"See? the caller snapped. "She's not denying it. Well, all I've got to say is that she'd better watch her --.
Daugherty cut him off. "If you can't be civil, caller, we'll have to address your question without you on the line. He gazed coolly at his guest. "So, was he right? Are you really implying that Republicans are sick?
"If you really want an answer to that question, I'm going to need a few minutes to explain my findings. But first, I'll have to describe the experiment.
He turned his palms up. "By all means. Take as long as you'd like. There's almost three hours left of my show.
Paula's brow furrowed momentarily as she agonized over how to present the science without completely losing whatever audience there might be. There was no point delving into the details of quantum mechanics; that would only sidetrack the discussion. Still, she'd have to present the essence of that field in order to make sense of her conclusions. Sensing a solution, she smiled and relaxed.
"As long as people have tried to figure out how the brain works, she said, "they've used some bit of cutting-edge technology as a metaphor to explain it. First they said it's like a precision clockwork, then, when they ran into mechanical trouble, they changed their minds and said it's like a super-fast computer, and so forth. Meanwhile, biologists and surgeons, the people who actually poked around in all that gray matter, were busy trying to map out which part of the thing did what. They ran into similar problems when they tried to identify exactly where an experience or a memory lived, and what it might look like. The thing is, all of these approaches had one thing in common: they made the assumption that the mind and the brain were the same thing, which drove them to conclude that some combination of neural connections and electro-chemical signaling meant the color blue, or the sound of middle ˜C', or the memory of where you left your keys.
Daugherty, who had been nodding agreeably, said, "I take it you didn't buy into that assumption.
"I did at first, yeah. But something I read, an unproven theory, gave me an idea. So I concocted an experiment to try to disprove the theory, which is how the scientific method works, after all, and found that I couldn't.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
