of a shoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse, the kingdom was lost.”
64 In so doing they modify the claims of Kahneman 2011.
65 It may be helpful to refer back to the Recapitulation of Section 3 on page 35.
66 Since writing this, the work on the Entorhinal–Hippocampal assemblage has been published by the Nobel laureate Edvard Moser, one of whose lectures I was fortunate in attending. See: A Memory is always an abstraction on page 92.
67 In reference to the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck (1744–1829) whose theory of evolution was later eclipsed by that of Darwin and Wallace.
68 See ‘Common presentations of ill–health’ on page 8. Self as identity is also treated in several sections of Part Two.
69 Daniel Kahneman (Bibliography) in his section entitled USEFUL FICTIONS argues for the usefulness of this descriptive device: he describes his Systems 1 and 2 as nicknames or shorthands. I quote the Nobel Laureate not to obtain undeserved merit by association but to show that some shorthands (even with dubious properties) can serve a convenient purpose in a long work.
70 Refer back to Organisational structure on page 66 and Resonance on page 72.
71 See Moravec Paradox in Section 6.
72 Refer back to the discussion in Section Three: ‘The biological basis of the adaptive response’.
73 Futurists (as described in Section 14 and elsewhere) save energy by gambling on feed–forward circuits, uncluttered by the complexity of feedback and the inertia of arriving at the end of a circuit when it comes to rest and switches itself off. Perhaps the trick is to consult past learning but pay little heed before embarking.
74 Refer back to Bipolarity in The Trajectory earlier in this section.
75 The nature and activities of the receptors that cluster around synapses may be more significant than the main transmitter itself. It seems that these transmitter systems engage in mutual activity that tends to imply that no one system can operate independently (except possibly in psychiatric disease).
76 As these themes are explored persuasively by Adam Phillips. See Bibliography.
77 From solstice to equinox and back again: the influence of the midpoint on human health and the use of plants to modify such effects, 2011 and 2016.
78 Refer back to Gaia's children: fauns and fauna on page 56.
79 My ideas also hope to sidestep Dual Aspect theories (cf. Thomas Nagel (e.g., 1979) and Gilbert Ryle).
80 See the research quoted in the notes to Chapter 9, Receptors and Transmitters in Narby 1998.
81 See segments entitled Creativity in Section 14 and Dreaming in Section 17.
82 It is clear from recent advances in functional MRI that the whole brain is co–opted to integrate all percepts and stimuli. Whatever anaesthesia may be, it abolishes the meta–coordination the singularity provides.
83 Persaud has been criticised as a populist and oversimplifier (and was also disgraced for plagiarism). I have not read his books but have attended his lectures. I consider this time-conscious formula to be a powerful and useful simplification and pick it up again in Sections 14 and 18.
84 Cf. John Maynard Keynes: “It is astonishing what foolish things one can temporarily believe if one thinks too long alone.”
85 Movement is an event. To move is to control; bear in mind Adler's injunction: “Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.”
86 Notably the work of Edvard Moser and his team on Grid, Place and Border cells in the Entorhinal cortex. They shared the Nobel Prize Lecture for Physiology or Medicine in 2014.
87 Funes the Memorious in Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges whom I mentioned in Binaries: The Garden with Forking Paths.
88 Perhaps exponentially. See The Calculus of Poise in Section 7.
SECTION SIX
Limitations of theory
Limitation is an understatement, to say the least. Biological theories are inevitably examples of inductive generalisations made from observed phenomena; medical theories are, at a further remove, inferences upon them. As inferences are made upon inferences and the chain grows longer, the links inevitably become weaker. While Medicine has, since the Classical Period, relied to some extent upon empirical observations, Evidence Based Medicine is a very recent approach to decision- and policy-making. As part of a mission to make money go further and with the laudable aim of analysing treatments so that futile and ineffective measures are abandoned, EBM attempts to reduce the cognitive biases under which we all operate. It is applied to therapeutic and diagnostic decisions and is narrower in its scope than a model or theory and, it might be argued, is more truthful in accepting this limitation.
Personalised medicine cannot by definition be subjected to statistical evaluation though it would be a worthwhile enterprise, if not an imperative, if we were to conduct and systematise clinical audit of our practices. By this and other means of evaluation, we might lessen our inevitable cognitive bias and reduce the inferential generalisations made by theory. EBM attempts to minimise the subjective in clinical decision–making, admirable for public policy, yet illness itself is a subjective phenomenon for which biological theory attempts to make cohesive inferences. Theories like contracts are inherently incomplete89 and cannot preconfigure every possible circumstance.
It might therefore seem perverse to extend a theory in a section expressing its Limitations. I do so because there is at least good scientific work on the deep influence of our physical world on biological rhythms, and these oscillations are at the centre of Poise. The absence from EBM of any such theory leads to a fragmented empiricism, which is adequate only for emergency medicine.
Escape from limitations
Constraints form the springboard of life and creativity. We cannot escape the limitations of the model, but we can use them to our advantage as I hope to do in the rest of this section, morphing into Potential Applications towards the end of this section.
How medicinal plants can help a person maintain Poise is the focus of Part Three, but as we are here considering the strengths as well as the limits of theory, it may be helpful to outline those systems that need stabilising. A summary of clinical indicators is made in Sections 10, 11 and 12.
Time and drive
Awareness depends upon the maintenance of an adequate perfusion of oxygenated blood to the brain and vital organs. From moment to moment, survival and consciousness depends upon the maintenance of blood glucose and reserves of substrate. In the slightly longer term, water and salt balance must be regulated. Reserves of substrate