The Tell-Tale Brain

Science benefits from its inclusion of the abstraction-addled, absent-minded professors, the control-freak obsessives, the cantankerous bean-counting statistics junkies, the congenitally contrarian devil’s advocates, the hard-nosed data-oriented literalists, and the starry-eyed romantics who embark on high-risk, high-payoff ventures, stumbling frequently along the way.

These atoms now form a conglomerate—your brain—that can not only ponder the very stars that gave it birth but can also think about its own ability to think and wonder about its own ability to wonder.

Science benefits from its inclusion of the abstraction-addled, absent-minded professors, the control-freak obsessives, the cantankerous bean-counting statistics junkies, the congenitally contrarian devil’s advocates, the hard-nosed data-oriented literalists, and the starry-eyed romantics who embark on high-risk, high-payoff ventures

One is that humans are truly unique and special, not “just” another species of primate. I still find it a little bit surprising that this position needs as much defense as it does—and not just against the ravings of antievolutionists, but against no small number of my colleagues who seem comfortable stating that we are “just apes” in a casual, dismissive tone that seems to revel in our lowliness. I sometimes wonder: Is this perhaps the secular humanists’ version of original sin?

How do we perceive the world? What is the so-called mind-body connection? What determines your sexual identity? What is consciousness?