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Editorial
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Scientists working in a previous Decade of the Brain (the 1660s) were the first reliably to link function to structure in the nervous system. But not everyone agreed on the physical basis of human behaviour. In Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (1641), René Descartes (1596–1650) had already made the case for a separation of mind and body, distinguishing in ‘Cartesian dualism’ brain and intelligence from self-awareness and consciousness, and formulating the contemporary mind-body debate. In ‘Brain and (Bad) Behaviour’, John Cornwell brings the journalist's ability to probe the vulnerable points in any argument, together with good working knowledge of neuroscience and its implications for society, to debate the neural basis for morality and creativity (page 1339). Mr Cornwell is an affiliated research scholar in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and director of the Science and Human Dimensions project at Jesus College, Cambridge. He works on the public understanding
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