![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.blog-lecerveau.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Alan-Jasanoff.jpg\" "\\"Alan")
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Some of you may be aware of the distinction, in Cartesian radical dualism, between the extended thing and the thinking thing, otherwise known as the body and the mind. A similar but perhaps more insidious distinction is made between the brain and the rest of the body. Likewise, the distinction between the individual and the rest of his or her environment is still taken as self-evident. In all three cases, tradition and \u201cbasic common sense\u201d naturally lead us to think of the two terms in each dichotomy as clearly separate things. But in all three cases, according to today\u2019s cognitive science, we are quite simply wrong.<\/p>\n
In the June 2018 episode of the podcast Brain Science<\/em>, Ginger Campbell talks with Alan Jasanoff<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/strong> about his book The Biological Mind: How Brain, Body, and Environment Collaborate to Make Us Who We Are<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/strong>. Jasanoff takes issue with what he describes as a certain \u201cmystique of the brain\u201d\u2014our tendency to overemphasize the brain as a \u201csubject\u201d, as it it had its own life disconnected from the organism in which it is housed. Jasanoff reminds us that, on the contrary, the brain is part of this body that is subject to the biological imperative to stay alive<\/span><\/a><\/span>, to postpone for as long as possible the victory of entropy, the second law of thermodynamics\u2014in short, death.<\/p>\n As Jasanoff sees it, if some cells in our bodies have become specialized into neurons that can communicate rapidly<\/span><\/a><\/span> by means of nerve impulses<\/span><\/a><\/span>, the basic reason they have done so is to find the resources in the outside world that are necessary for the body\u2019s survival. Because animals, unlike plants, cannot use photosynthesis to convert solar energy directly into their bodies\u2019 structural components, they have instead developed nervous systems that let them perceive the world and move around in it to find food (and partners with whom to reproduce). The growth in brain size<\/span><\/a><\/span> of vertebrates over the course of evolution, resulting in the human brain, is thus indissociable from this imperative to maintain our homeostasis\u2014the biological equilibrium of our internal environment.<\/p>\n