Nevzorov origin of personality. Alexander Nevzorov: The origin of personality and human intellect. worth noting passionately nonetheless

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Ceterum, back to the therapsid skull.

Repeto, skull NMQR-1702 quite typical, well studied (Sidor FROM. BUT., Welman J. BUT Second Specimen of Lemurosaurus pricei. Therapsida: Burnetiamorpha, 2003), including the issue of fundamental comparability with the skulls of other synapsids of the Permian and Triassic periods ( gorgonopsida, bullocephalus, lobalopex, dimetrodon, docynodon et cetera) to serve as a standard and give the right to some generalizations.

Let's generalize.

The brain of animal lizards is already quite perfect. The main structures that provide consciousness, emotions, self-identification (personality and its tools), complex behavior have already been formed.

Only minor drawings remain, which will be completed in 200 million years, when the mammalian descendants of therapsids will replace the dinosaurs on the stage of the evolutionary theater.

Scilicet, the personal characteristics of the first animal lizards were only one of the stages in the development of this general brain function, but by no means its "foundation stone", not the foundation and the fundamental principle. The most initial characteristics both were and remain in the tenebris of the Archean and Proterozoic.

However, the biological identity homo is a direct continuation personality traits including the animal-toothed creatures of the Permian period. This is especially clearly seen in the example of both the homology of the nuclei of the reticular formation, the limbic system (see Chapter II), and when comparing other brain structures: “In higher mammals, especially in humans, the visual tubercle is very strongly developed due to the significant development of the brain bark. Its functional and structural differentiation is very detailed. However, the basic scheme of structure and relationships remains the same as it began to form at the level of amphibians and developed in reptiles ”(Sell E. History of the development of the nervous system of vertebrates, 1959).

Mammalism, placentality, enrichment of the receptors have introduced very significant adjustments to these features, but not fundamental changes.

In the context of our study, it is worth noting the development of cranial nerves V and VII (mammals inherited them again from reptiles, albeit in a very modest form).

It is L. trigeminus and l. facialis were the organizers of the mimic language of mammals, which is much more universal than olfactory, postural, plastic, excretory and other languages. It is difficult to say exactly how versatile it is on a class-wide scale. (Mammalia) but within orders and families, and even more so within genera and species, its universality is undeniable.

With the development of facial expressions, the biological individuality acquired another important ability to accurately and quickly demonstrate aggression, physiological states and intentions, which, together with the excellent design of the V and VII nerves, was inherited by homo.

Ceterum, all this is described in sufficient detail and fully by both G. Spencer and C. Darwin or C. S. Sherrington: “Fear, if it is strong enough, manifests itself in screams, in the desire to hide or run away, in individual tremors. Similar experiences are also found in general muscular tension, clenching of teeth, protruding claws, in the expansion of the pupils and nostrils, in grumbling. All these are weakened forms of actions that accompany the killing of prey. ( Spencer N. The Principles of Psychology, 1880); “Somatic manifestations of ‘gross or bestial emotions’ are widely known in man and in higher animals. This view is presented in Darwin's work on the contraction of the orbicular muscle of the eye during a cry. (Sherrington Ch. S. Integrative activity of the nervous system, 1969).

Somewhat naive, but inevitable is the question of the ability of a biological person to radical metamorphosis under the influence of religions, ideals, literature, social relations, myths, traditions, and everything that could be combined in the term "morality". (This issue has already been discussed in chapter III, but a few additions need to be made here.)

There is probably no exact (experimental) answer to this question; although it is clear that the so-called. morality in the context of 500 million years natural history looks so microscopic that, of course, it cannot be recognized as any influential "factor", and the assumption of the possibility of a sudden "moral mutation" homo based on nothing.

Probably, per obticentiam, the odiousness of such an experiment has always been so obvious that in the entire history of laboratory or clinical studies of the brain it has never been staged in this way. In part, this is even annoying, because. "morality" is our "contemporary" and (in laboratory terms) is capable of being "observable"; it could be of interest for studying the possibilities of the impact of artificial circumstances on biological individuality, which in itself would be an extremely curious experiment, clarifying some features of the origin and implementation of aggression.

