FROM CASES OF HYSTERIA TO THE THERAPEUTIC SOCIETY
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such a basis. He was right. One of the things a scientist learns is that there
is a right time to ask a question. Newton did very well in his analysis of
the motion of the planets but failed completely in his attempts at chem–
istry or the nature of matter, because their time had not yet arrived.
My own feeling is that within the next ten to twenty years we will
uncover the biological basis of learning and memory storage. We will
know precisely what happens in a cell or at the cell surface, which recep–
tors change, what alterations take place, what cellular changes occur with
learning, what chemical changes take place, where memories are stored,
what the differences are between short-term and long-term memory, and
what determines whether or not transfers are made between short and
long-term memory. I believe that it is just a matter of time before we
understand how the brain processes information.
A question we might ask is whether we will be able to construct all
of the so-called mental states from these material entities. Whether we will
be able to construct such things as our awareness of ourselves, our con–
sciousness. I recall Santayana writing
(Dialogues in Limbo,
I believe): "all of
our sorrow is real, but the atoms of which we are made are indifferent."
The scientific question might perhaps be phrased: Can we construct real
sorrow from indifferent atoms? This is no doubt difficult, but not neces–
sarily insoluble.
I'm not willing to indulge in the kinds of mystification one so often
hears-the almost invariable accompaniment to the players who attempt
difficult scientific questions. There is a common sequence. First try to solve
the problem. After the first few failures throw up your hands and say it is
insoluble or that a new law of nature is involved. In this case pour intelli–
gence and consciousness into the material machine. We don't know before
a problem is solved whether or not it is soluble, but historically people
have thrown up their hands very quickly. Let me give you an example. In
the ninteenth century, the French positivist Auguste Comte said that an
example of knowledge permanently inaccessible to the human mind is the
chemical composition of the stars. He likely reasoned that in order to
determine the chemistry of the stars you have to go there, take a piece of
one and put it in a test tube, etc. That was just a couple of years before
spectroscopy was invented. Then it was realized that by analyzing the light
that came from the stars you could know more about the chemistry of the
star than we do of the interior of the earth. What it really means when
people say that things are insoluble is that they haven't seen the links: the
links don't yet exist. But links are what we construct all of the time. It
could turn out that some problems are insoluble, but I'm reluctant to jump
to that conclusion.
At the turn of every century we seem to be afflicted with fin de siecle
malaise; call it "sixth decimal place-itis." You all recall the famous statement
