The universe is big; the mind is bigger
A baby’s mind is bigger! So says David Brooks, citing a Caltech scientist, at the conclusion of a long, discursive essay in the New Yorker: We have a hundred billion neurons in the brain; infants...
View ArticleMicrobes that control your mind
A mash-up of weird biology and invasion of the body-snatchers: Last month, three insect and plant disease researchers in the University of California system reported a discovery about the tomato...
View ArticleConsciousness in “a vegetative state”
Don’t call people in a coma “vegetables.” That’s a dehumanizing figure of speech. And, as researchers have recently discovered, it isn’t necessarily an accurate description: All the patients had the...
View ArticleThe benefits of magic mushrooms
A study of the effects of psychedelic mushrooms is being hailed as revealing positive benefits. What interests me is what the scientists and the media consider to be beneficial. The active ingredient...
View ArticleYour brain has as much memory as the internet
New research into the brain’s synapses has found that the human brain has 10 times the memory capacity previously thought. In computer terms, it comes to at least a petabyte, the memory capacity of...
View ArticleWhat Happens When Mind, Soul, & Body Go in Different Directions
Love in the Ruins (1972) is a dark, comic, disturbing, and yet profoundly Christian novel by the late Catholic author Walker Percy. “It’s all there in that one book,” said William F. Buckley, “what’s...
View ArticlePanpsychism and the Scientific Search for Consciousness
Scientists are finding it impossible to find a physical cause for consciousness. So instead of accepting the notion of a supernatural soul, some scientists are proposing the hypothesis that...
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