Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Because we do not understand the brain very well we are
constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a
model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we
were always assured that the brain was a telephone
switchboard. ('What else could it be?') I was amused to
see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist,
thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system.
Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and
electro-magnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill,
and I am told some of the ancient Greeks thought the
brain functions like a catapult. At present, obviously, the
metaphor is the digital computer.
—John R. Searle,
in Minds, Brains and Science
