[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
structure."
"And this field structure expands and collapses under different stresses,"
Prudence said.
Timberlake nodded. "And that field structure itself would be the phenomenon
we call consciousness."
"Are you two agreeing with him?" Flattery asked.
"For the moment," Timberlake said. "Now, let's follow this assumption. The
organic receptor would be subjected to a constant storm of impressions."
"And most researchers think the cerebellum is the focus of that storm of
impressions," Prudence said.
"But it's certainly not the seat of consciousness," Flattery objected.
"There may be no seat of consciousness," Prudence said. "We're talking about
a motile phenomenon. It can move by itself."
"Okay," Timberlake said. "What's the impression input? What does the
cerebellum receive?"
"Electrical inputs of some form," Prudence said.
Page 64
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"Yes. . . . but how is that input sorted into its receiver?"
Flattery inhaled a deep breath, caught at last by the feeling of the hunt with
the quarry near. Was it possible that this crew would succeed? He grew
conscious that Prudence had asked him a question.
"What?"
"Do you understand this concept? We're talking about electroform inputs of
nerve-impulse groups and each group would be of extremely short duration."
"But the groups wouldn't be absolutely discrete," Flattery said.
"Of course not," she said. "It's like the ambiguity of light. Sometimes the
physicist has to think of light as waves and sometimes as particles."
"Wavicles," Flattery said, his tone musing.
"Right. So sometimes we think of these nerve-impulse groups as discrete
units, particles, and sometimes we think of them as a continuous flow . . .
waves."
"Track that discrete flow for me," Timberlake said.
She glanced away from the big console, studied Timberlake. There was no
avoiding the excitement in him. With that intuitive sense of his, Timberlake
had leaped ahead somewhere and the others were supposed to follow.
"The track's pretty well plotted," Flattery said: "Action currents are
conducted over the cortico-ponto-cerebellar tract. What're you driving at?"
She saw it then as a diagram in her mind: (1) cortico- (2) ponto- (3)
cerebellar. Three phase! Were those the essential three of Bickel's
field-self?
Prudence put this thought into words, waited, not knowing quite what to expect
from the others.
"Three tracks, not one," Flattery mused. "No . . . that's not it." Then,
pouncing: "Holographic!"
"A holographic field," Prudence said. She saw that Flattery, too, had been
caught up in Timberlake's excitement. But the board demanded her full
attention for a moment and it was only later that she realized she had missed
some silent exchange between Flattery and Timberlake -- perhaps a knowing
look, a nod . . .
Presently, Timberlake said: "I want you to say it. What's the terminal point
of all that input?"
"It goes into the silent or nonfunctional areas of the cerebellum," Prudence
said.
Flattery felt a need to expand on this. "That's the superior and inferior
lobes, the declive, the folium, and the tuber -- the major portion of the
cerebellum."
"Mediation is across the tract from the cerebral cortex," Prudence said.
"Silent or nonfunctional?" Timberlake asked. "Don't you medical people ever
listen to your own words?"
"What do you mean?" Flattery asked. There was an edge of anger in his tone.
"What's the potential, the effect?" Timberlake demanded.
"I don't --"
"Energy arrives! Does it turn a wheel? Does it turn on a light? You can't
keep piling energy into any system indefinitely without some kind of output .
. . or balancing effect."
"But you said --"
"What's the output, the potential, the balancing effect? The energy goes in.
What does it do?"
"Are you suggesting that this . . . this potential, that it's consciousness?"
Prudence asked.
And she remembered Bickel calling the field system an "infinite sponge."
Flattery cut across this thought. "Didn't Bickel say something about
consciousness being like the vestibular reflex of the inner ear?"
"The way we balance," Timberlake said. "The thing that tells us which way is
down and which way is up."
Page 65
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"The strangest thing," Prudence said. "I feel as though I'd been a little bit
asleep all along, not awake enough to realize what Bickel was driving at."
"But now you're beginning to get it," Timberlake said.
"That storm of sense impressions doesn't stop when you're asleep," Flattery
argued. "Are you trying to tell me that sleep is a form of consciousness?"
As he spoke, he remembered making the same argument to Bickel, but now he had
to be honest with himself and face up to the obvious answer plus everything
that the answer implied.
"Yes, of course," Flattery said. "Sleep's a form of consciousness. It just
falls near one end of the spectrum."
"And all that unexplained energy?" Timberlake insisted.
"It has to be used for something," Flattery said. "Yes, I see that."
"All right," Timberlake said. "The consciousness-effect -- field or whatever
-- may mediate that energy balance. Perhaps it's a homeostat."
"All biological control mechanisms are homeostats," Prudence said. "So what?"
"It's not enough to say that consciousness juggles the storm of sense
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]