All of the above will be true, except for the involuntary "experiment" of the so-called. human history over the past 2,000 years.

As we remember, mass religious and social training homo, declarative cultivation of "mercy", "humanism", "conscience" and "shame", which lasted almost twenty centuries, had the end result of the First world war, revolutions in Russia and France, World War II and a number of other conflicts in which people demonstrated the futility of moral training, in a short time (for no particular reason) killing approximately 200,000,000 individuals of their own species of different ages and sexes in various ways and crippling another 600,000,000.

The results of this experiment (if we recognize the status of “unintentional” scientific experience behind the events of the 1st-20th centuries) indirectly confirm the thesis expressed in the text about the microscopic nature of the “morality” factor and its complete inability to make adjustments to evolutionarily established behavior homo.

Necessario notare that and much more important changes than "moral mutation" homo, are not implemented in evolution, although (unlike the above) there are unlimited temporary “spaces” for them, and the need for them is vital. As wisely pointed out by Prof. N. Vorontsov(1934-2000) "for millions of years, the hair of forest animals has not acquired a green color or even a greenish tint, despite all the convenience that such a metamorphosis could give" (Development of evolutionary ideas in biology, 1999).

Let's summarize this topic.

Evidenter, that without the integrating, guiding, and stimulating power of the function we call “personality” or “biological individuality,” all brain activity becomes as meaningless as it is diffuse: the brain falls apart into a hundred large and small neuronal groups, devoid of not only management or incentive, but probably any need.

By withdrawing the “personality”, we also withdraw the primary cause of the existence of the organism materialized in it, its invitamentum. (A term that can not be very euphonious, but accurately translated as “the will to live.” This “will” has its own genetic mechanism and is the subject of a separate consideration.)

Accepting Penfield's centrencephalic theory as a convenient tool for understanding the mechanisms of the brain, we, nihilominus, can only conditionally put an end to the question of the "dwelling" of this general function (namely, in the reticular formation of the trunk), taking as the main argument even the unproved corticopetal and corticofugal connections , but the super antiquity of the structure itself.

Super antiquity, in fact, is the main "guiding star" in the darkness of cerebrogenesis. (Speaking of the super-ancient structure of the brain, we thereby speak of the root cause of the appearance of all its other formations, the detonator of all its evolutionary transformations.)

Assume the equivalence and equality of the parts of the brain does not allow us to know about the stages, the gradualness of its formation over the past 500-600 million years; as well as the fact that the creatures with the "original" brain were already biologically complete, i.e. capable of adequate behavior in a complex environment, otherwise they could not survive and give rise to hundreds of thousands of species. (Naturally, the brain improved and developed, developing both the receptors and the substrate of the hemispheres, but this was only an escalation of possibilities, necessary in the conditions of competition between life forms and the struggle for survival).

If in my words about the habitat of the “personality” some uncertainty is now felt, it is only because 100% of reliable data that the reticular formation is the most ancient structure of the brain, i.e. some kind of "pra-structure", we still do not have.

It's obvious that formatia reticularis arose as an inevitable communicator between the already developing spinal cord and the nascent brain. Igitur, it was she who was the first cerebral formation that, micron by micron, increased both the substrate of the cerebrospinal substance and its connections with the spinal cord, reciprocally complicating (as the connections were optimized) their functions.

(It is to this property that we owe the fact that the reticular formation until now has not had and does not have any obvious specialization, in contrast to all other formations of the brain stem.)

According to the whole logic of cerebrogenesis, there is no other candidate for the role of the “protostructure”. But (let me remind you) there is not even that “drug” of the Proterozoic era, the study of which would give us the right to categorism today.

Therefore, we conditionally speak of the reticular formation as a super-ancient structure capable of generating a biological individuality, igitur, to take the lead in behavior.

Breviter, touching upon the most profound and important, but at the same time subtle and discus- sive mechanisms of personality, we now consider the fastigium quaestionis (the surface of the question), i.e. the simplest manifestations of this function.

