“The purpose of the nervous system is to organize chaos.”
“The combination of the Main brain with its central nervous system, and the ancient Animal Brain with its somatic, enteric nervous system in the inner body—in the gut—and the constant dialog between them provides a self-correcting feedback system, which regulates the behavioral qualities of the organism when consciously cultivated—preferably in early youth.”
“With the arrival of electric technology, man has extended, or set outside himself, a live model of the central nervous system itself. To the degree that this is so, it is a development that suggests a desperate suicidal autoamputation, as if the central nervous system could no longer depend on the physical organs to be protective buffers against the slings and arrows of outrageous mechanism. ”
“Cancer was not disorganized chromosomal chaos. It was organized chromosomal chaos”
“The worms were beautifully drawn, with their nervous systems and reproductive organs shaded in different colors of highlighter, but the artist had also given them big goofy smiling faces. Grotesque but lovable in a cross-eyed way.”
“(...) to think that worms and slugs are neurologically simple is another blunder of contemporary, scientifically uninformed philosophy. To take as an example the current “superstar” nematode worm --superstar, because it was the first multicellular organism to have its genome completely sequenced, by 1998, and is widely used as a model organism-- the 1 mm long Caenorhabditis elegans, it exhibits a nervous system of 302 neurons and a sensorimotor system with very complex connectivity patterns.”