Abstract
An extreme view of the relation between psychology and brain anatomy, a view I would not have dared to advance if the subject of this Chapter had been humans rather than flies, is the following: a thorough analysis of behavior must result in a scheme that shows all regularities that are to be found between the sensory input and the motor output of the animal. This scheme is an abstract representation of the brain. If we are lucky, its structure can be identified with the structure of the fiber patterns within the brain that constitute the mechanism tested in the behavioral experiments. If we are not so lucky, the structure of the behavioral scheme may not be the same as that of the brain, but may still be equivalent to it, in the sense that both belong to a class of structures that perform the same function and therefore cannot be distinguished in the behavioral experiment. From this point of view, psychology (analysis of behavior) is a source of hypotheses on brain structure, a subsidiary branch of brain anatomy. Conversely, anatomy could be understood as a method of psychology, as the most direct means of understanding the structural complexity that constitutes the mind.
It has always seemed to me extreme presumptuousness on the part of those who want to make human ability the measure of what nature can and knows how to do, since, when one comes down to it, there is not one effect in nature, no matter how small, that even the most speculative minds can fully understand.
Galileo Galilei [7.4]
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Braitenberg, V. (1977). The Automatic Pilot of the Fly. In: On the Texture of Brains. Heidelberg Science Library. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-87702-5_7
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