Now we are talking about "personality" as the most "relief", the most visual function of the brain, which allows the creature to be self-aware of itself and build relationships with its own organism as with unconditional property.

I explain.

Exempli causa, let us once again take the factor of "adequate behavior" (which was already discussed in chapter IX).

Its presence or absence signifies the life or death of the organism. But such behavior can be based only on an uninterrupted and distinct self-awareness by the being of its features and capabilities. (Translated into the language of taxonomy: on the "knowledge" of one's belonging to a certain species, class, order, age, sex et cetera, not to mention the many smaller, but significant features, such as the presence of injury, fatigue, cooling, etc. )

Search for the reason for the adequacy of behavior in the so-called. instincts are not justified. The concept of "instinct" is a literary psychological term that has no neurophysiological meaning 54 . It can be used, but only as a metaphor, remembering its conventionality. The only conscientious attempt to give at least some scientific rationale the concept of "instinct" was made by prof. G. Ziegler as early as the beginning of the twentieth century Instinct. The concept of instinct before and now, 1914 ; soulful animal world, 1925), but was not very successful; "instinct" when trying to seriously consider, of course, "crumbles" into its reflex components, each of which requires separate explanation and understanding.

The search for the reasons for adequacy will be just as unconvincing - in “innate behavior”, in that reflex minimum that is contained in the genome and provides the body with the initial skills of grabbing, sucking, burping, biting, defecation, vomiting, coughing, swallowing, frictioning, blinking, sneezing etc. But, ut notum est, the genome has neither receptors nor memory. He is "blind". Accordingly, he cannot, through the same blind and stereotyped “innate skills” as himself, manage the body in changing circumstances, the variability of which has thousands of combinations. This was noted by E. Sepp: “However, behavior based on individual experience far leaves behind the role of innate reflexes” ( The history of the development of the nervous system of vertebrates, 1959). It should also be noted that following the logic of "innate behavior", it is impossible to explain the improvement of the receptor, the primary task of which is to provide information to the brain every second. (Here we again come to the conclusion that the basis for adequate behavior can only be cerebral processes, and nothing else.)

Now consider the second mandatory component of the manifestation of "personality": the attitude towards the body as an unconditional property. This property needs to be protected, fed and rested, and must properly serve any impulses of the brain (neuropile, protocerebrum).

To a certain extent, this “proprietary” connection between the brain (at any level of its development) and the organism is demonstrated by simple coordination of movements, always subordinate to both the “intention” and the accurate analysis of all circumstances received by the brain through receptors.

In accordance with these simple characteristics, we can again be convinced that personality (as a function of the brain) is probably inherent in any living creature without exception and as a phenomenon about 545 million years older than the image of Leonidas I, Scipio Africanus or Ivan Pavlov.

Here the question of whether there is a fundamental neurophysiological difference between a given brain function in homo and, for example, the cave bear (Ursus spelaeus), gray rat (Rattus norvegicus) or an alligator?

Puto, there is no reason to assume that there is any significant difference.

Biologically, the personality of the wild or socialized homo is of the same nature with the personality of any other animal, and what a person takes as his “unique feature” is, in part, the development (?) of this brain function, but to a greater extent its modernized presentation, not only addressed to the outside world, but also directed "inside".

Explico.

In the animal world, biological individuality (personality) can be demonstrated with the help of smell, sound, posture, facial expressions, mimicry, plasticity, physical or sexual potential, status in the pack et cetera. To these manifestations, the socialized homo simply added speech, thinking and all the derivatives of the intellect.

These derivatives "colored" the biological individuality, giving its features (somewhat far-fetched from the point of view of neurophysiology) "uniqueness" and drama.

Absolutely special role played "inner speech" (i.e. thinking); thanks to it, the most ancient function of the brain "sounded" and made itself the object of its own close and aggressive attention. This circumstance did not change its biological mechanism in any way, but self-awareness (self-identification) turned from an everyday neurophysiological process into a very exciting activity.

