To listen to more of Gerald Edelman’s stories, go to the playlist:
[ Ссылка ]
Biologist Gerald Edelman (1929-2014) was born in America. His early work concentrated on the study of immunology and he was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1972 for his work leading to the understanding of the antibody’s chemical structure. [Listeners: Ralph J Greenspan]
TRANSCRIPT: [RJG] Can this approach, both theoretical and as instantiated in devices, ever get you to the issue of how consciousness works, of what consciousness is in a biological sense, or in any sense?
Good. Well, you've asked a question about something that has been considered to be outside the pale of scientific approach for a long, long time. Independent of the movement of behaviorism in the early 20th Century which distorted the subject mightily, the fact is that consciousness was the province of philosophers, wasn't it? Pretty much. Particularly of what we'll call of modern philosophy starting with Descartes. Let me see where I can begin. Let me do it this way. Let me start with Descartes and say how he posed the problem – because even though one doesn't agree with him, it sets the context actually very beautifully; it sets what the problem is. Alfred North Whitehead in his book Science and the Modern World made an interesting statement. He said, 'At the very beginnings of Western science in the 17th Century, two figures removed the mind from nature. The first was Galileo and the second was Descartes.' Now, both of them tried physics, you know, but Galileo was a much superior physicist whereas... and not a philosopher, whereas Descartes had some physics but he was of course... in a way that Galileo was for modern physics, he was the founder of modern philosophy. And so they removed the mind from nature for different reasons.
