The inexplicable loneliness we sometimes feel might be due to the fact that verbal discourse fails to capture the complexity of our actual neurological states. Paul Churchland, for example, suggests that the two hemispheres of our brains communicate with a much more intricate and intimate “language” than we do with each other. On the other hand, some philosophers claim that language doesn’t gain its meaning from our internal experience at
When I was a kid, my father gave me the “don’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes” speech. I imagined donning different-sized shoes of myriad colors, tripping over my feet, and struggling to walk an entire mile in shoes either too big or too small for me. Just as we can try on others’ shoes, we can slip out of our own skins in a way by seeing others’
The scientific revolution spawned by The Origin of Species is now morphing in ways Charles Darwin himself might not have expected, as the principles of adaptation and natural selection are manifesting themselves in fields far removed from biology. Most notably, when applied to human thought, culture, and institutions, the theory of evolution becomes the discipline of memetics. A meme is a concept adept at replicating itself within human brains and influencing human behavior. Memes, like genes, can