Here again, explanations are required, thanks to which we can approach the neurophysiological interpretation of the concept of "fascinating".

As we know, the system of nominations (speech) is a symbolization of beings, properties, phenomena, objects, actions or connections between all these positions, i.e. verbal duplicate of reality. The dependence of the organism on reality (environment) has been absolute since the Proterozoic.

No matter how powerful a creature is, but the rules of the game are always set by the environment, without distinction of type, class or ... name. It is she who determines "to live or not" the being, and what efforts should be expended by him in order to adapt to it or try to resist it. And it does not matter what the creature is called - dimorphodon, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus or orangutan; either way, the environment wins. And it's not even that on its banners on behalf of all those who have already passed earth path creatures, a cold-blooded appeal to every living organism is inscribed: nos ossos qve aqvi estamos pelos vossos esperamos; because among its arguments is biogenesis, which automatically presupposes the death of any born. However, the omnipotence of the environment is so absolute that even the argument of death is not a trump card. (Improvement of the receptors did not reduce, but, on the contrary, probably increased the dependence of the organism on the environment, since an increasing number of factors and nuances became the components of consciousness coming through the receptors. Puto, the dependence escalated gradually and steadily, the moment of its "aggravation" did not For example, we know that the age of the visual receptor (a protein with photochemical sensitivity) is about 500 million years, but the organelle itself (the optic rod on which this protein is concentrated) is a much more ancient creation, having a “ciliary” origin, therefore , (possibly) the same age as cryogeny or even thonium.)

As you probably remember, I. M. Sechenov gave an even more precise and categorical definition of "environment": "An organism without external environment supporting its existence is impossible; therefore, the scientific definition of an organism must also include the environment that influences it, since without the latter the existence of an organism is impossible. (Medical Bulletin, 1861. No. 28).

inner speech homo, creating a duplicate of the environment (reality), not only did not cancel its drama, its temptation or other properties, but also aggravated them.

Why did this aggravation occur?

Probably for the reason that thinking has turned out to be an excellent spatio nutribile for prognosticism, which by its very nature is prone to dramatization and exacerbation, since any animal perceives all the circumstances and nuances of the world primarily in relation to the good of its own biological individuality and rightly looks for hidden and obvious threats in everything.

Prognosticism, or what the Russian physiological school called "probabilistic forecasting", of course, is not a property of only thinking homo; to a certain extent, the ability to predict is a prerequisite for survival, therefore, its mechanism has long been developed in an infinite number of creatures.

Back in 1971 Prof. D. Dubrovsky summed up the ideas of classical neurophysiology on this issue: “Probabilistic forecasting is a fundamental function of the brain that provides programming and organization of current actions” (Psychic Phenomena and the Brain, 1971).

Despite the clarity and even some categorization of this dogma, it should be noted that there are still no convincing experimental data regarding insects, amphibians, reptiles, and any reasoning about their ability to predict is ultra limites factorum. (No matter how much one would like to recognize them on the basis of evolutionary logic and the fantastic splendor of insect receptors.) With a certain confidence, one can responsibly speak of the presence of experimentally confirmed prognosticism only in insectivores, hedgehogs, rats, monkeys, and those mammals whose abilities have been confirmed by multiple , well-documented laboratory studies (Karamyan A., Malyukova I. Stages of higher nervous activity of animals// Physiology of behavior. USSR Academy of Sciences, 1987; Feigenberg I., Levy V. Probabilistic forecasting and pilot study him in pathological conditions, 1965).

There is no doubt that, compared with other animals, the predictive homo became more dramatic and sophisticated.

(The quality of this forecasting and its actual performance will be discussed later.)

Thanks to the system of nominations and knowledge, forecasts have become much more accurate, and therefore more pessimistic. (An understanding of the real number of dangers and their fatality has come.)

And now let's temporarily switch to the language of approximate concepts in order to briefly outline the reasons for the exacerbation of the prognostic function of the brain using simple examples. homo in the era of the formation of intelligence. (We will look at its actual productivity a bit later.)

