The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. ―Oscar Wilde

A Roman brick from Cherchell, Algeria with a 2000-year-old imprint of a human hand.

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The brain is not the mind, the mind inhabits the brain. Like a ghost in a machine, some say. Mind is the comforting mirage of the physical brain. An experience, not an entity.

Another way to think of mind may be as St. Augustine thought of God, as an emanation that is not located in one place, or one form, but exists throughout the universe. An essence, not just a substance.

And, of course, the mind is not located only in the brain. The mind reflects what the body senses and feels, it is influenced by a caravan of hormones and enzymes.


—Diane Ackerman
An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

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What is the ultimate truth about ourselves? 

Various answers suggest themselves. We are a bit of stellar matter gone wrong. We are physical machinery —puppets that strut and talk and laugh and die as the hand of time pulls the strings beneath. 

But there is one elementary inescapable answer.

We are that which asks the question.


—Sir Arthur Eddington

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