I’ve been kicking around an idea for a blog post on the relationship of dualism and religion. The arguments go something like this: small children are natural dualists (and animists) for a whole bunch of adaptive reasons: taking the intentional stance towards stuff is often a good way of modelling the world. And if you never get a chance to question this dualism (and culture, family, language, and wishful thinking can make it hard), you wind up with a worldview which needs some kind of supernatural authority to make sense of it. Etcetera. Not very novel, perhaps – various writers, from Scott Atran to Dan Dennett, have visited this territory – but perhaps it makes clear the fact that arguments about religious epistemology are mostly intended as justification.
And then I started to think about all of the reasons why people do, in fact, question dualism. I imagined that some might reject theism as incoherent, and then find they have no need of the supernatural, while others might come to a materialist monism as the best explanation of the world that they see, and only then realize that they had no need of a deity. “Best explanation of the world…?” What might this be? Mental illness replacing demonic possession? The effects of drugs on the mind, demonstrating an unquestionably physical basis for aspects of emotion and personality?
It was at this point that I realized that I actually knew very little about the history of the brain: how personal experience, evidence, and dogma have influenced the way in which people have thought about brains, minds, and souls over history. And by a happy coincidence I came across a highly-esteemed book on the subject by an author who is a new favourite of mine. So I picked up a copy of “Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain – and How It Changed the World” by Carl Zimmer, the author of “Microcosm”, the wonderful book on E.coli that I just finished.
“Soul Made Flesh” doesn’t pretend to address the entire history of the study of the brain. Instead, Zimmer concentrates on one man: Thomas Willis, a 17th century English doctor who effectively invented neurology. I read the first two chapters over dinner this evening, before going down to the waterfront to watch the Ivars fireworks on Elliott Bay. Zimmer’s style is as deft as it was in “Microcosm”; I’m really going to enjoy this. (And when I finish it, I may be able to write that piece on dualism with a little more evidence to support my hypothesis….) My only frustration? No Kindle edition. Sigh….
Horribly wet conditions, with great puddles of water on the track, and a few dry spells to tempt people into risky tyre changes. Everybody seemed to be spinning, or sliding off the track, except for Lewis Hamilton in his McLaren, and 