The knowledge of life doomed man to a knowledge of death that was inaccessible to any other animal; now the image of death has become dissolved in almost every event, phenomenon or thing. This image has turned into an "eternal companion", into a cunning, cruel, malicious and inexorable pursuer, and a person's life - into eluding him.

Religions have provoked man into constant dramatic forecasting of how his actions and desires are evaluated by the dangerous supernatural beings in whose power he is.

These two positions are confirmed by the classics of anthropology: “Primitive thinking is different from ours. It is oriented in a completely different way. Its processes proceed in a completely different way ... Primitive thinking pays attention exclusively to mystical causes, the action of which it feels everywhere. "In the eyes of primitive people, death always implies a mystical cause and almost always violence" (Levy-Bruhl L. Primitive thinking, 1930)."The native is absolutely incapable of realizing death as the result of some natural cause" (Spenser AT., Gillen F. The Native Tribes of Central Australia, 1899).“For the consciousness of the Mugands, there is no death arising from natural causes. Death, like illness, is a direct consequence of the influence of some spirit. (Roscoe J. Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda, 1901).

property, sexual, predatory, intermale, territorial, hierarchical aggression naturally became the core and content of all human social games. However, the force of aggression in itself did not guarantee success in these games, and then the search for advantages developed the so-called. deceit; the more effective the property, the better its consequences were predicted.

Ad verbum, of course, aggression in many ways, up to "changes in the state of consciousness", affect the way of action of all animals, but only in the example homo we can observe their ability to control behavior for a long time. As for lying, as already noted above (Chapter II), this phenomenon has been perfectly worked out by evolution in the mimicry of fish and insects; it is present in the mating, hunting, and conflict behavior of many animals; and in human culture, lies have developed into such important factor that today "the inability to lie" is a diagnostic feature of diseases such as Asperger's syndrome and other varieties of autism.

Equally essential for the development of prognosticism was labor, with the need for a “step by step” foresight of all its intermediate and final results. It can also be assumed that labor was a special, "double-edged" factor. He provoked both simple (labor) forecasting and complex (social) forecasting, generated by the desire to free oneself from labor in general or from its most painful variations.

Puto, the emergence of social relations (estates, classes, dynasties, hierarchies, property and rights) is, first of all, the history of the desire and ability of a part homo evade the need for labor.

Secundum naturam, in addition to the listed global causes (fear, lies, labor and evasion from it), there were also “junior”, but also extremely influential factors.

The most famous of the direct consequences of prognosticism was the so-called. imagination, perhaps owing its development primarily to the masturbatory practices inherited homo from part of the ancestral chain.

Although monkeys in the animal world stand out as active masturbators, this activity does not become a fixed tradition of behavior for them, since it is based (mainly) on the rough mechanical effect of limbs or objects on the genitals and on momentary visible pathogens.

The man managed to take a "step forward" in this matter as well.

The fine motor skills of his hands, supported by the predictive potentials of the brain and the rudiments of "imagination", suggested homo a lot of acute sensations that did not require from him (unlike real sexual relations) either social viability, or the performance of matrimonial rituals, or material or time costs, or the use of violence, or even a visible pathogen.

Secundum naturam, these practices developed "imagination", and it became the most important part of thinking.

Find some other reason why masturbation has become a household norm homo, apart from socialization (which is always based on many different taboos), it will be very difficult. The style of sexual relations in flocks of early people remains a debatable issue: the hypothesis of orgiastic relationships and promiscuity, limited only by the factors of menstruation and pregnancy of females, competes with the hypothesis of the “harem family”.

Proponents of the first point of view: I. Bahoven(1861), L Morgan (1934), Nesturkh( 1958), Zolotarev (1940), Espinas( 1882), Briffault (1927), Sahlins(1960) et cetera.

Cautious apologists for the "harem" version can be recognized as: carpenter (1934), Quiet (1947), Voitonis (1949), Yerkes (1943), Zuckerman(1932), but even then with reservations, since these researchers only assumed the inevitability of the transfer of the model of relations in monkey flocks to the communities of early people.

