Wednesday, November 2

Gaston Bachelard, French philosopher, became the inaugural chair in history and philosophy of the sciences at the Sorbonne.  The connection Bachelard made between psychology and the history of science he tried to demonstrate by how the progress of science could be blocked by certain types of mental patterns, creating the concept of “epistemological obstacle."  One task of epistemology is to make clear the mental patterns at use in science, in order to help scientists overcome the obstacles to knowledge.

Emily Dickinson wrote "The Brain--is wider than the Sky,” as quoted by Nobel-winning scientist Gerald M. Edelman and his Neurosciences Institute colleague Giulio Tononi in A Universe of Consciousness.  Miss Dickinson described the problem of conscious awareness, the two scientists work trying to solve it in their book.  But it is hard for the brain to ponder its own activity. Philosophers and psychologists like James and Freud made some progress by starting with awareness and working backward to the brain; these days we try looking in the other direction and building a theory of the mind out of neurons first.

I will not use words to connect or explain the above two paragraphs and why to me they are related, but just let them be abosorbed by your consciousness and see what you "think."