Brain Advance Access originally published online on December 19, 2008
Brain 2009 132(1):274-277; doi:10.1093/brain/awn324
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© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Book Review |
Brainy fictions
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
In 1929, the crystallographer and all-round ‘sage’ (to use his nickname), J. D. Bernal, imagined detaching a human brain from its body, maintaining it in some kind of nutrient vat and connecting it up to other similarly preserved brains. What might such enhanced brains not accomplish, disconnected from the troubles of being a person? The fantasy was an apt play with human reason, a metaphor for the power of science to make all things possible—if only we would detach ourselves from our native prejudices, such as preoccupation with individual personality and the soul!
The interplay of fact and fiction about the brain has a long and colourful history (‘from Mesopotamia to the Matrix’). It is the habit of scientists, or for that matter historians, to separate fact and fiction, and few people would question that there are times when the distinction has significant moral weight. There are other times, however,
Institute of Advanced Studies
University of Durham