Introducing the brain: lumping not splitting (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, November 11, 2022, 16:47 (531 days ago) @ David Turell

A book review of a lumper scientist:

https://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/library/item/11_november_2022/40...

"In his new book, The Entangled Brain: How Perception, Cognition, and Emotion Are Woven Together, Brazilian neuroscientist Luiz Pessoa offers a way to construe the brain as a fully integrated organ, a framework that “while not rare, is also not mainstream among neuroscientists.” A “divide-and-conquer strategy” has produced ever more refined brain maps, he argues, and subsequent leaps from structure to function. However, not only are anatomical brain areas far from simply located units of cognition but, as the subtitle of the book makes explicit, perception, cognition, and emotion are also interweaved.

"To stress the networked nature of the brain, Pessoa has chosen a timely adjective: “entangled.” He seeks a portrait of the brain beyond the high-resolution caricature of cognitive functions placed inside cerebral boxes.

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"So, what is the remedy for reductionism? Pessoa goes for large-scale distributed circuits within a network perspective—a complex systems approach where “many relatively simple interacting parts” exhibit “emergent” behaviors. Emergence can be invoked as a free miracle, and the misuse of networks lends itself to hairball graphs. However, Pessoa’s amalgamation of systems theory, cybernetics, and network science is a necessary step.

"Pessoa claims that “biology does not work like physics, and even less so like engineering.” He challenges linchpin assumptions in the life and mind sciences—the reducibility of organisms and their brains, ceteris paribus, and the belief that truth is to be found in simplicity. The obviously nontrivial requires restating: We cannot explain “all biology in terms of physics and chemistry.”

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"Given Pessoa’s wink at a processual view of life, one wonders whether his postreductionism also calls for a post materialist neuroscience. Para phrasing Erwin Schrödinger, if verschränkung (entanglement) is the defining characteristic of brains and minds, it enforces an entire departure from classical lines of thought. In this sense, The Entangled Brain instantiates yet another conservative revolution in current neuroscience."

Comment: there are always splitters and lumpers in science. I'm with the lumpers.