D+C Selection: Intelligence in the Flesh
Humans understand approximately 10-20% of how our brains function. Thinkers have also narrowed our intellect to a single organ in our body, the brain.
In his book, Intelligence in the Flesh, Guy Claxton explores the idea that your brain, far from being the only organ that thinks, is far more like a junction box, connecting intelligence from every part of your body. It’s a fascinating view into intelligence that moves beyond the established logical brain-centered model to understand your whole body as an intelligence ecosystem from the moment you are born.
Highlights from the book
“A cardiologist can give a pretty good account of how the ‘organ of circulation’ works, but after more than a hundred years of scientific psychology we still struggle to give an overall account of this mysterious organ of intelligence.”
“One of the major errors of twentieth-century psychology was to suppose that there are childish ways of knowing which are outgrown, and ought to be transcended, as one grows up.”
“Fundamentally we are not designed for thinking, philosophising or solving cute logic problems against the clock. Reason and debate are themselves tools that evolved to support deeper biological agendas.”
“This being so, we need to rethink the relationship between thoughts and feelings. Feelings are not a nuisance. They are not – as Plato thought, and many still do – wayward and primitive urgings that continually threaten to undermine the fragile structures built by dispassionate reason.”
Prose on logic alone
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
— Act 1, Scene 2 | Julius Caesar |William Shakespeare
A drawing I made called The Watcher
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