So I was doing the requisite coffee-run today when I came across a copy of last week's U.S. News and World Report. And lo and behold the cover story - about "one of the last great intellectual frontiers", the study of consciousness.
And so I re-post the following...
The Final Frontier
By the time I was looking for the ultimate adventure, space was no longer the final frontier. It was the late 1980s and the mind was being hailed as the last uncharted terrain. Or consciousness was, or the brain, depending on who was talking. Physicists realized that they needed the mind to explain how the state vector collapsed. Psychologists were already so specialized that few knew the history of anything except their own sub-discipline. Neuroscientists were beginning to acquire the level of technology needed for obtaining new insights into the workings of the brain. And everybody wanted to understand the mystery of consciousness. Including me.
Perhaps I would not have cared so much if I hadn't had my own set of experiences with the anomalies of consciousness. Certainly I had always preferred the adventure of the unknown, and I was observant enough to realize that there were wonders of the mind that were acknowledged by society but which science had difficulty explaining. Call me hooked. A mystery. A Holy Grail that was within reach. What power could be gained by understanding the nature of the human mind? And what adventures might be had in explaining its limits?
More than even I dreamed possible...
