The Physical Basis of Mind / Being the Second Series of Problems of Life and Mind.

Chapter 20: PROBLEM II. THE NERVOUS MECHANISM.

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About This Book

The text investigates the biological foundations of mental phenomena, arguing that psychology must root itself in organismal and social conditions. It presents four essays on the nature of life, the nervous mechanism, animal automatism, and reflex action, combining physiological description with philosophical critique. The author emphasizes a biological rather than metaphysical or purely mechanical viewpoint, warns against speculative assumptions such as imaginary anatomy and the unexamined primacy of the nerve-cell, and proposes extending competition principles to tissues and organs. The work seeks to reconcile mechanical explanations of movement with biological complexity and to show how physical processes relate to mental aspects without reducing one wholly to the other.

PROBLEM II.
THE NERVOUS MECHANISM.

“All the functions of the nervous system are as dependent upon its structure and nature, as the accurate indication of time upon the construction of the chronometer.”—Prochaska.

“Unser Wissen wird nie vollendet, ist und bleibt Stückwerk; dessen Ergänzung das Streben und Hoffen der forschenden Denker bleiben wird für alle Zeit.”—Radenhausen, Osiris.

“Our nimble souls
Can spin an insubstantial universe
Suiting our mood, and call it possible,
Sooner than see one grain with eye exact,
And give strict record of it.”

George Eliot, The Spanish Gypsy.

“If we compare the teachings of our books with what Nature is constantly showing, we find there is no agreement between those two sources of learning.”—Brown Séquard.