Sunday 18 August 2013

The Mind.

"The Power of the Mind"
How often does one hear this phrase?
People use it to talk about how much the mind is capable of doing, how much of influence it can have, and so on. Unlike such people, I want to talk of the power of the mind a bit differently. I want to talk about it as a scientific miracle.

Since time immemorial, the goal of scientists has been to explain whatever is happening around us with accurate reasons. For that, postulates, laws, theorems, equations and various theories have been put forth by various personalities across the globe. What science has achieved is amazing in the sense that today a person can explain complex phenomena just on a piece of paper with a few alphabets and numbers (i.e. in the form of equations). Science has been able to explain so many things, like the formation of a rainbow, 

 

or the periodically recurring shapes (or phases) of the moon 


and so many wonderful things that left man awestruck for centuries!

Science showed the world that there are patterns in nature and most of the things that we see around us work as per these patterns. In the scientists' language, they termed these as laws, theories and such stuff. Science succeeded in explaining simple things like why we are stuck to the surface of the Earth, or why we can walk easily on a dry floor as compared to a wet floor, as well as complicated things like the production of light by stars or the reason children have features similar to their parents.

The reason I call the abilities that our mind possesses as a 'scientific miracle' is that our mind, or rather the minds of all organisms on this planet, never needs to work out such equations in order to do something. Let me be more specific. Suppose I want to lift a pen fallen on the floor and keep it on the table nearby. Now, this action or phenomenon, as discovered by scientists, works because of certain conditions, and as per certain equations. This action won't be possible in certain circumstances too. For example, to lift the pen, one must apply a greater upward force than the gravitational force which keeps the pen down. One can also calculate the energy that will be required to complete this action.

But the mind is amazing. No person actually calculates in the mind the force that (s)he has to apply to lift the pen is say 2N at the least. The mind is miraculous. It can pretty accurately predict how much force it needs to apply without working out complicated equations. The mind can judge whether the temperature of a hot object you might be touching will burn your hand or not if you keep your hand on the object for some more time. It tells you when some noise is too loud for you to sustain, without actually calculating the decibels and all. It knows the intensity of light and accordingly instructs the iris to adjust the size of the pupil to prevent damage.



In brief, though all the phenomena around us work as per certain laws, our mind is powerful enough to do all the math, physics or whatever required to complete its action almost instantaneously. It knows exactly what it has to do without doing the actual physical calculations and telling you that "Hey, you can't open that door unless your hand applies a force of 5N!"
It just does it. It somehow does. Looking at it scientifically, it's totally miraculous. A SCIENTIFIC MIRACLE!


3 comments:

  1. Cool! I like that last line.

    ReplyDelete
  2. There's this book called 'Incognito' by David Eagleman (neurologist)--offers insight into different neurological conditions. Interesting read.
    His official website is www.eagleman.com

    ReplyDelete