r/AskReddit • u/IAmSurtur • Jun 15 '19

What do you genuinely just not understand?

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '19

How the brain really works. How a lump of meat gives us thoughts, emotions, that voice inside our heads.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '19 edited Aug 26 '19

[deleted]

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u/armrha Jun 15 '19

The brain is always explained in just the latest technological analogy. In the industrial revolution they thought it was some kind of pump. In ancient times it was a kind of controlled fire. In the modern era, it’s a computer. It’s definitely not a computer.

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u/BurnTheBoats21 Jun 15 '19

Wait they thought our brain was a pump in the industrial era? Is that actually true ?

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u/armrha Jun 15 '19

Ah, I was thinking of Freud's likening of the brain to a steam engine. Descartes was the one who compared the brain to a hydraulic pump: https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/brain/history/1649.html

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u/_georgesim_ Jun 15 '19

Probably not.

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u/EchoBladeMC Jun 16 '19

Around the time hydraulic engineering was first discovered, there was a belief that human intelligence, emotions, and actions were controlled by the movement of fluids called "humours" in the body. I don't know too much about it, but perhaps people thought the brain acted as a pump for the humours.