Ode To The Dullard Sir Charles Scott Sherrington, Nobel Prize winning neurophysiologist, made many contributions to our early understanding of the brain, including, in 1897, coining the term synapse to describe the microscopic chasm separating the tendrils of one brain cell from the clasp of its neighbor. That's one of the privileges of a pioneer--you get to name the terrain along the way. In his summa philosophica, "Man--On His Nature," Sherrington also offered a classic poetic description of the functioning of the human brain: . . . swiftly the head-mass becomes an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one ; a shifting harmony of subpatterns. . . All quite wonderful. And yet, I sometimes experience my own mental magic as just a shade less enchanting. There are times when my mind seems some creaking old machine in need of lubrication, and perhaps a replacement part or two. I sometimes want, in addition to Sherrington's poetry, something closer to an Ode To The Dullard.
Ode To The Dullard Hardly anything enchanted about this loom. More Cannon Mills than magic. To those of us muddled of mind and thick of thought, it all seems a mystery. As a friend once observed, How can one think when one's head is filled with cotton candy. A cotton-candy network. Yes, now we're getting somewhere. Thoughts twist along sugary pink filaments. Progress is maddeningly slow. The idea becomes entangled in the web. Patterns ever changing, a shifting harmony of subpatterns? If a pattern is any loop of thought which comes near another, then I suppose pattern there be. One hears wondrous tales of minds both agile and strong. Evidence abounds. The argument readily grasped; the implication easily seen; the phrase delicately turned. Certainly no cotton-candy here. Cotton-candy has a different character. The argument is a distant port, dimly perceived. The implication falls out slowly, and only after repeated squeezings. Meanings are occasionally brushed against, but the contact is fleeting. Even the blind man has the good fortune to bump into things substantial. The mind lit by weak light is not so blessed. The groggy effort of will to think clearly about something, when the mind just won't go along. No enchanted play of lights and sparks. No cascades of electricity in ever-meaningful patterns. And not a loom to be found. Perhaps Sherrington was partly right. But there are those of us who would say, Sir, there are more things mundane under heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your physiology. |