Therefore Choose Read Free Page A

he said. “It’s the next big problem, the basis of how we learn … everything.”
    They walked across the Downing Site, turned right into Downing Street.
    Douglas stood on the pavement, talking emphatically.
    â€œThat building we’ve just been in, Physiology. Some of the most important research on the nervous system is going on right there. That would be learning about science, but of course as undergraduates we see nothing. But that’s the place. Professor Adrian is there. It’s electronics now. That’s how the brain works.”
    â€œAnd that’s what you want to do?”
    â€œIn Part II, I want to do Experimental Psychology. It’s a small group, but with Bartlett, the head of the department. He’s got the right idea.”
    Whereas for George the syllabus on the way to medicine was mapped out for him, Douglas had somehow managed to create his own mixture: maths, physics, physiology.
    With a father who’d been to Cambridge and was a professor at Manchester, Douglas knew where to go, who to talk to, what to do. Not the kind of thing on which George’s mother, a primary-school teacher and the widow of a gentleman’s outfitter, could offer guidance.

3
    One drizzly afternoon in his last term of his last year at Cambridge, George lost patience with his revisions for finals. He bought some crumpets and went to visit Werner.
    Werner was in. His wood-panelled room overlooked Great Court. On the walls, he had put up reproductions of Holbein, Dürer, and Cranach. He lit his gas fire, picked up the toasting fork, and started to toast the crumpets.
    â€œI want to write a thesis,” he said. “Can you get the butter out, and plates?”
    George did as he was asked.
    â€œIt’s the big unsolved problem.”
    â€œWhat is?” said George.
    â€œHow minds meet,” said Werner. “When minds are so different from each other, how can they connect?”
    â€œWittgenstein, will he help?”
    â€œHe is the most complete intellect in philosophy. Whether he will help … I don’t have a route yet, or a method.”
    â€œI should introduce you to Douglas Hinton. He wants to find out about memory.”
    â€œIs he doing philosophy?’
    â€œExperimental psychology.”
    â€œThat would be of no help to me. In psychology, problem and method pass each other by.”
    â€œHow do you mean?”
    â€œHere’s the problem,” said Werner. “When silk first came from China to Europe, the Romans, who knew about cotton, thought it must come from a bush, with a fruit in which the silk fibres grew.”
    â€œNow we know it comes from silkworms.”
    â€œYou’re not following. We see everything through what we know, through that by which we make propositions. If we had telepathy, even then I could not read your thoughts because minds are too different.”
    â€œBut we can talk to each other.”
    â€œPerhaps we only think we do.”
    â€œIs that what your thesis will be on?”
    â€œI want to solve the problem of how minds can join.”
    â€œAnd that’s the most important problem?”
    Suddenly Werner looked very deliberate. “If minds cannot join,” he said, “how do we know we are not mad?”
    Werner could be uncomfortable to be with. He sometimes made George feel inadequate. He had grand ideas, which he took up with total commitment.
    George thought: What do I have? Attracted to knowledge but don’t know much. Knowledge of Hegel nil. The Hanseatic League — what was that? A medical student without that essential fascination for the workings of the body. Werner talks about connection between minds. Am I even connected to my own mind?

    Until George was thirteen, things went for him much as one would expect. It was as if life were a jigsaw. It wasn’t that he knew which pieces were which, but they were all there. He needed merely to fit each into its place as time