Physics in Mind by Werner Loewenstein

Author:Werner Loewenstein [Loewenstein, Werner R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780465033973
Publisher: Basic Books

The Feathers of the Brain

But what is good for social intercourse is not necessarily good for describing and explaining what goes on beyond the sensory horizon. That calls for a different kind of language, one that is stringently coded, logically self-consistent, and capable of apprehending the reciprocal relationships between things.

Mathematics is such a language. However, the corresponding neuronal circuitry is not so easy to pinpoint as in the case of ordinary language. Mathematics draws more heavily on our consciousness, whose information states occupy vast neuronal spaces in the brain. However, we are not altogether clueless. Clinical neurology lends a hand here; patients with mathematical inabilities (but without obvious memory inability) showed structural deficits in the left frontal bulge of their brain and in the left parietal-occipital region.

This gives us a broad hint. Recall that the frontal bulge is the seat of forecognition, the neuronal-trellis capacity of computing from past experiences the probability of future occurrences (chapter 11). That same capacity thus may well be the basis for higher mathematics, too. This stands to reason because the alternative, a special neuronal circuitry for such mathematics, is unlikely on Darwinian grounds. What selective advantages could the solving of quadratic equations possibly have, or the formulation of topological theorems or wave equations? Whereas it is plausible that those mathematical abilities developed secondarily as by-products or extensions of the life-significant computer capacity of forecognition.

Along this line of thought, we may envision that, from humble beginnings and under the ever-present evolutionary pressures for fast reaction, the neuron trellis grew to a sprangling apparatus for probabilistic computation, eventually becoming co-opted for higher mathematics.

Such co-options are called trans-adaptations in Darwinian terms, and they are by no means oddities. They are among Evolution’s favorite information-conserving ploys. The feathers of birds are a classical example: although today the feathers are used for flight and are the quintessential instruments for it, for millions of years, before any creature flew, they served to maintain body temperature. And they are as successful in the secondary adaptation as they were in the primary one. So, putting it briefly, mathematics are the feathers of the brain.

That may not be an inspiring slogan, but it pretty much sums things up.

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