Any Ape Can Reach For A Banana,

The Adage That Fact Is Stranger Than Fiction Seems To Be Especially True For The Workings Of The Brain.

With The Arrival Of Humans, It Has Been Said, The Universe Has Suddenly Become Conscious Of Itself. This, Truly, It The Greatest Mystery Of All.

People Think Of Art And Science As Being Fundamentally Opposed To Each Other, Because Art Is About Celebrating Individual Human Creativity, And Science Is About Discovering General Principles, Not About Individual People. But In Fact, The Two Have A Lot In Common, And The Creative Spirit Is Similar In Both.

In The Fetus, Or A Really Young Child, All The Different Brain Areas Are Connected To Each Other, Diffusely. And As The Brain Develops, The Excess Connections Are Turned Off, So You Get Very Specialized Areas. So Most People Have Really Specialized Talents. What Happens In Creative People Is This Pooling Doesn't Take Place.

Lofty Questions About The Mind Are Fascinating To Ask, Philosophers Have Been Asking Them For Three Millennia Both In India Where I Am From And Here In The West - But It Is Only In The Brain That We Can Eventually Hope To Find The Answers.