The Spaceman Says

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_(philosophy_of_mind)


Dualism (philosophy of mind)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Main article: Dualism

In philosophy of mind, dualism is the position that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical, or that the mind and body are not identical. Thus, it encompasses a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, and between subject and object, and is contrasted with other positions, such as physicalism and enactivism, in the mind–body problem.

Aristotle shared Plato's view










http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_microscope_technology


Timeline of microscope technology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Timeline of microscope technology

c2000 BCE - The Chinese use water microscopes made of a lens and a water-filled tube to visualize the unseen.

Up to 612 BCE - The Assyrians manufacture the world's oldest surviving lenses.

1267 Roger Bacon explains the principles of the lens and proposes the idea of telescope and microscope.

1590 - Dutch spectacle-makers Hans Jansen and his son Zacharias Jansen, claimed by later writers (Pierre Borel 1620 - 1671 or 1628 – 1689 and Willem Boreel 1591 – 1668) to have invented a compound microscope.

1609 - Galileo Galilei develops a compound microscope with a convex and a concave lens.

1612 - Galileo presents occhiolino to Polish king Sigismund III.

1619 - Cornelius Drebbel (1572 – 1633) presents, in London, a compound microscope with two convex lenses.

c.1622 - Drebbel presents his invention in Rome.

1624 - Galileo presents his occhiolino to Prince Federico Cesi, founder of the Accademia dei Lincei (in English, The Linceans).

1625 - Giovanni Faber of Bamberg (1574 - 1629) of the Linceans coins the word microscope by analogy with telescope.

1665 - Robert Hooke publishes Micrographia, a collection of biological micrographs. He coins the word cell for the structures he discovers in cork bark.

1674 - Anton van Leeuwenhoek improves on a simple microscope for viewing biological specimens.

1863 - Henry Clifton Sorby develops a metallurgical microscope to observe structure of meteorites.

1860s - Ernst Abbe discovers the Abbe sine condition, a breakthrough in microscope design, which until then was largely based on trial and error. The company of Carl Zeiss exploited this discovery and becomes the dominant microscope manufacturer of its era.

1931 - Ernst Ruska starts to build the first electron microscope. It is a Transmission electron microscope (TEM)

1936 - Erwin Wilhelm Müller invents the field emission microscope.

1938 - James Hillier builds another TEM

1951 - Erwin Wilhelm Müller invents the field ion microscope and is the first to see atoms.

1953 - Frits Zernike, professor of theoretical physics, receives the Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the phase contrast microscope.










http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapse


Synapse

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about synapses of the nervous system. For other uses, see Synapse (disambiguation).

In the nervous system, a synapse is a structure that permits a neuron (or nerve cell) to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another cell (neural or otherwise). Santiago Ramón y Cajal proposed that neurons are not continuous throughout the body, yet still communicate with each other, an idea known as the neuron doctrine.

The word "synapse" – from the Greek synapsis, meaning "conjunction", in turn from( ("together") and ("to fasten")) – was introduced in 1897 by English physiologist Michael Foster at the suggestion of English classical scholar Arthur Woollgar Verrall.

Synapses are essential to neuronal function: neurons are cells that are specialized to pass signals to individual target cells, and synapses are the means by which they do so. At a synapse, the plasma membrane of the signal-passing neuron (the presynaptic neuron) comes into close apposition with the membrane of the target (postsynaptic) cell. Both the presynaptic and postsynaptic sites contain extensive arrays of molecular machinery that link the two membranes together and carry out the signaling process. In many synapses, the presynaptic part is located on an axon, but some postsynaptic sites are located on a dendrite or soma. Astrocytes also exchange information with the synaptic neurons, responding to synaptic activity and, in turn, regulating neurotransmission.










http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_neuroscience


History of neuroscience

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From the ancient Egyptian mummifications to 18th century scientific research on "globules" and neurons, there is evidence of neuroscience practice throughout the early periods of history. The early civilizations lacked adequate means to obtain knowledge about the human brain. Their assumptions about the inner workings of the mind, therefore, were not accurate. Early views on the function of the brain regarded it to be a form of "cranial stuffing" of sorts. In ancient Egypt, from the late Middle Kingdom onwards, in preparation for mummification, the brain was regularly removed, for it was the heart that was assumed to be the seat of intelligence. According to Herodotus, during the first step of mummification: "The most perfect practice is to extract as much of the brain as possible with an iron hook, and what the hook cannot reach is mixed with drugs." Over the next five thousand years, this view came to be reversed; the brain is now known to be the seat of intelligence, although colloquial variations of the former remain as in "memorizing something by heart".


Early views

The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, written in the 17th century BC, contains the earliest recorded reference to the brain. The hieroglyph for brain, occurring eight times in this papyrus, describes the symptoms, diagnosis, and prognosis of two patients, wounded in the head, who had compound fractures of the skull. The assessments of the author (a battlefield surgeon) of the papyrus allude to ancient Egyptians having a vague recognition of the effects of head trauma. While the symptoms are well written and detailed, the absence of a medical precedent is apparent. The author of the passage notes that "the pulsations of the exposed brain and compared the surface of the brain to the rippling surface of copper slag (which indeed has a gyral-sulcal pattern). The laterality of injury was related to the laterality of symptom, and both aphasia ("he speaks not to thee") and seizures ("he shutters exceedingly") after head injury were described." Observations by ancient civilizations of the human brain suggest only a relative understanding of the basic mechanics and the importance of cranial security. Furthermore, considering the general consensus of medical practice pertaining to human anatomy was based on myths and superstition, the thoughts of the battlefield surgeon appear to be empirical and based on logical deduction and simple observation.

During the second half of the first millennium BC, the Ancient Greeks developed differing views on the function of the brain. However, due to the fact that Hippocratic doctors did not practice dissection, because the human body was considered sacred, Greek views of brain function were generally uninformed by anatomical study. It is said that it was the Pythagorean Alcmaeon of Croton (6th and 5th centuries BC) who first considered the brain to be the place where the mind was located. According to ancient authorities, "he believed the seat of sensations is in the brain. This contains the governing faculty. All the senses are connected in some way with the brain; consequently they are incapable of action if the brain is disturbed...the power of the brain to synthesize sensations makes it also the seat of thought: The storing up of perceptions gives memory and belief and when these are stabilized you get knowledge." In the 4th century BC Hippocrates, believed the brain to be the seat of intelligence (based, among others before him, on Alcmaeon's work). During the 4th century BC Aristotle thought that, while the heart was the seat of intelligence, the brain was a cooling mechanism for the blood. He reasoned that humans are more rational than the beasts because, among other reasons, they have a larger brain to cool their hot-bloodedness.










JOURNAL ARCHIVE: posted by H.V.O.M at 6:31 PM Tuesday, September 13, 2005


Maybe tomorrow.

Nothing today. Maybe I'll hear something tomorrow.



Epic poetry agrees with Tragedy in so far as it is an imitation in verse of characters of a higher type. They differ, in that Epic poetry admits but one kind of metre, and is narrative in form. They differ, again, in their length: for Tragedy endeavours, as far as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun, or but slightly to exceed this limit; whereas the Epic action has no limits of time.

The Poetics - Aristotle


[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 13 September 2005 excerpt ends]



- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 4:36 PM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Sunday 26 April 2015