Dr. Walter Freeman III's chaos and creativity

Dr. Walter J. Freeman

"One profound advantage chaos may confer on the brain is that chaotic systems continually produce novel activity patterns. We propose that such patterns are crucial to the development of nerve cell assemblies that differ from established assemblies. More generally, the ability to create activity patterns may underlie the brain's ability to generate insight and the 'trials' of trial-and-error problem solving."

- Walter J. Freeman
On a sunny Tuesday morning when most of the University of California, Berkeley student body was away from campus for Spring Break, Selene and I had the pleasure of visiting Dr. Walter Freeman in his Donner Lab office. He provided us with a simple introduction to neurodynamics -- brain waves are a "special kind of noise," he explained -- before expounding on the theoretical outgrowth of his neuroscience research. Many of Walter's conclusions about the workings of the brain have an unexpected antecedent, the philosophy of the 13th century theologian, St. Thomas of Aquinas (Walter prefers the Italian formulation, Tommaso, so I will use it here).