Berthoz - The vicarious brain, creator of worlds

Only the hand that erases. This very strong, very Latin verb conjures up the rasura, the gesture that erases and liberates, so that a new text, a new story may start, so that the hand should be free to create, without having to wrestle with the scribbles in the margins, so that this whiteness should be a new beginning. This demanding radicality in search of an absolute lies in wait for us, lies in wait for you, in each line of the book: Those looking for adventure will find itin proportion to their courage.

CARLO OSSOLA

This book urges us to rediscover the freedom to create using the incredible wealth we all have available to us: that of our brain, our body, and the broad knowledge that is more easily accessible today than ever before. I suggest that vicariancethe substitution of one process for another, but leading to the same goalis one of the fundamental mechanisms of life. Vicariance gives living organisms a powerful capacity to create, innovate, and interact with flexibility, tolerance, and generosity. Vicariance is also the key to the remarkable human faculty for creating imaginary worlds. These are the worlds that individuals invent during the course of everyday life and that allow them to transform their desires and beliefs at will. They are also the worlds that the imagination creates in novels and fiction, as well as those to which we have access thanks to modern imaging technologies and so-called virtual communities, both fascinating and disturbing, into which we can teleport by developing avatars of ourselves. Finally, these are the worlds we know as utopias.

Modern society is in the throes of massive changes. One extreme is pitted against another in confrontations whose outcome is uncertain. In this combat, the amazing diversity of cultures and individuals has been flattened by the need to standardize outcomes and behavior. For example, economists now represent the human being by equations, favoring financial cost over individual creativity. They have stifled pride in resourcefulness through a multitude of production constraints (barbarously referred to as process).

This work is of a piece with my previous books, The Brains Sense of Movement, Emotion and Reason, and Simplexity. For this reason, you will find that it refers to some ideas and themes that I have already discussed. But here you will find them in a new and, I hope, stimulating light. The painters of the Renaissance generally chose familiar material for their subjects, but innovating each time; in the same way, the thoughts of adults often echo those of children. The development of the brain is, in fact, an ascending spiral, each step giving the impression of going backward, but at a more developed level. One could also reverse the spiral and say that every new treatment of a question in turn makes it possible to delve more deeply into it and to shed new light on it. In any event, that is the challenge that I hope to meet. In Simplexity, I sought to show how greater complexity (elegance) can lead to simpler solutions to complex problems. In the present volume, I propose that vicariance provides new solutions by substituting one solution for another to solve a given problem, or by using the solution to one problem to solve another problem. These vicarious transfers make it possible to reach the same objective.

I also refer to (and cite where possible) documents I consulted here and there, including on the Webpublished papers, personal communications, and so forth. Some work is directly quoted, some paraphrased. I do not mean to suggest that these theories and findings are definitive. The mathematician Henri Poincar said of Euclidean geometry: It is not the truest, but it is the most convenient. Similarly, the research and ideas presented here are the most useful for illustrating and supporting the books basic theses. Please forgive their variety, their eclecticism, and their incompleteness. If the unity of the ideas is not readily apparent, the fault is mine. Since I am a physiologist, I describe the neural basis of diverse forms of vicariance without claiming that they are basic in the ontological sense, that is, the very foundation of lived experience. The partial knowledge that we are able to gain regarding the functioning and cerebral workings of behavior must still be considered in the context of individual experience. This is why I sometimes make excursions into the domains of literature, art, and even anthropology.