Regardless of the correctness of one or another hypothesis, it is indisputable that socialization rather severely tabooed sexual freedom, replacing chaotic partnerships with ritualized games, the dangerous need to use violence, pay or masturbate. There are very few authoritative detailed studies on this topic, but there are indications about the systems of sexual taboos and public masturbation as the everyday norm of primitive peoples. Claude Levi-Strauss in volume III "Mythologiques"(1968), E. Crowley in "Studies on Primitive Marriage"(1895), E. Westemarka in "History of Human Marriage" (1901).

However, it would be unfair to reduce the “masturbation effect” that develops the imagination solely to sexual desires and experiences.

Puto, a broader interpretation of this term is also possible.

Status and property lusts that are not realizable in reality, which became stronger with the development of material culture and social relations, can also be partly classified as masturbation or phenomena close to it in principle. (Later they would be called "dreams", "dreams" et cetera.)

The fact is that the symbols of reality (words) and its nominated images have almost the same irritating power as reality itself, but are completely independent of its dictate, due to biogenesis, the laws of physics et cetera.

With the invention of language, all the immensity of the world, encoded in symbols, was “transferred” into a small space of the brain skull (350-1300 cm 3), where it was completely dominated by the so-called. thinking homo.

The free and unrestricted manipulation of these symbols, the creation of arbitrary constructions from them turned out, at times, to be an even stronger irritant than reality itself.

Ceterum, as we have already noted, all the factors that gradually developed prognosis: fear of death, lies, work, masturbation, religion, aggression belong to the field of approximate concepts and do not contain any neurophysiological meaning.

Translated into a language that we can understand, we must mark them as approximately equivalent, multiple, replacing each other or even adjacent stimuli, which, due to the richness and accord of the reflexes they cause, are able to mobilize nervous system, ensuring its continuous tone. At the same time, we must remember that a verbal symbol or a “fragment of consciousness” (a visual image) has almost the same exciting potential as a real phenomenon.

Dry, but accurate I. Pavlov, who described in « General characteristics complex-nervous phenomena "(1909) this process as follows: “Different agents, which are converted into conditioned stimuli, first act in their general view and only gradually, with further reinforcement conditioned reflex, become more and more specialized stimuli. This should be considered a rule, a law for stimuli delivered by all analyzers (sense organs)."

Ergo, e supra dicto ordiri, each nomination (word), each symbol of reality, as Ivan Petrovich rightly noted, is a “comprehensive”, superstrong stimulus.

Thinking, being (severe dictu) a combination of hundreds and thousands of nominations, i.e. plexus-weaving of thousands of stimuli, in fact, is a constant provocateur of a billion synaptic, neuroendocrine and structural processes for ancient and new brain structures that support part of the brain in a state of excitation.

Here arises a new, but extremely important question- about the reaction of the brain to its continuous stimulation by these processes. (Taking into account the physiological burden of any activation for any living cell substrate).

Theoretically, the answer is, of course, known; we see that even the most complex and multivariate thinking, hypothetically being a “biologically burdensome” challenge of an innumerable set of reflex responses, nevertheless “took root” and became the norm of the brain.

Moreover, it is appropriate to assume that it was the irritable power of thinking that was probably the main reason for its emergence and consolidation.

But this is a theory, and we would like to receive unambiguous experimental evidence of the “relationship” of the brain to those influences that persistently activate both its local cellular fields and entire structures.

Here it is probably worth remembering James Olds and Peter Milner, which in 1954 in Hebb's laboratory at McGill University conducted an important and curious experiment, described in detail both in the writings of Olds himself ( Physiological Mechanisms Of Reward, 1955; self-stimulation of the brain, 1958; Differentiation of Reward Systems in the Brain by Self-Stimulation Technics, 1960), and in his joint work with P. Milner"Positive Reinforcement Produced by Electrical Stimulation of Septal Area and Other Regions of Rat Brain" (1954).

The influence of this experiment on neurophysiology was so great that it was later repeated by many of the most authoritative researchers.

