Apr 15 2006 08:01:23 PM EDT
Can We Handle Change?
In the early evening last week, I want to a presentation by a Yale professor of psychiatry. It was about what he called “the neurobiological antagonism to difference” — all about how, after we reach a certain age (12, about the age of sexual maturity), our brains look at the world for confirmations of their perceptual frameworks, and so cope less well with “difference” — data that challenge our perceptions. In the comments period I said I thought this view was a little pessimistic — after all, don’t scientists, who learned all the old scientific theories first, come up with new and different theories? He allowed as how human beings probably have other means of adapting to new conditions. I think a complete theory would include an explanation of how it is, even though our brains lose the plasticity of early childhood, we can continue to learn new things and even adopt new world views into old age.
Apr 17 2006 09:37:48 AM EDT
Comment by: The ghost of '39
VERY OT - How far do we have to let them go before we can call Bushco Nazis? I’m just askin’ since your ‘law’ seems to be the only reason not we can’t.
Apr 20 2006 01:11:12 PM EDT
Comment by: The ghost of '39
I could really use an answer…these sickos are gearing up again. And BusHitler fits so well. Now more than ever.
Apr 20 2006 05:04:34 PM EDT
Comment by: gertrude smith
thanks mike for your courteous reply re: enantiomers.
here’s my thought on ‘difference’ …
Aquinas called g_d the unmoved mover, but in my life that felt rather cold…my appelation more follows Augustine’s “to know g_d, to know myself” i say “to know others , to know the Other”.
biologically speaking there is an interesting article in the 3 december 05 science news p.366, rejected lovers have increased brain activity in the regions of the brain associated with evaluating risk.
Apr 20 2006 05:06:49 PM EDT
Comment by: gertrude smith
ooops..forgot to put in: the scientist is lucy brown at Albert Einstein college of medicine in New York