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Full Idea
The guiding principle of the whole body is the mind or intellect, which is firmly lodged in the mid-region of the breast. Here is felt fear and alarm, and the caressing pulse of joy. Here, then is the seat of the intellect and mind.
Gist of Idea
The mind is in the middle of the breast, because there we experience fear and joy
Source
Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.140)
Book Ref
Lucretius: 'On the Nature of the Universe', ed/tr. Latham,Ronald [Penguin 1951], p.100
A Reaction
Even by this date thinking people were not clear that the mind is in the brain. They paid insufficient attention to head injuries. The emotions are felt to have a location, but intellect and principles are not.
| 5987 | Alcmaeon was the first to say the brain is central to thinking [Alcmaeon, by Staden, von] |
| 5718 | The mind is in the middle of the breast, because there we experience fear and joy [Lucretius] |
| 5717 | The mind is a part of a man, just like a hand or an eye [Lucretius] |
| 6003 | Galen showed by experiment that the brain controls the body [Galen, by Hankinson] |
| 18462 | The soul is everywhere and nowhere in the body, and must be its cause [Porphyry] |
| 6261 | The soul is in the brain, as shown by head injuries [Montaigne] |
| 21840 | A meeting of man and animal can be deterritorialization (like a wasp with an orchid) [Deleuze] |
| 5802 | Representations are in the head, but their content is not, as stories don't exist in their books [Dretske] |
| 6641 | Externalists say minds depend on environment for their very existence and identity [Lowe] |