Alexander Nevzorov is guided by the ideas of 40 years ago.

On the contrary, the farther, the more evidence of the active hunting of our ancestors is revealed, starting from the gracile australopithecines. hunted like Australopithecus garhi(however, not our direct ancestors), and “early Homo(and these are already our ancestors). At present, a huge amount of material has been developed on this topic.

Primates aren't all that vegetarian after all. Small animals are hunted by baboons, chimpanzees and even peaceful phlegmatic orangutans.

(Available review: Stanford C. Chimpanzee Hunting Behavior and Human Evolution // American Scientist, 1995, May-June, ). What prevented Australopithecus and their descendants from doing this - Homo?

L.B. Vishnyatsky, Doctor of Historical Sciences, famous archaeologist, Leading Researcher, Department of Paleolithic Archeology, Institute of the History of Material Culture, Russian Academy of Sciences:

Among paleoanthropologists, as well as archaeologists involved in the Paleolithic and familiar with this issue, not only from the works of B.F. Porshnev, today, perhaps, no one doubts that both early sapiens and Neanderthals (200 - 40 thousand years ago) were skilled hunters and that a significant proportion of their diet was meat products. They say about it:

- finds of animal bones with stone and later bone tips stuck into them (for example, in Umm el Tlel, 50 thousand years ago, see Fig. Boda E. et al. 1999. A levallois point embedded in the vertebra of a wild ass (Equus africanus): hafting, projectiles and Mousterian hunting weapons // Antiquity 73, 394-402),

- finds among animal bones (elephant) wooden spears (Lehringen),

- data from numerous isotope analyzes (by the ratio of a number of stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in collagen from fossil bones, as well as in tooth enamel, one can judge the composition of the diet of people or animals to which these bones or teeth belonged),

- sex and age composition of collections of animal bones from sites (not typical for scavengers),

- the presence already in the Middle Paleolithic of tips adapted for attaching spears and darts to wooden shafts (and retaining traces of such an attachment)

- and other facts, the number of which is constantly growing. Earlier hominids, starting at least with Homo erectus, most likely also actively hunted, not only for small game, which even modern chimpanzees successfully hunt, but also for fairly large animals, the bones of which have traces of butchering with stone tools (sometimes these traces are superimposed by the teeth marks of large scavengers, who, therefore, had access to the bones already after people) are known in large numbers on the monuments of the Acheulian era. Known, by the way, for this era and

In the book, Alexander Nevzorov - director, screenwriter, writer, member of the All-Russian Scientific Society of Anatomists, Histologists and Embryologists - offers clear, detailed interpretations of such concepts as "consciousness", "mind", "personality", "thinking" and "intelligence", based only on those discoveries that were made by the classical schools of neurophysiology, and on the natural scientific interpretation of any processes in the brain of a person or other mammalian animal.

“I had a need for this book for a long time,” says Nevzorov. “Honestly, I would have preferred someone else to write it, and I would have received it already finished. I am not looking for extra work, and I believe that such books should be made by those whose direct duty it is.

In this statement of Nevzorov, as in the defense of her from sharp criticism from scientists that followed the publication of the book, regret is clearly expressed. According to the journalist, who is also a member of the All-Russian Scientific Society of Anatomists, Histologists and Embryologists, today ordinary readers are hungry for popular scientific literature in the field of brain study, which should be created, first of all, by people of science.

More or less seriously, scientists began to study the brain only in the 19th century - previously it was considered an insignificant organ. With such a late appeal to the main center that controls the body, the publicist explains the influence that religion still has on people's consciousness, which for centuries considered the heart to be the seat of the human soul.

The origin of personality is an attempt to define such concepts as consciousness, mind, personality, thinking and intellect, not obscured by psychology, and even more so by religion, to explain the origin of intelligence solely from the standpoint of classical neuroanatomy and neurophysiology based on research data from the world's largest scientists.

“I am only acting as a storekeeper who, rattling keys, can lead you through the bins where ingenious discoveries gather dust,” the author concludes.

