| So, summing up: the brain was the seat of the
rational soul. It received vital spirit from the heart,
mixed into the 'sanguine' humour (blood). The brain then
separates the animal spirit out and stores it in the
ventricles, distributing it throughout the body via the
nerves. This fluid travelled, via the nerves, to muscles
and organs to control all the bodies activities. The
rational soul was considered responsible for imagination,
reason and memory.
Commentary
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It seems to me that we
always use the stuff we generate about the world,
in trying to understand the world; as a model
from which we can gain greater and greater
differentiation of the things being considered.
The brain works by recognising the differences
between sensory data, sameness drops away by
being habituated out. The ideas of proportion and
ratio, similarity of nature and process in things
of different level (as expressed in the macrocosm
/ microcosm) provide the basis for metaphor and
modelling to elucidate nature and thus allowing
finer and finer differentiation between things.
We use the projections and constructions of our
minds to feedback upon ourselves. It is geometry
which provides the data of these earliest models
of human being. |
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