In the past, when people had psychological problems, neuroscientists would often wrongly jump to the conclusion that something in the persons past was to blame. Nowadays, scientists know more than ever about the growing field of neuroscience. According to recent statistics, over 90 percent of the neuroscientists who ever lived are living now, and more has been accomplished in the field during the past twenty years than the past two hundred. Until recently, the brain could only be studied under extreme situations of illness when symptoms readily appeared. The public lacked interest in matters of the mind, which made neuroscience a difficult field to research.
The legacy of René Descartes' notorious dualism of mind and body extends far beyond academia into everyday thinking: "These athletes are prepared both mentally and physically," and "There's nothing wrong with your body--it's all in your mind." Even among those of us who have battled Descartes' vision, there has been a powerful tendency to treat the mind (that is to say, the brain) as the body's boss, the pilot of the ship. Falling in with this standard way of thinking, we ignore an important alternative: viewing the brain (and hence the mind) as one organ among many, a relatively recent usurper of control, whose functions cannot properly be understood until we see it not as the boss, but as just one more somewhat fractious servant, working to further the interests of the body that shelters and fuels it, and gives its activities meaning. This historical or evolutionary perspective reminds me of the change that has come over Oxford in the thirty years since I was a student there. It used to be that the dons were in charge, while the bursars and other bureaucrats, right up to the Vice Chancellor, acted under their guidance and at their behest.........
