your brain. The fact that you can dream of far universes or imagine the meadows of Finland in summer while we live in Chicago is a trick your brain is playing on you. You will learn as you grow up not to be fooled by the tricks of your brain. When you reach a certain age, or have a certain kind of accident or illness, your brain switches off, the electrons stop moving, and that is the end of you; nothing but blackness. That's the way you are built."

The other father teaches his child, "There are lots of studies about how the brain works and how the body works, but no-one has found an explanation there for how powerful your imagination can seem to be, or how we can understand things or communicate as well as we can. Some people believe you are nothing more than your body. Others believe you are the owner of the body, but are driving it like a vehicle or wearing it like a suit of clothes, and when you throw it away you will be free to get another one. What is important is that you know you have the freedom to examine your own experience and other people's information and decide for yourself what you see or believe in keeping with your own understanding."

You can see that one message has many implications of limitation, strong identification of self with matter (meaning subordination to laws of entropy, inertia, and mass -- and no possible actual creativity, since everything is just a series of relayed effects with no real origin point). The other has ramifications of responsibility, promoting curiousity and reflection, encouraging the possibility of discovering a spiritual nature, and the possibility that one might be more than just a piece in the random blender of the physical universe -- that the ability to view and select viewpoints might be more valuable than the electricity and molecules that hang around your location representing you to the universe.

I hope this comaprison illustrates my point satisfactorily -- I must return to my duller side (work) for a while longer.

Regards,

A