Our sense organs 45

municate, to evaluate, and to be creative and
inventive.
Between the brain stem and the cortex are various
structures which play a major part in the
regulation of such things as body temperature,
blood pressure, pulse rate, blood sugar and electrolyte
levels, among others. The hypothalamus
and the pituitary gland play an important role in
this system. The former can be regarded as the
“brain” of the brain. The size of a pea and weighing
only about four grams, it is the most complex
and amazing part of the brain. It controls eating,
drinking, sleeping, alertness, body temperature,
the equilibrium of many physiological processes,
pulse rate, hormones, and sexuality. It also controls
the most important gland in the brain,
namely the pituitary gland, by means of a combination
of electrical and chemical messages. The
pituitary in turn controls many body functions
through hormones, which are chemical substances
carried by the blood to specific target
cells. The targets of the pituitary’s hormones are
often other hormone-secreting glands (e.g. the
thyroid and adrenal glands). The pituitary acts
somewhat like a hormone symphony conductor,
regulating the ’instruments’ which regulate other
functions.
Information storage: At the cellular level, there
are basically two kinds of information storage.
One type is the unimaginably large quantity of
genetic information contained in the DNA molecules
of all cells. The second kind of storage
takes place in the brain, which also involves an
enormous amount of information. In the first of
these, the amount of (genetic) information is
fixed at conception. The second type occurs
through experience and learning. Each of us
acquires an ever-increasing amount of mentally
stored information throughout our lifetime.
Every person’s uniqueness is not least to do with
their mind, in which the memories, events and
experiences of a lifetime are stored. Our ability to
learn, which varies between individuals, obviously
depends on properties of the complex cerebral
network. These properties themselves are
undoubtedly determined to a great extent by
our genes.
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The entire vocabulary of all languages we have
mastered, as well as their complete grammatical
structures, are stored in our brain, enabling us to
freely and flexibly use language. The storage of
visual images is unique in the way these memories
may be recalled clearly at any time. An
important additional aspect of that which makes
us human is our ability to imagine and to fantasise,
both of which somehow involve the brain.
Memory/Mind: Memory is the ability to store
and recall mental information. Without this processing
ability, we could neither see, nor hear, nor
think. We would not be able to express our feelings
in language, nor would we be aware of our
personal identity. We would be intellectually dead
biological machines.
An adult knows the meaning of between 20,000
and 100,000 words, which could be appreciably
more if he/she has some knowledge of foreign
languages. Living in society requires familiarity
with many common customs – how to negotiate
city traffic, how to buy and sell, how to use a
telephone, and how to check in at a hotel. In
addition, we have at our disposal a considerable
amount of specialised knowledge gained during
education, and in our professional life. During
leisure times we occupy ourselves with various
hobbies and recreational activities. All this information
is at our mental beck and call. Consider
the task of trying to construct a similar source of
knowledge, just as comprehensive and able to be
accessed with the same blindingly fast precision.
We begin to catch a mere glimpse of just how
amazing and fascinating our mind really is.
Just consider the following questions: Did
Archimedes have hands? Did Harrison Ford participate
in the Boer War? What was Bach’s telephone
number?
If our brain were merely a computer system with
a large hard disk that could only access a store of
previously learned information, then the above
three questions could only be answered with “I
don’t know”. But we possess the crucial (and
underrated) ability of deductive thought (see also
the chapter “Like God, we can think”).