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There are brains that can detect the minutest changes in light,sound,smell,and touch;delicately and accurately intergrate the actions of many muscles;regulate the functioning of the body's many organs so as to preserve the optimum conditions for life.
Such brains learn from experience,and they have found ways to communicate with each other through simple "languages" and so share their knowledge.They are also sensitive to magnetic and electric fields and ultraviolet light.They can analyze the polarization of sunlight and use it to tell directions.They keep a constant track of time,even through the night.These brains function as accurate guidance systems;compensating for wind direction, they correlate the rapid beating of four tiny wings,landing their little bodies delicately at the center of a waving flower.Such brains are the size of a grain of salt,contain a mere nine hundred neurons,and can be found inside a BEE'S HEAD.What then can we expect from our own brains,ten million times in size,and many billion times as complex?
Clearly the human brain as to control a much larger body.This,however,is only part of the answer;a much smaller brain could carry out all the necessary functions quite satisfactory.A shark,for example,has a large body and very accurate senses,but its brain is very much smaller than ours.
Where we differ most radically from bees and sharks-and from virtually every other creature-is in our highly developed use of language,our capacity to learn not only from our own experience but from that of others,and our ability to adapt the environment to our own needs.
A human being has the faculty of self-consciousness,in the sense of being aware of his own experiences and of himself as a conscious being.With this awareness of his own conscious processes comes freedom of choice and the ability to make deliberate actions.Intelligence and self-conciousness together give human beings the unique capacity to progress and evolve within their own lifetimes.
08-12-2005 12:21 PM 