NEUROSCIENCE: THE QUEEN OF THE (NATURAL) SCIENCES

There are two reasons for starting with a brief sketch of some of the central ideas of neuroscience. First, I want to make clear that what I am attacking is not science but scientism: the mistaken belief that the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology and their derivatives) can or will give a complete description and even explanation of everything, including human life. The body of knowledge and understanding, and the panoply of techniques, that go under the name “neuroscience” are some of the greatest intellectual achievements of mankind. Every element is a double triumph: over the opacity of nature; and over the presuppositions with which we approach our own bodies and those of the other living creatures whose bodies we use to cast light on our own. Neuroscience is the queen of the natural sciences. As someone who has contributed in a minor way to this discipline, adding my ant's load to the ant-heap, with some 200 or more scientific papers that have filled in one or two lacunae, but have reported no spectacular breakthroughs, I have a very clear idea of the scale of this achievement.

Second, it will be difficult to follow the arguments against neurosci-entism without an inkling of the fundamental concepts of neuroscience. What follows, addressed primarily to readers who are not familiar with neuroscience, is the barest outline of a few key notions, and certainly not a history of the subject, which is immensely complex.