Challenges Placed in Perspective.

The Brain. We look at it today with the same twinkling expression of anticipation that was worn by our forefathers who first heard that the Earth was, in fact, round. It seems that new discoveries are taking place each day as the frontiersmen of science attempt to map the largely uncharted mechanism of our cognition. In this endeavor, there are two main fronts: Neuroscience, which deals with the physical workings of the brain, and Cognitive Psychology, which strives to understand the processes of our subconscious mind through introspection and psychological experimentation. These fields are faced with obstacles of tremendous proportions. I'd like to take a moment to put these challenges into perspective.

Now, granted, I am no expert in either of these fields, but the problem that I see facing Cognitive Psychology is that the brave men and women exploring this shadow coated area of the mind have nothing to work with save their own observations of human behavior, much the same way we began to explore the realm of physics by using our observations of the natural world.

In the field of Neuroscience, with all the myriad tools of the physical scientists at their disposal, Neuroscientists attempt to reverse engineer the brain at the material level. Here, however, we come upon an entirely different problem. The human mind is clearly the product of either an evolutionary process, or the design of an altogether alien consciousness. Possibly a combination of both.

Let's assume for a moment that the mind is the product of an intelligent designer. If this is the case, then we find ourselves faced with a dramatic challenge. To illustrate: In the 1950's as the cold war was beginning to take shape, American and British cryptologists, fresh from the triumphs of World War II, went to work trying to break the codes of the Soviet Union, whereupon they struck a wall. Slavic grammar and syntax are nothing like those of the Germanic languages of which both German and English are a part.

All systems of codebreaking were centered around models which depended upon a certain thought process. At first, the codebreakers believed that they had encountered an entirely new type of code. This assumption proved to be incorrect. As it turned out, what was needed was a person who had an understanding of both modern code breaking technique and Russian. ( see the book 'The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet', by David Kahn for more information on this topic. )

The brain poses a similar challenge, in that it does not use a linear, man made system of organization. The mind does not, contrary to popular belief, function like a computer or any other human device and for this reason the difficulties the difficulties inherent in discovering the principles which govern its operation are daunting, to say the least.

If, on the other hand, we assume that the mind is the product of evolutionary forces, we are faced with yet another problem: Namely, that of superefficiency produced by natural selection. In 1999, I read an article from the Associated Press about a pair of scientists in Ireland who had developed a piece of software which "bred" computer chip designs together in order to achieve highly efficient results to specific problems. The scientists gave the computer the task of creating devices which were capable of recognizing sound within a specific frequency range. After many iterations, the computer produced an extraordinary success. The "evolved" device which was the product of this process was capable of performing its task with unprecedented efficiency.

The catch was this: The scientists were unable to understand how the device operated, not only from a logical perspective, but from a physical perspective as well. The chip design was divided physically into two separate parts, each operating with no apparent means of communicating with the other. ( sadly, I have been unable to find this article again, but I do know that NASA has recently used a similar technology to evolve antennae for use on spacecraft. )

If the human mind is, in fact, a device which has evolved in such a manner, it will be incredibly difficult to reverse engineer the results of thousands upon thousands of years of organic evolution.

Obviously, both the field of Neuroscience and that of Cognitive Psychology are faced with challenges of remarkable difficulty and complexity. Whether the brain evolved or was designed, or was influenced by an amalgam of both processes, it is clear that we have an uncharted and perilous path to travel if we hope to comprehend it.