Studies of nerve action throughout the animal kingdom have also shown that nerves work by either ‘firing’ or not firing; intensity is represented by the rate of firing – the more intense the stimulation the faster the turning on and off of any particular nerve. This is of course very similar to the way computers work, in ‘bits’ of information, where everything is represented by a configuration of either 0s or 1s. The arrival of the concept of parallel processing in computing led Daniel Dennett to consider whether an analogous procedure might happen in the brain between different evolutionary levels, giving rise to consciousness. Again, though tantalising, such reasoning has not gone much further than preliminary exploration. At the moment, no one seems able to think of the next step.
So, despite all the research into consciousness in recent years, and despite the probability that the ‘hard’ sciences still offer the most likely way forward, the self remains as elusive as ever. Science has proved an enormous success in regard to the world ‘out there’ but has so far failed in the one area that arguably interests us the most – ourselves. Despite the general view that the self arises in some way from brain activity – from the action of electrons and the elements, if you will – it is hard to escape the conclusion that, after all these years, we still don’t know even how to talk about consciousness, about the self.
Here, therefore, and arising from this book, is one last idea for the scientists to build on. Given the Aristotelian successes of both the remote and the immediate past, is it not time to face the possibility – even the probability – that the essential Platonic notion of the ‘inner self’ is misconceived? There is no inner self. Looking ‘in’, we have found nothing – nothing stable anyway, nothing enduring, nothing we can all agree upon, nothing conclusive – because there is nothing to find. We human beings are part of nature and therefore we are more likely to find out about our ‘inner’ nature, to understand ourselves, by looking outside ourselves, at our role and place as animals. In John Gray’s words, ‘A zoo is a better window from which to look out of the human world than a monastery.’27 This is not paradoxical, and without some such realignment of approach, the modern incoherence will continue.
Notes and References
When two dates are given for a publication, the first refers to the hardback edition, the second to the paperback edition. Unless otherwise stated, pagination refers to the paperback edition.
INTRODUCTION: THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEAS IN HISTORY – SOME CANDIDATES
1. Michael White, Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer, London: Fourth Estate, 1997, page 3. Keynes also said: ‘I fancy his [Newton’s] pre-eminence was due to his muscles of intuition being the strongest and most enduring with which a man has ever been gifted.’ Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, London: Macmillan, 2003, page 458.
2. Norman Hampson, The Enlightenment, London: Penguin, 1990, pages 34 and 36.
3. James Gleick, Isaac Newton, London: Fourth Estate HarperCollins, 2003/ 2004, pages 101–108; Frank E. Manuel, A Portrait of Isaac Newton, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1968, page 398n.
4. Joseph Needham, The Great Titration, London: Allen & Unwin, 1969, page 62.
5. Charles Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind, London: William Heinemann, 2002, page 322.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., page 327.
8. Marcia Colish, Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition: 400–1400, New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1997, page 249.
9. Harry Elmer Barnes, An Intellectual and Cultural History of the Western World, volume two. From the Renaissance Through the Eighteenth Century, New York: Dover, 1937, page 825.
10. Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, Book 1, aphorism 129, quoted in Joseph Needham et al., Science and Civilisation in China, volume 1, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1954, page 19.
11. Ibid.
12. Barnes, Op. cit., page 831.
13. John Bowle, A History of Europe, London: Secker & Warburg/Heinemann, 1979, page 391.
14. Hagen Schulze, States, Nations and Nationalism, Oxford: Blackwell, 1994/1996, page 395.
15. Ernest Gellner, Plough, Sword and Book, London: Collins Harvill, 1988.
16. Ibid., page 19f.
17. Barnes, Op. cit., pages 669ff.
18. Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, edited by R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner, two volumes, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976, volume 1, page 265.
19. Gellner, Op. cit., page 19.
20. Carlo Cipolla, Guns and Sails in the Early Phase of European Expansion, 1400–1700, London: Collins, 1965, pages 5 and 148–149.
21. Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind, London: Pimlico, 1991, pages 298ff.
22. Johan Goudsblom, Fire and Civilisation, London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1992, pages 164ff.
23. Isaiah Berlin, The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and Their History, edited by Henry Hardy, London: Chatto & Windus, 1996, pages 168–169.
24. Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, London: Jonathan Cape, 1997, pages 200–202.
25. Jacob Bronowski and Bruce Mazlish, The Western Intellectual Tradition, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960, page 495.
26. Barnes, Op. cit., page 720.
27. Bronowski and Mazlish, Op. cit., page 259.
28. Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1936/1964, page 23.
29. Edward P. Mahoney, ‘Lovejoy and the hierarchy of being’, Journal of the History of Ideas, volume 48, 1987, page 211.
30. Lovejoy, Op. cit., page 55.
31. Ibid., page 89.
32. Ibid., page 91.
33. Ibid., page 201.
34. Ibid., page 211.
35. Ibid., page 232.
36. Ibid., page 241.
37. Paul Robinson, ‘Symbols at an exhibition’, New York Times, 12 November 1998, page 12.