Swarm Intelligence

Studying Minds

As minds cannot be observed directly, the experience of thinking and

feeling can only be described in metaphorical terms, and throughout his-

tory people have used the symbols and technology of their times to de-

scribe their experience of thinking. At various times mind has been pop-

ularly conceived as operating by humors, the interventions of gods, the

actions of stars and their corresponding terrestrial substances, possession

by demons, and, in more recent centuries, by pneumatic and hydraulic

operations of glands and other physiological systems. The metaphor

used to describe mental functions comes to prescribe acceptable func-

tions; ...