The Enlightened Brain

The Enlightened Brain: Can neuroscience illuminate our quest for the good life?

How can we be happy? How can we be better people? For thousands of years, human beings have asked what makes a good life. Wise men and women have drawn on their understandings of human nature to chart a path to a good life and a healthy society.

Our understanding of human nature is set to shift in the 21st century, as research uncovers more about the development and the moment-by-moment dynamics of normal human brain function. How will that research change our thinking about how to live well and build a healthy society?

Dr. Mark Reimers returns to West Hill as our special guest speaker.

Click here to watch the gathering

First Reading

How can a three-pound mass of jelly that you can hold in your palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos? 

Especially awe-inspiring is the fact that any single brain, including yours, is made up of atoms that were forged in the hearts of countless, far-flung stars billions of years ago. These particles drifted for eons and light-years until gravity and change brought them together here, now. These atoms now form a conglomerate- your brain- that can not only ponder the very stars that gave it birth but can also think about its own ability to think, and wonder about its own ability to wonder.  - V.S. Ramachandran, from “The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human”

Second 

To put the world in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right. 

- Confucius 

Third

The universe is not only queerer than we suppose,  but queerer than we can suppose.  - Biologist J.B.S Haldane, from his essay titled “Possible Worlds"

Fourth

It is essential to understand our brains in some detail if we are to assess correctly our place in this vast and complicated universe we see all around us. - Francis Crick (co-discoverer of the double helix) from his book “What Mad Pursuit”