In Our Heads

When Michael Graziano issued his theoretical contention that the brain is nothing but a “data-processing device,” he said something he cannot prove.

Science is a method of inquiry, not a view from Olympus. As a matter of working procedure, scientists restrict themselves to the measurable. It is a self-imposed restriction that does not preclude the existence of an immaterial dimension. Of course, any individual can opt to believe that “only the measurable is real,” but any scientist who would suggest that such a proposition is demonstrable is being both unscientific and dishonest.

In the end all our theories, however compelling, are incomplete. As Gabriel Marcel has said: “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.”