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The Philosopher s Myth
On the contrary， it is impossible to obtain an adequate
version of the laws for which we are looking unless the
physical system is regarded as a whole，.
ra. PLANC~ 1931
Two former Nobel Prize laureates in physics were recently
asked to guess what area of research would win the Nobel
Prize for physics in the year 2000. Both of them， without
prior consultation and with hardly a hesitation， said brain
research. The human brain， they concluded， is our ultimate
intellectual challenge in the last quarter of the twentieth
century.
There is a double irony in the choice of the brain as
an area of research worthy of Nobel Prizes in physics. For
one thing， physics is one of the \"hard sciences，\" a model
of the \"objective\" view of the world. Brain research， in
contrast， has been modeled on biology， a \"softer，\" more
fuzzy discipline where disagreement abounds. (Articles
are still appearing from time to time attempting to dis-
prove even such well:established biological principles as
evolution.)
Secondly， brain research is taken up with questions
even more fundamental than those which challenge the
theoretical physicists: \"How do we know what we know?\"
\"What is the real world?\" \"Who am I7\" Until very recently
such questions were referred to theologians or philos-
ophers， whose speculations provided the fotmdadons for
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