We need to distinguish between true complexity of design and apparent complexity. Consider the famous Mandelbrot set, the image of which has long been a symbol of complexity. To appreciate its apparent complication, it is useful to zoom in on its image (which you can access via the links in this endnote).7 There is endless intricacy within intricacy, and they are always different. Yet the design—the formula—for the Mandelbrot set couldn’t be simpler. It is six characters long: Z = Z2 + C, in which Z is a “complex” number (meaning a pair of numbers) and C is a constant. It is not necessary to fully understand the Mandelbrot function to see that it is simple. This formula is applied iteratively and at every level of a hierarchy. The same is true of the brain. Its repeating structure is not as simple as that of the six-character formula of the Mandelbrot set, but it is not nearly as complex as the millions of quotations on the brain’s complexity would suggest. This neocortical design is repeated over and over at every level of the conceptual hierarchy represented by the neocortex. Einstein articulated my goals in this book well when he said that “any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex…but it takes…a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
One view of the display of the Mandelbrot set, a simple formula that is iteratively applied. As one zooms in on the display, the images constantly change in apparently complex ways.
So far I have been talking about the brain. But what about the mind? For example, how does a problem-solving neocortex attain consciousness? And while we’re on the subject, just how many conscious minds do we have in our brain? There is evidence that suggests there may be more than one.
Another pertinent question about the mind is, what is free will, and do we have it? There are experiments that appear to show that we start implementing our decisions before we are even aware that we have made them. Does that imply that free will is an illusion?
Finally, what attributes of our brain are responsible for forming our identity? Am I the same person I was six months ago? Clearly I am not exactly the same as I was then, but do I have the same identity?
We’ll review what the pattern recognition theory of mind implies about these age-old questions.
CHAPTER 1
THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS ON THE WORLD
Darwin’s theory of natural selection came very late in the history of thought.
Was it delayed because it opposed revealed truth, because it was an entirely new subject in the history of science, because it was characteristic only of living things, or because it dealt with purpose and final causes without postulating an act of creation? I think not. Darwin simply discovered the role of selection, a kind of causality very different from the push-pull mechanisms of science up to that time. The origin of a fantastic variety of living things could be explained by the contribution of which novel features, possibly of random provenance, made it to survival. There was little or nothing in physical or biological science that foreshadowed selection as a causal principle.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
A Metaphor from Geology
In the early nineteenth century geologists pondered a fundamental question. Great caverns and canyons such as the Grand Canyon in the United States and Vikos Gorge in Greece (reportedly the deepest canyon in the world) existed all across the globe. How did these majestic formations get there?
Invariably there was a stream of water that appeared to take advantage of the opportunity to course through these natural structures, but prior to the mid-nineteenth century, it had seemed absurd that these gentle flows could be the creator of such huge valleys and cliffs. British geologist Charles Lyell (1797–1875), however, proposed that it was indeed the movement of water that had carved out these major geological modifications over great periods of time, essentially one grain of rock at a time. This proposal was initially met with ridicule, but within two decades Lyell’s thesis achieved mainstream acceptance.
One person who was carefully watching the response of the scientific community to Lyell’s radical thesis was English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882). Consider the situation in biology around 1850. The field was endlessly complex, faced with countless species of animals and plants, any one of which presented great intricacy. If anything, most scientists resisted any attempt to provide a unifying theory of nature’s dazzling variation. This diversity served as a testament to the glory of God’s creation, not to mention to the intelligence of the scientists who were capable of mastering it.
Darwin approached the problem of devising a general theory of species by making an analogy with Lyell’s thesis to account for the gradual changes in the features of species over many generations. He combined this insight with his own thought experiments and observations in his famous Voyage of the Beagle. Darwin argued that in each generation the individuals that could best survive in their ecological niche would be the individuals to create the next generation.
On November 22, 1859, Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species went on sale, and in it he made clear his debt to Lyelclass="underline"
I am well aware that this doctrine of natural selection, exemplified in the above imaginary instances, is open to the same objections which were at first urged against Sir Charles Lyell’s noble views on “the modern changes of the earth, as illustrative of geology”; but we now very seldom hear the action, for instance, of the coast-waves called a trifling and insignificant cause, when applied to the excavation of gigantic valleys or to the formation of the longest lines of inland cliffs. Natural selection can act only by the preservation and accumulation of infinitesimally small inherited modifications, each profitable to the preserved being; and as modern geology has almost banished such views as the excavation of a great valley by a single diluvial wave, so will natural selection, if it be a true principle, banish the belief of the continued creation of new organic beings, or of any great and sudden modification in their structure.1
Charles Darwin, author of On the Origin of Species, which established the idea of biological evolution.
There are always multiple reasons why big new ideas are resisted, and it is not hard to identify them in Darwin’s case. That we were descended not from God but from monkeys, and before that, worms, did not sit well with many commentators. The implication that our pet dog was our cousin, as was the caterpillar, not to mention the plant it walked on (a millionth or billionth cousin, perhaps, but still related), seemed a blasphemy to many.