Radio Telescopes - ESO - Chile There wasn't any reason in particular to step out into the mitigated darkness of late evening, other than to follow an urge to move past the sometimes bewildering blur my life has been of late. Somehow, as I turned my gaze to the canopy of stars in the cool … Continue reading Victory over Disharmony
Back in June of last year, I began my first serious reading of “Out of Our Heads,” by Alva Noë, and immediately I started to feel a high degree of admiration for his courage in addressing the philosophical, scientific, and biological approach to understanding human consciousness. His premise that “We are not our brains,” strikes … Continue reading Are We “Out of Our Heads?”
Having just returned from three days and nights in the Belleplain State Forest, the return to civilization always seems to find me rejuvenated in spirit, but also oddly melancholy. The trip was a welcome break from the relentless daily routines that sustain me as I write, and the moments of blissful silence communing with only … Continue reading Spirits in the Woods
Contemplating recent comments about what it means to be a conscious human, I began to consider what really distinguishes us from all the other inhabitants of our planet. There are some distinctively human traits to be sure, but it seems more like a combination of several important capacities and foundational characteristics that sets us apart. … Continue reading Blossoming of Consciousness
In an article in the April-June 2009 issue of Scientific American Mind called "The Power of Symmetry," by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and Diane Rogers-Ramachandran, we learned that through our own subjective experience of visual stimuli, we can verify the brain's tendency to impose symmetry on what we see, and through a deliberate method of presenting … Continue reading The Illusions of Neuroscience and the Certainty of the Mysterious
David Darling has pressed the matter of consciousness into the moment vividly for me, not simply due to his compelling prose, but also because of the immediacy of consciousness and its relationship to the world we inhabit, which often offers us conflicting priorities based on our personal sensitivity to the events which transpire in the … Continue reading Consciousness and the World We Create
From the book jacket: "David Darling holds a degree in Physics From Sheffield University and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Manchester, in England." In a fascinating and unique treatment of the subject, David Darling prompts the reader to consider the interdependence of both sides of the brain hemispheres. Identifying the left brain … Continue reading Equations of Eternity
Mario Beauregard's book makes special notice of the placebo effect in chapter six entitled, "Toward a Non-materialist Science of Mind." In that chapter, he details the research being conducted using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and describes what it is and why it is being employed in this kind of research: "A magnetic resonance imaging … Continue reading The Placebo Effect
Another interesting viewpoint that suggests our understanding of the nature of consciousness would benefit from being more inclusive appears in the book, "The Spiritual Brain," which takes on the purely materialistic view that the brain alone produces the mind and accounts for consciousness. In a methodically reasoned and admirably balanced manner, the book addresses how, … Continue reading A Spiritual Neuroscience – Mario Beauregard
Tamily Weissman, Jeff Lichtman, and Joshua Sanes (2005) A recent article on the Scientific American website detailed the extraordinary work being undertaken by scientists studying the complex array of connections and neural pathways in the brain. The following link will take you to a brief video explaining the current efforts being made to track these … Continue reading Complexity in Nature – Brain Connections
