Brain

My principal reason for writing this book has been to rid myself of the burden of an idea. I have not exactly ‘rushed into print’. The set of insights, if that is what they are, came to me quite suddenly and with an intensely strong (and frightening) eureka feeling in 1956. I wrote the first few sketchy and tentative papers on the subject in 1957 and 1958. A vastly condensed version of one of them was published in The Scientist Speculates which was edited by my friend Professor Jack Good. I have been fitting my reading, thinking and writing on the subject into an exceptionally busy life ever since. I know I have done only a fraction of the research and reading which is necessary to justify my intrusion as an outsider, into this field. But evidence accumulated, predictions which resulted from my hypothesis were fulfilled and I felt an increasingly strong feeling that I had a duty to communicate what I had come to for anything it might be worth. Perhaps there are no experts trained to pull together the scattering starting points in the very broad field I have chosen. I have written for the intelligent layman who remains the last association area of the brain of Mankind. Title Contents Foreword 1. What is Life? The Question The epistemological nature of science What is living? Entropy Negentropy Death The persistence of orgs Homeostasis Triggers 2. Intelligence First-order intelligence in protozoa The Cell as an input-output information transducer Change-accepting mechanisms Deliberate variation Second-order intelligence Vertebrae Third-order intelligence Meta-morphostasis Senility Maxwell Demons 3. Cybernetics Signals and Information 4. Recognition, Classification, Generalization Recognition Tolerance Matching classes Deterministic computers Tolerance Generalization Recombination The Apices 5. The Motorium The Apprehension of 'whole situations’ Information Figure Recognition 6. Learning 7. Attention, Volition, Conation Doing one thing at a time Ratiocination Memory Planning Writing 8. Biomorphic Philosophy 9. Confirmation and Falsification 10. Implications Towards an Electronic Brain The Implications for Politics The Implications for Organization Theory Organs Traditional View of Organization as Monohierarchic Development from Monohierarchic to Polyhierarchic organization Two Strata Hierarchies Inadequate Management The Implications for Democracy and Law Justice, Laws, Codes, Rules and Regulations Freedom Anarchists Power and the Trappings of Power Elites Social Reward Money, a motor signal A Biomorphic View of Pure Science The Scientists Universities The Academic Iconoclasts Meosa, the Ubiquitous University 11. World Org World Plan Afterword: Tinkering with the Works Bibliography Index