The Enchanted Loom (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: n/a
- First Published: 1991
- Type of Work: History and science
- Time of Work: Antiquity to 1990
- Principal Characters: Paul Broca, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, René Descartes, Franz Joseph Gall, Camillo Golgi
- Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, History, Science and technology
- Subjects: Culture, Philosophy or philosophers, Twentieth century, Nineteenth century, Science or scientists, Social life, 1990’s, Computers, Research, Brain
In 1940, the English physiologist Sir Charles Sharrington likened the awakening human brain to an “enchanted loom,” and he poetically proclaimed that the rising pattern of innumerable points of electrochemical light signaling our daily coming to consciousness was “as if the Milky Way entered upon some cosmic dance.” Over the centuries a considerable number of investigators have similarly fallen under the spell of the brain, eager to penetrate the mysteries of mind and matter and perhaps to join the rhythm of the dance, or simply to understand its processes in order to intervene...
[The entire page is 2019 words long]
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