Connectionists: How the brain works

[Ivan Raikov]

Speaking of radio and electromagnetic waves, it is perhaps the case that
neuroscience has not yet reached the maturity of 19th century physics:
while the discovery of electromagnetism is attributed to great
experimentalists such as Ampere and Faraday, and its mathematical model is
attributed to one of the greatest modelers in physics, Maxwell, none of it
happened in isolation. There was a lot of duplicated experimental work and
simultaneous independent discoveries in that time period, and Maxwell's
equations were readily accepted and quickly refined by a number of
physicists after he first postulated them. So in a sense physics had a
consensus community model of electromagnetism already in the first half of
the 19th century. Neuroscience is perhaps more akin to physics in the  17th
century, when Newton's infinitesimal calculus was rejected and even mocked
by the scientific establishment on the continent, and many years would pass
until calculus was understood and widely accepted. So a unifying theory of
neuroscience may not come until a lot of independent and reproducible
experimentation brings it about.

  -Ivan


On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 1:39 PM, Thomas Trappenberg <tt at cs.dal.ca> wrote:

> Some of our discussion seems to be about 'How the brain works'. I am of
> course not smart enough to answer this question. So let me try another
> system.
>
> How does a radio work? I guess it uses an antenna to sense an
> electromagnetic wave that is then  amplified so that an electromagnet can
> drive a membrane to produce an airwave that can be sensed by our ear. Hope
> this captures some essential aspects.
>
> Now that you know, can you repair it when it doesn't work?
>
>
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