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1. bs2 (bsmall2@mstdn.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 12-Jun-2024 03:52:23 UTC bs2

   > The invention of hydraulic engineering in the 3rd century BCE led to the popularity of a hydraulic model of human intelligence, the idea that the flow of different fluids in the body – the ‘humours’ – accounted for both our physical and mental functioning. The hydraulic metaphor persisted for more than 1,600 years, handicapping medical practice all the while.

   #HydraulicBrain #StalledMedicalPractice #MedicalMetaphors

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   • bs2 (bsmall2@mstdn.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 12-Jun-2024 03:52:27 UTC bs2

     in reply to

     > By the 1500s, automata powered by springs and gears had been devised, eventually inspiring leading thinkers such as René Descartes to assert that humans are complex machines. In the 1600s, the British philosopher Thomas Hobbes suggested that thinking arose from small mechanical motions in the brain.

     #MechanicalBrain #MachineBrain #InRecentTechImage #AutomataBrain

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   • bs2 (bsmall2@mstdn.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 12-Jun-2024 03:52:28 UTC bs2

     in reply to

     > By the 1700s, discoveries about electricity and chemistry led to new theories of human intelligence – again, largely metaphorical in nature. In the mid-1800s, inspired by recent advances in communications, the German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz compared the brain to a telegraph.

     #ElectricBrain #ChemicalBrain #TelegraphBrain

   • bs2 (bsmall2@mstdn.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 12-Jun-2024 03:52:28 UTC bs2

     in reply to

     > Our shoddy thinking about the brain has deep historical roots, but the invention of computers in the 1940s got us especially confused. For more than half a century now, psychologists, linguists, neuroscientists and other experts on human behaviour have been asserting that the human brain works like a computer.

     I.A.Richards recommended using a metaphor for as long as its useful then moving on, the correspondence only for a certain time and area I guess...

     #ComputerBrain #MetaphorControl

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