As followers of natural science we know nothing of any relation between thoughts and the brain, except as a gross correlation in time and space.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the limitation of our understanding of the relationship between thoughts and brain activity.
In this quote, Charles Scott Sherrington emphasizes that while we observe correlations between thoughts and brain functions in terms of timing and spatial location, our comprehension of the underlying relationship remains rudimentary. This acknowledgment of the gaps in knowledge underscores the complexity of the mind-brain connection and encourages further inquiry into the intricacies of consciousness and cognition within the realm of natural science.
In practice
In a lecture discussing the philosophy of mind, this quote can illustrate the complexity of understanding human thought.
The brain seems a thoroughfare for nerve-action passing its way to the motor animal. It has been remarked that Life's aim is an act not a thought. To-day the dictum must be modified to admit that, often, to refrain from an act is no less an act than to commit one, because inhibition is coequally with excitation a nervous activity.
No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power. ... The time has come to consider how we might bring about a separation, as complete as possible, between Science and Government in all countries. I call this the disestablishment of science, in the same sense in which the churches have been disestablished and have become independent of the state.
It is now widely realized that nearly all the 'classical' problems of molecular biology have either been solved or will be solved in the next decade. The entry of large numbers of American and other biochemists into the field will ensure that all the chemical details of replication and transcription will be elucidated. Because of this, I have long felt that the future of molecular biology lies in the extension of research to other fields of biology, notably development and the nervous system.
Science is often misrepresented as "the body of knowledge acquired by performing replicated controlled experiments in the laboratory." Actually, science is something broader: the acquisition of reliable knowledge about the world.
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.
There we measure shadows, and we search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial.
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