Tuesday, May 20, 2003

Hmm. Install still not finished. Time to add another entry.

I read an interesting article a long time back, in which some guy was doing research on babies' brains. Rather, what kinds of logic they are capable of. What he did was, had a large, attention-attracting object move slowly through the baby's field of vision. Then he had something blocking the way, so the moving object was obscured. He checked the direction in which the baby was looking. Sure enough, the little geniuses continued to turn their heads and eyes in the direction the object had been moving, and they would lock on to it again when it became visible. He concluded that humans are born with this basic logic inbuilt.

Writing this above reminded me of the 'blind spot' in our eyes - that place where the optic nerve connects to the eye and there arent any sensor cells. No one ever complained of that one.

Why am I thinking of these things? Extrapolation, or the creation of pattern, is what I'm coming to. Even without having to think about it, people do believe (or 'have faith in') the idea that their action has a result, and every result has a cause. It struck me today that this impulse must be really burnt deep into our brains. Essential survival instinct, I bet. And take a society that keeps asking "why?" to every question, a society where you have a bunch of people who are free to do just this, for many generations, and you get a system of thought like hinduism.

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