How things work

By Chris Trout | September 21, 2008

An article in last week's issue of Newsweek called "Sad Brain, Happy Brain" explores the mind-body connection. What a funny debate this is! It is so symbolic of our need to fit everything into our current framework of how things work, and our struggle to entertain the idea that much of what we observe has its roots in phenomenon that we can't comprehend… yet. We did it before we discovered the earth orbited the sun, that atoms existed, that atoms were not, in fact the smallest particle, that the smallest particles are not particles at all, and on and on.  The "mind-body connection" begs the question of non-physical phenomenon. It begs the question "Who is the observer?"  I wonder what could happen if researchers took a deep breath and simply assumed that each thing they observe may be partially influenced by phenomena they don't yet understand. I wonder what would happen if researchers assumed that everything is profoundly inter-connected and that the important question may not be how, but to what end.