The Evolution of Brain and Science

In reading Sharon Begley’s article in the April 9, 2007 edition of Newsweek, “In Our Messy Reptilian Brains,” I noticed an intelligible parallel between Johns Hopkins University professor David Linden’s description of the human brain in The Accidental Mind and Thomas Kuhn’s descriptions of the socio-scientific mindset of society in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

For Linden, the human mind is, “a weird agglomeration of ad hoc solutions that have accumulated throughout millions of years of evolutionary theory.” Begley elaborates on this, calling the human brain “an iPod built around an eight-track cassette player,” in that the brain takes incoherent snippets and blends them into coherent thoughts and understandings. Begley discusses sight specifically in that each time a person blinks, a short bit of experience is understood, but the brain “[fills] in the gaps of the jerky feed.” In short, the human brain is able to create a finely seamed story despite a jumpy, severed input.

To me, this is much like Kuhn’s descriptions of society’s understandings of science and the bridging from paradigm into new paradigm. Because of the cycle of normal science to crisis to revolution, the societal understanding of science becomes a somewhat historic ands streamlined narrative.

Much like the brain’s ability to smooth the jerkiness of the eye’s conception of existence, so does society amass the understandings of scientific discovery, theory, conflict, proof, and invention. Kuhn states on page 66, “After the discovery had been assimilated, scientists were able to account for a wider range of natural phenomena or to account with greater precision for some of those previously known.” Science is therefore a process which blends new ideas with the old to understand things more clearly.

This is much like Linden’s description of the brain’s ability to blend individual moments of sight into one cohesive understanding. Each new piece adds onto those of the past.

However, Kuhn also insists upon contextual understandings of science in that textbooks fall short of providing an accurate depiction of science as a construction over time because they only focus on arrival points rather than examining the conflicts and revolutions and moments of normal science that led to “facts.” In the same way, it seems that Linden would encourage society to look at the human brain as a piece which has had a past and development rather than strictly defining in its modern state. Science blends in its development, just as the brain blends human understanding and continues to develop itself.

Perhaps, after reading both “In Our Messy Reptilian Brains” and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, it seems relevant to say that as we evolve, so does knowledge.



WRITTEN IN REFERENCE TO:
"In Our Messy Reptilian Brains"
Sharon Begley
Newsweek
April 9, 2007

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas S. Kuhn
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago, Illinois and London, England
1962, 1970, 1996