While Broca's and Wernicke's areas the main regions associated with speech and language are typically located in the left hemisphere, other critical aspects of language including our abilities to work with metaphor, prosody, and tone probably derive from the right hemisphere's special capabilities. In this way, Trimble draws a distinction between the in the less specific, softer and ethereal aspects of language, the "voice of God", and the more perfunctory aspects of communication derived from the left hemisphere, the "voice of man".
The thought is that since the left hemisphere aspects of language are motivated by the specific, defined and logical requirements of communication, they can be regarded as "coming from within" i. On the other hand, the aspects of language that come from the right hemisphere may appear to be "derived from without" - the inspiration for poetry being one such example.
In making these observations Trimble is not attempting to either prove or disprove the existence of God, simply to explore the boundaries between the disciplines of neurology and psychology using one of the most complex subjects possible. The scope of the book is vast and it is certainly not a "light read".
But for anyone interested in the subject of the book or even in the general area of the evolution of the brain, Trimble provides an insightful guide to an extremely complex subject. For more information on this subject read the article " God in the Brain ". All rights reserved. No part of this site may be reproduced without prior written permission.
Article Archive. Mind Matters. The Brain Blog. Recommended Reading. Cooper Associate Editor: D. Hutchinson pages written by 26 contributors pages of text Four pages of epigrams poems by Plato 61 pages of index Hatckett Publishing Company, Inc. But Plato wrote more. He wrote essays on the law see below , and social contract.
What a feast! Reading the collected work in proper sequence has been a joy. It has taken me a couple of years to complete the volume, make notes and now offer a review. It has been like climbing a tall mountain one step at a time.
Each of the 35 dialogues is written by a contributor, a luminary of Socratic and Platonic scholarship, among them G. The Republic , pages long, is essentially a discourse on Justice. The book starts by asserting that Socrates is the origin of western speculation. He never gave long speeches to be recorded. He taught through dialectics and not rhetoric. All his sayings and writings come through Plato, and possibly another contemporary, Xenophon.
The work asserts that Socrates was a super-human.
There is no question that Plato idealized Socrates. Plato portrayed Socrates as the intellectual life of Athens and the Athenians. The work elucidates that Socrates liked precision, reproducibility and reliance on certainty, thus relying heavily on Pythagoras and Mathematic model of thinking and conceptual architecture of Pythagorean approach to teaching. In the days of Socrates, there were monastic math communities devoted to numerology, re-incarnation and Vedic philosophy.
In this provocative study, Michael R. Trimble, M.D., tackles the interrelationship between brain function, language, art―especially music and poetry―and. In this provocative study, Michael R. Trimble, M.D., tackles the interrelationship between brain function, language, art-especially music and poetry-and religion.
Also, he was influenced by Egyptian geometry and mathematics done in Alexandria. However, his concern was not like the pre-Socratic philosophers such as Anaximander, Anaximones, Thales and Pythagoras himself, to concentrate on materials, atoms, science and things. Socrates was concerned about political and moral issues. Socrates was probably the first person with a passion to bridge the gap between material science, morality, and what we now call the humanities and the arts.
While Plato was writing about his mentor, one must realize that he was very angry with Athens because Athens killed Socrates. Plato thinks that Athenians are corrupt and hopeless. He thought they lost the Peloponnesian wars because of their weak moral attitude. They allowed Sicilian invasion which was an absolute disaster to Athens. These provoke the reader in further thinking and questioning, producing more dialogues. Credo, Apology and Ion are good examples of aporitic dialogue. The dialogues reveal that Socrates directly attacked the sophists- the rhetoricians who made a living out of persuading people- regardless of whether their goals were right or wrong.
Socrates was a chronic irritant to sophists.
It was the sophists who in unison accused Socrates of corrupting the youth of Athens, a charge that led to his condemnation and death. The Republic deals with the question of justice and virtue, emphasizing the virtues of morality and politics. The Republic also examines the issues of ethics, ontology, epistemology, logic and the theory of art. There are many other subjects discussed in Republic , among them drama, philosophy, sex, death, and money, all in a sublime, beautiful and poetic form.
To realize that Republic was written some years ago is most astonishing. There was a remarkable phenomenon in pre-Socratic era, a small Greek colony, Elia, in Italy, around BC, produced a remarkable group of philosophers among them Zeno of Elia, Mellissus Of Samos and Xenophane not to be mistaken for Xenophan who was a contemporary of Socrates and Plato who, along with Pythagoras had profound influence on Socrates, his teaching, his method of inquiry and his devotion to daemon of knowledge and virtue.
A good bit of this book is devoted to these pre-Socratic philosophers. They fail. There is a gripping and autobiographical account, Plato saying that he wanted to be a tragic poet like Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Homer. At the time they were the best sources of education in Greece. There are many pearls in the dialogues. The one Phoebus which is devoted to the understanding of love is magisterial reading and Symposium in its entirety is another symphonic poem on love.
In reading Plato, I have learned not to get so enchanted by the design of the appointments and furnishing inside of the house, but to take a helicopter ride and view the landscape of Platonic verbal beauty. Throughout the years of reading and seriously studying Socrates, I have learned that he was not about gaining victory with his interlocutors.
He was not after money, and never made a dime form his teaching pursuit.
Socrates told the truth and did not accept money.