Cybernetics of Epistemology - Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - page 242

the earth” (theory of action at the point). An immediate result of this shift
in the point of view is that the usual distinction between “sensitive” and
“switching” neurons—or, should you prefer, between the neurons of the
peripheral and the central nervous system—will disappear, as every nerve
cell is now to be considered a “sensitive” cell specifically reacting to its
micro-environment. Yet, as the total sum of the micro-environments of all
neurons of an organism constitutes its “entire environment,” it is clear that
only an outside observer has the privilege of distinguishing between an
“exterior” and an “interior” environment of an organism. This is a privilege
that the organism itself does not have, as it knows only one environment:
that, which it experiences (it can, for instance, not differentiate between hal-
lucinatory and non-hallucinatory states of experience.)
Let us keep, for a moment, the above-mentioned inside/outside distinc-
tion by the observer so we can estimate the impact of both environments
on the nervous state of the organism. I understand every sensitive cell to
be a “point of activity” coupled with the exterior environment (“exterior
world”), and every synaptic spine of a cell in the CNS as a preferred point
of activity of the “interior world”, the micro-environment of which is deter-
mined by the chemical constitution of the neurotransmitters in the corre-
sponding synaptic gap and through the electrical state of activity of the
afferent axon.
If one takes the ratio of the amount of internal or external points of activ-
ity as a relative measure of the effects of the internal and the external world,
one comes up with approximately 2 times 10 8 for the external and 2 times
10 13 for the internal points of activity, which translates into a 100 000 times
higher sensitivity of the nervous system with regard to changes of the inter-
nal than those of the external world.
The question whether the nervous system can afford this extraordinary
sensitivity for inner changes because the thermal and hormonal parameters
remain so incredibly constant inside the skull or whether synaptic prolifer-
ation is enhanced by this constancy, belongs, to the category of questions
asking what came first, the chicken or the egg. In any case, this observation
may be a hint for neuropharmcologists and psychiatrists that they are
dealing with a highly sensitive system which may exhibit noticeable changes
in its entire mode of operation with even minute changes in metabolism; to
the information scientists it may tell that one is dealing with a computer,
the program structure of which is modifiable by its activities. 14
In Figure 9, the above-outlined overview of the organization of the
nervous system is schematically reproduced. The black squares symbolize
neuron bundles, which can have an effect on the next bundle via spaces—
a collection of synaptic gaps. The flow of signals along the bundle runs from
left to right, starting with the sensitive surface and terminating in the motor
surface, the changes of which are fed back via the exterior world—the
“motor-sensory synaptic gap”—to the sensory surface, thus closing the flow
of signals through a circuit. A second circular flow of signals begins at the