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by additional brain activities, called 'context' that are not controlled in the
experiments, showing the inadequacies of the concepts (Shulman & Hyder, 2004;
Fodor, 2000). In these inconclusive investigations, modern functional imaging
methods are being selectively interpreted to subserve and explain the 'clear and
distinct' assumptions made by contemporary psychology. These concepts are
being studied because philosophical and psychological reasons have claimed
them to be clear and distinct and therefore, following Descartes, to be worthy
of study. However, concepts of Mind from psychology or everyday experience,
which incorporate Cartesian assumptions about mind, are not providing a sound
scientific explanation of brain activity.
Of course, advocates of large-scale revolutionary changes, such as are envis-
aged for systems biology, could counter that this is not a time for normal science.
I have argued, with diabetes as an example, that questions being asked about
systems can be answered by novel but normal science. I cannot be sure that
the great data banks becoming available would not be more productive if we
pursued revolutionary methodologies than if we persisted in treating them as
the data of normal scientific enquiry. However, I can see that, at least in the
systemic field of cognitive neuroscience, the new synthesis is not a heroic, rev-
olutionary hypothesis integrating physical data, as Karl Popper proposed, but
rather the imposition of Cartesian-like certainties from psychology upon physical
methods.
The scientific methodology of cognitive neuroscience resonates with philoso-
phies proposed by other modern scientists. We are familiar with the claims - of
particle theorists that universal truths of 'what is' will be explained by a final
theory or of particle experimentalists proposing that everything will be explained
by a God particle, or of computer scientists building computational theories of
mind or, closer to our subject, of Francis Crick proposing that consciousness,
like DNA, will be explained by its constituent atoms and molecules - to realize
that philosophy is often an extension of scientific method. These examples illus-
trate the temptations felt by scientists to generalize the results of their scientific
methodology and to use them to define the questions posed by larger systems,
e.g., cosmology or mental activities of brain. However, the ironic nature of these
modern claims, simultaneously assured and exaggerated, suggests that gener-
alizations of scientific methods into philosophical principals for understanding
'what is' must not remain unexamined. These proposals are similar to cogni-
tive neuroscience in that they have offered intuitive certainties as guidelines for
research. They represent philosophical principals of Cartesian certainties rather
than of modern scientific methodology. The philosophy responsible for this
kind of proposal for new scientific synthesis must be examined closely in the
formulation of systems biology.
My preference for the advantages of normal rather than revolutionary science
echoes an exchange between Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn in their two essays
