Introduction: Knowledge Most Worth Having in the Decade of the Brain

Abstract

When President George Bush and the Congress of the United States designated the 1990s the Decade of the Brain, they not only recognized the tremendous advances being made in the neurosciences, but they also recognized that this new information speaks directly to a core question of our society: What does it mean to be human?A pluralistic society interested in the brain comes with its own goals, preconceptions, and values. The best way that our neuroscience can enlighten the most profound questions of what it means to be human is not to negate these goals, preconceptions, and values, but somehow to address them in light of unfolding knowledge.Neuroscience in the past twenty years has taken great strides toward helping us understand ourselves as linguistic beings. We have begun to explore new horizons of knowledge and potential therapy using transplants and grafts into the human brain. We are learning the nature and causes of severe depression and schizophrenia, which afflict a sizable proportion of this society. Such learning has implications for deeply held human values, and important transformations in our self-understanding are already resulting. For these reasons, and because of potential benefits to people close to us, we need good information and serious reflection on these topics.The Institute for Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS) has taken the measure of the neurosciences midway through the decade of the brain in the form of two conferences titled "Knowledge Most Worth Having in the Decade of the Brain." The first took place at the 1993 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the second comprised the 1994 IRAS Star Island conference. Zygoon is herein publishing versions of some of the papers presented at those conferences. The writers present conclusions from contemporary neuroscience that, when taken at their depth, may transform our understanding of what it H. Rodney Holmes is a research scientist at

A Religion for an Age of Science

“…The development of new brain scanning techniques has facilitated studies in neurophysiology and neuropsychology that are giving us modern evolutionary and developmental psychology and thus the evolution of mind, in both its emotional and its rational aspects-the evolution of love and logic. And new computer simulation and analytical techniques promise to give us correspondingly modern econometrics, sociology, and political science (see Hawking 1988;Chaisson [1981Chaisson [ ] 1989Swimme and Berry [1992] 1994; de Duve 1995;Dennett 1996;Holmes 1996;Ashbrook 1997;Barlow 1997;Deacon 1997;Goodenough 1998;Rue 2000. ) These modern scientific developments have given us powerful medical, agricultural, manufacturing, transportation, and communication technologies that have had revolutionary effects on our physical, economic, and social worlds.…”