182 Self and the Phenomenon of Life
b2726 Self and the Phenomenon of Life: A Biologist Examines Life from Molecules to Humanity “9x6”The focus of attention was later shifted to the brain when it was
realized that the brain is responsible for all mental functions. In the sev-
enteenth century, Descartes maintained the brain as the organ of the
mind but put it under the control of the soul. In this dualistic view, the
physical body, which includes the brain and the heart, is nothing but a
machine, driven into motion by a spirit sitting comfortably in the center
of the brain, in a small structure called the pineal gland. The pineal is
unique among brain structures in that it occurs singly and is in the mid-
line on the top of the midbrain, protected on both sides by the two large
cerebral hemispheres.^3 Descartes regarded the pineal as the “driver’s
seat,” a place where mind (soul) and matter (body) interact and negoti-
ate. Emotion, like cognitive function, in Descartes’ view, is the business
of the soul.
As human biology and psychology progressed, scientists tried to
work out the mechanism of mind without having to resort to a non-
physical soul. By the late nineteenth century, the cognitive function of
the cerebral cortex was known, and it was widely believed that the emo-
tions are the results of cerebral activity. William James, a noted American
psychologist, stunned the world by going against the prevailing tide. He
proclaimed that emotion is nothing but the sensory experience of bodily
changes (heartbeat, blood pressure, respiration rate, muscular tension,
sweating, crying, etc.) in response to exciting stimuli, thus placing the
site of emotion back in the periphery, away from the brain. In James’
oft-quoted statement, “If we fancy some strong emotion, and then try to
abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symp-
toms, we find we have nothing left behind, no ‘mind-stuff’ out of which
the emotion can be constituted, and that a cold and neutral state of intel-
lectual perception is all that remains.”^4
James made a seminal contribution to psychology by stripping off
the spiritual nature of emotion and planting it on the solid ground of
matter — the body. Simultaneously with Carl Lange of Denmark, James
suggested that an emotion-arousing stimulus is first received by the sen-
sory cortex (without emotion or feeling), then channeled to the periphery