“The basic idea is that cognitive activities are ultimately just activities of the nervous system; and if one wants to understand the activities of the nervous system, then the best way to gain that understanding is to examine the nervous system itself.”

— Paul Churchland

Source: Matter and Consciousness, 1984/1988/2013, p. 96; As cited in: Peter Zachar (2000) Psychological Concepts and Biological Psychiatry. p. 132

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Paul Churchland 11

Canadian philosopher 1942

George Alec Effinger book When Gravity Fails

I laughed. “About as much as any hustler from the Budayeen who can barely read and write his name. I know that the brain is in the head, I’ve heard that it’s a bad idea to let some thug spill it on the sidewalk. Beyond that, I don’t know much.” I did, truthfully, know some more, but I always hold something in reserve. It’s a good policy to be a little quicker, a little stronger, and a little smarter than everybody thinks you are.
Source: When Gravity Fails (1986), Chapter 12 (p. 160).

“The earth has grown a nervous system, and it's us.”

Daniel Dennett (1942) American philosopher

The Genius of Charles Darwin (television, 2008)

“All art is probably erotic in its ultimate character, but painting more than anything else is a purely nervous erotic activity.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

"Some Notes on Caravaggio" (Nimbus 1956).

“They damaged his nervous system with a wartime Russian mycotoxin.”

William Gibson book Neuromancer

Neuromancer (1984)
Context: They damaged his nervous system with a wartime Russian mycotoxin. Strapped to a bed in a Memphis hotel, his talent burning out micron by micron, he hallucinated for thirty hours. The damage was minute, subtle, and utterly effective. For Case, who'd lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall.

“People are locking their doors and switching off their nervous systems.”

J. G. Ballard book Cocaine Nights

"Bobby Crawford"
Cocaine Nights (1996)
Context: Town-scapes are changing. The open-plan city belongs in the past — no more ramblas, no more pedestrian precincts, no more left banks and Latin quarters. We're moving into the age of security grilles and defensible space. As for living, our surveillance cameras can do that for us. People are locking their doors and switching off their nervous systems.

“Never listen to newscasts. Saves wear and tear on the nervous system.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Red Planet

Source: Red Planet (1949), Chapter 2, “South Colony, Mars”, p. 17

“My main theme is the extension of the nervous system in the electric age”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Letter to Robert Fulford, 1964. Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p. 300
1960s
Context: My main theme is the extension of the nervous system in the electric age, and thus, the complete break with five thousand years of mechanical technology. This I state over and over again. I do not say whether it is a good or bad thing. To do so would be meaningless and arrogant.

“I'm perhaps best known for three different kinds of work, which seem disparate to many people but to me run as a unified theme. These are my contributions in conceiving the notion of autopoiesis — self-production — for cellular organization, the enactive view of the nervous system and cognition, and a revising of current ideas about the immune system.”

Francisco Varela (1946–2001) Chilean biologist

The Emergent Self (1995)

“In terms of the Internet, it's like humanity acquiring a collective nervous system. Whereas previously we were more like a… collection of cells that communicated by diffusion. With the advent of the Internet, it was suddenly like we got a nervous system. It's a hugely impactful thing.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

[Mann, Adam, Video: Wired’s Interview with SpaceX’s Elon Musk, http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/elon-musk-hangout/, 18 August 2012, Wired, 26 April 2012]

“Any attempt to reduce the complex properties of biological organisms or of nervous systems or of human brains to simple physical and chemical systems is foolish.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1970s, Ecodynamics: A New Theory Of Societal Evolution, 1978, p. 20

“The basic idea is that cognitive activities are ultimately just activities of the nervous system; and if one wants to understand the activities of the nervous system, then the best way to gain that understanding is to examine the nervous system itself.”

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Paul Churchland 11

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