"The brain’s true meaning is hidden in its microscope detail. Its fluffy mass is an intricately wired..."

“The brain’s true meaning is hidden in its microscope detail. Its fluffy mass is an intricately wired system of about a hundred billion nerve cells, each a few millionths of a meter wide and connected to other nerve cells by hundreds or thousands of endings. If we could shrink ourselves to the size of a bacterium and explore the brain’s interior on foot, as philosophers since Leibniz in 1713 have imagined doing, we might eventually succeed in mapping all the nerve cells and tracking all the electrical circuits. But we could never thereby understand the whole. Far more information is needed. We need to know what the electric patterns mean, as well as how the circuits were put together and, most puzzling of all, for what purpose.”

- Edward O. Wilson (via viperslang)