Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Contents
- Illustrations
- I Nature and Tradition
- II The Natural and Superstition
- III Life in Little
- IV The Wisdom of the Body
- V Earth's Reshuffling
- VI A Whole Presupposed of its Parts
- VII The Brain and its Work
- VIII The Organ of Liaison
- IX Brain Collaborates with Psyche
- X Earth's Alchemy
- XI Two Ways of one Mind
- XII Conflict with Nature
- Index
VIII - The Organ of Liaison
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2010
- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Contents
- Illustrations
- I Nature and Tradition
- II The Natural and Superstition
- III Life in Little
- IV The Wisdom of the Body
- V Earth's Reshuffling
- VI A Whole Presupposed of its Parts
- VII The Brain and its Work
- VIII The Organ of Liaison
- IX Brain Collaborates with Psyche
- X Earth's Alchemy
- XI Two Ways of one Mind
- XII Conflict with Nature
- Index
Summary
Mind knows the world and operates on the world by means of its body. It is hard to escape the conclusion that bodies existed before minds and minds only exist because there are bodies fit for them.
A. D. Ritchie, The Natural History of Mind.Science has put the old teleology to death. Its disembodied spirit, freed from vitalism and all material ties, immortal, alone lives on, and from such a ghost science has nothing to fear.
Lawrence Henderson, The Fitness of the Environment.Could we look altogether naively at the question of a seat of the mind within the body we might suppose the mind diffused, not confined to any one part. An individual, one's dog, one's self, is a mass of microscopic lives, each one self-centred. It might then perhaps be that our mind, at least so far as sentience, would extend through all our parts. That is not found to be so.
The fact is that the mind—the finite mind of the individual— as to ‘place’ is related with one only of the systems in the body. That system itself is the opposite of diffused. There are indeed what are called, and justifiably, diffuse nervous systems. They too are built of cells, unpolarized nerve-cells, called ‘protoneurones’ (Parker). They are however the very simplest of nervous systems, nor have they correlated with them any plainly demonstrable or recognizable mind. The nervous system, though mind ultimately is correlated with it, shows no such correlation primarily.
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- Information
- Man on his Nature , pp. 235 - 262Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009First published in: 1940