“The difference between mind and brain is that brain deals only with memorized, subjective, special-case experiences and objective experiments, while mind extracts and employs the generalized principles and integrates and interrelates their effective employment.”

1960s, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963)
Context: The difference between mind and brain is that brain deals only with memorized, subjective, special-case experiences and objective experiments, while mind extracts and employs the generalized principles and integrates and interrelates their effective employment. Brain deals exclusively with the physical, and mind exclusively with the metaphysical.

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American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inv… 1895–1983

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Buckminster Fuller photo

“Our brains deal exclusively with special-case experiences.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

1960s, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963)
Context: Our brains deal exclusively with special-case experiences. Only our minds are able to discover the generalized principles operating without exception in each and every special-experience case which if detected and mastered will give knowledgeable advantage in all instances.

Buckminster Fuller photo
Roger Wolcott Sperry photo
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“The eternal is omniembracing and permeative; and the temporal is linear. This opens up a very high order of generalizations of generalizations. The truth could not be more omni-important, although it is often manifestly operative only as a linear identification of a special-case experience on a specialized subject.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

1005.52 http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s10/p0520.html#1005.50
1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), "Synergy" onwards

Roger Wolcott Sperry photo

“I have never been entirely satisfied with the materialistic or behavioristic thesis that a complete explanation of brain function is possible in purely objective terms with no reference whatever to subjective experience”

Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913–1994) American neuroscientist

Discussion in The first Conference on The Central Nervous System and Behavior (1958), p. 420 - 421, as quoted in the obituary at the National Academies Press http://www.nap.edu/html/biomems/rsperry.html
Context: I have never been entirely satisfied with the materialistic or behavioristic thesis that a complete explanation of brain function is possible in purely objective terms with no reference whatever to subjective experience; i. e., that in scientific analysis we can confidently and advantageously disregard the subjective properties of the brain process. I do not mean we should abandon the objective approach or repeat the errors of the earlier introspective era. It is just that I find it difficult to believe that the sensations and other subjective experiences per se serve no function, have no operational value and no place in our working models of the brain.

James Randi photo

“Sir, there is a distinct difference between having an open mind and having a hole in your head from which your brain leaks out.”

James Randi (1928) Canadian-American stage magician and scientific skeptic

Swift, 30 December 2005,. "McGill University Featuring Pseudoscience" http://web.archive.org/web/20110108172522/http://www.randi.org/jr/200512/123005museum.html#i8
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/living/17126222.htm April 24, 2007.

Charles Bukowski photo

“the area dividing the brain and the soul
is affected in many ways by
experience –
some lose all mind and become soul:
insane.
some lose all soul and become mind:
intellectual.
some lose both and become:
accepted.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Variant: The area dividing the brain and the soul
Is affected in many ways by experience --
Some lose all mind and become soul:
insane.
Some lose all soul and become mind:
intellectual.
Some lose both and become:
accepted.
Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

“The systematic principle is based upon the hypothesis that there is a structure in the real world that transcends the distinctions of subjective and objective experience.”

John G. Bennett (1897–1974) British mathematician and author

J.G. Bennett (1963) " Geo-physics and Human History: New Light on Plato's Atlantis and the Exodus http://www.systematics.org/journal/vol1-2/geophysics/systematics-vol1-no2-127-156.htm." Systematics vol 1, no 2 (1963): p. 127–156.

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