The brain evolves sensation as "an iron rod, when hammered, evolves heat"
— Huxley, Thomas H. (1825-1895)
Date
1874
Metaphor
The brain evolves sensation as "an iron rod, when hammered, evolves heat"
Metaphor in Context
It is experimentally demonstrable–any one who cares to run a pin into himself may perform a sufficient demonstration of the fact–that a mode of motion of the nervous system is the immediate antecedent of a state of consciousness. All but the adherents of "Occasionalism," or of the doctrine of "Pre-established Harmony" (if any such now exist), must admit that we have as much reason for regarding the mode of motion of the nervous system as the cause of the state of consciousness, as we have for regarding any event as the cause of another. How the one phenomenon causes the other we know, as much or as little, as in any other case of causation; but we have as much right to believe that the sensation is an effect of the molecular change, as we have to believe that motion is an effect of impact; and there is as much propriety in saying that the brain evolves sensation, as there is in saying that an iron rod, when hammered, evolves heat. (p. 238-9)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Originally published in Nature 10 (1874): 362-66. The essay also appears in Huxley's Collected Essays: pp. 199-250. Text available from "The Huxley File" <http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE1/AnAuto.html>.
Date of Entry
12/03/2003
