CONCEPTUAL THOUGHT I75 



larly as it would apply to my assumption that one may read 

 progress and purpose into the evolutionary record of rising 

 levels of awareness and intelligence. The discovery that 

 conscious voluntary actions and the brain processes through 

 which they operate function by way of a negative feed-back 

 mechanism (as in the picking up of the pencil) led Northrop 

 to the conclusion that cybernetics has found a "mechanism 

 for purpose." As he sees it, a teleological or goal-directed 

 system (as in the human nervous system) can be a system 

 mechanically behaving as though controlled by a negative 

 feed-back over the goal. Thus, the time-worn argument be- 

 tween the "mechanists" and the "teleologists" (determinism 

 versus free choice) is, according to Northrop, a problem 

 that is wrongly stated. He feels that both views are correct. 

 It is all a matter of semantics as to which language one 

 wishes to use in expressing the facts: the language of physics 

 or the language of consciousness. 



Although quite different from the human brain, the elec- 

 tronic computing machine with its permanent card and tape 

 memory can perform many brain functions, and doubtless 

 there are some common principles in these two kinds of op- 

 erations. Mental acts are vital functions. A living brain en- 

 gaged in thinking undergoes changes in electrical potentials 

 that can be localized and accurately measured. "Brain waves" 

 can be recorded by the oscillograph. Mental work is similar 

 in its effects to that of any other part of the body. Mind is 

 body specialized to a very high degree in the activities we 

 call mental, just as muscle is body specialized to a very high 

 degree for physical movement (see Chap. 9). Mental work 

 is body work and the body tires when we think. Mind is not 

 outside the body. It is "minding" body that does mental 

 work. There is also, as has been repeatedly emphasized, the 

 reasonable certainty that all the distinctively human mental 

 functions, even conceptual processes, appear out of pre-ex- 

 isting physiological functions in the course of personal and 

 evolutionary development. 



