Alkmaion's discovery that brain creates mind: a revolution in human knowledge comparable to that of Copernicus and of Darwin.
Without special examination the brain offers no clue that it is the organ of the mind. From the dawn of time man thus either ignored the problem as to the source of thought, or attributed it to a variety of anatomical structures, usually the heart. The brain held no place in such intuitions, and in most languages it is analogized to bone marrow. Furthermore, nothing in early medical systems claimed any intellectual capacity for the brain; and the Egyptians, so fastidious in care for their afterlife, heedlessly discarded the brain in funerary practice. It was thus a unique event in world history when Alkmaion of Kroton (Alcmaeon, ca. 500 bc), based on anatomical evidence, proposed that the brain was essential for perception. Although no writings of Alkmaion survived, it was probably via a fortuitous linkage that his idea of the mental primacy of the brain was transmitted to, and preserved within, the teachings of the Hippocratic school. Nothing, of course, was secure as to mechanism, two millennia unfolding until the search for mind passed from the ventricles to the cerebral cortex. Nonetheless, Alkmaion was the beginning, and the ensuing understanding that he initiated is still transforming humanity's perception of the natural world, and their place within it.
Doty
Robert W
RW
Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, 601 Crittenden, Rochester, NY 14642, USA. robert_doty@urmc.rochester.edu
D000046:Academic Medical Centers / Q000266:history; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D006115:Greece; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049690:History, Ancient; D049691:History, Medieval; D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge; D008606:Mental Processes / Q000502:physiology*; D009488:Neurosciences / Q000266:history