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The Cartesian view on the soul or the “I” as a master drive is still quite popular. The problem with the idea of the “ghost in the machine” or a Homunculus governing the brain is; who is then governing Homunculus? On the other hand—the more modern scientific, deterministic, reductionistic view on the brain and the soul as a computer the wiring of which is determined by the genes can also be questioned. The brain is no computer, it is a djungle and somewhere in this djungle there is a soul writes the Nobel prize laureate Gerald Edelman in his new book: Bright Air, Brilliant Fire. On the Matter of Mind. The genetic code does not provide a specific wiring diagram for the construction of the brain. We have only 30,000 genomes to construct the brain, but more than one hundred billion neurons, each one with thousands of synapses.
The brain develops by a neuronal darwinism, i.e. those synapses which are most active (“the firing rule”) survive, while the others disappear. In this way the brain can be formed by sensory stimulation and positive impressions rather than by genetic determinism.
The brain is to a large extent a self-organizing system. The neurons migrate from the brain ventricles up to the cortex along the glia. They adhere to other molecules by special adhesion molecules. Genes are turned on and turned off. Up to 70% of the neurons do not survive the competition and die already before birth.
Edelman presents his theory of neuronal group selection (TNGS). It consists of three tenets:
The first is that dynamic primary processes lead to the formation of the neuroanatomy. This anatomy possesses enormous variation due “to the dynamic regulation of the adhesion molecules, the stochastic fluctuation of cell movement, cell process extention and cell death during development”. The entire process is a selectional one based on topobiological competition. The genetic code does not provide the programme for this repertoire, rather it imposes