On the "indifference" of neurons

The smell of a female and a page of Shakespeare, skin itching and a mathematical formula are all disparate, but quite equal stimuli that cause reflex responses of varying degrees of complexity. But no more. [In 150 years of studying the brain] there has been no confirmed evidence that the neuron in any way "knows the nature" of stimulation or is even "interested" in it. The hypothesis has received academic status, according to which the signals in neurons are highly stereotyped and the same for all animals, and synaptic connections have an identical mechanism in all living beings. The mechanism of contraction-expansion of the synaptic cleft, the movement of mitochondria, and the behavior of synaptic vesicles during neuronal communication occurring in the ganglion of the locust is practically similar to the same mechanism in the brain of a lynx, shark, or human, although the characteristics of stimuli for the three listed species are radically different.

On the secondary nature of any intelligence

In fact, any intellectual act of homo is always, to put it mildly, “secondary”, since it is only a combination-recombination of answers, concepts, nominations, images, etc., that were created before the moment of this combination (intellectual act), that is, the individuality of creativity, science and so-called events inner peace man is nothing more than a figure of speech.

On aggression as the basis of human behavior

Perhaps it will be completely superfluous to remind that all the military exploits of homo (from the Iliad to Stalingrad) are direct children of predatory aggression, moreover, in its purest, original form, dating back to the Paleozoic. It may seem paradoxical, but I believe that it is predatory aggression that is the mother of such valuable qualities as self-sacrifice, selflessness, nobility, purposefulness, compassion and other virtues.

On masking aggression with virtue

Socialization has somewhat shifted the guidelines and overestimated values. The object of hunting in the socialized world of homo, the main super-valuable prey is no longer a rabbit or a hippopotamus, but public approval (the so-called fame, recognition, respect, worship, etc.). It is this prey that provides dominance, power and dividends. But the hunt for social recognition is complex and subtle, it requires special ingenuity, which just gives rise to various “self-sacrifices”, “selflessness” and other specific, brightly contrasting and, therefore, often successful variations in the behavior of homo. A particularly complex goal gives rise to extremely complex tools for achieving it, that is, the so-called virtues.

On the universality of aggression

There is no fundamental biological difference between Einstein's ten fingers, in 1921, accepting a diploma Nobel laureate, and the 220 teeth of Varanosaurus, 300 million years ago, tormenting the belly of the quiet moss-eater Moschops [prehistoric animals]. Both prey (both the diploma and the belly of the Moschops) are the result of the manifestation of approximately the same qualities, correctly directed, concentrated aggression to achieve the goal.

The Meaning of Inner Speech for the Birth of Intellect

A very special role was played by "inner speech" (that is, thinking); thanks to it, the most ancient function of the brain "sounded" and made itself the object of its own close and aggressive attention. Self-awareness has evolved from an everyday neurophysiological process into a very exciting activity. As we know, speech is a symbolization of beings, properties, phenomena, objects, actions, that is, a verbal duplicate of reality. The dependence of the organism on the environment has been absolute since the Proterozoic.

It is she who determines whether a creature lives or not, and what efforts must be expended by it in order to adapt to it or try to resist it. For the reason that thinking turned out to be an excellent breeding ground for prognosticism, which by its very nature is prone to dramatization and aggravation, since any animal perceives all the circumstances and nuances of the world primarily in relation to the good of its own biological individuality and rightly looks for hidden and obvious in everything. threats. There is no doubt that, compared with other animals, the predictiveness of thinking homos has become more dramatic and sophisticated. Thanks to the system of nominations and knowledge, forecasts have become much more accurate, and therefore more pessimistic.

On the influence of his knowledge of death on a person

The knowledge of life doomed man to a knowledge of death that was inaccessible to any other animal; now the image of death has become dissolved in almost every event, phenomenon or thing. This image has turned into an eternal companion, into a cunning, cruel, malicious and inexorable pursuer, and a person’s life into an escape from him.

About religions

Religions have provoked man into constant dramatic forecasting of how his actions and desires are evaluated by the dangerous supernatural beings in whose power he is.

About deceit

Property, sexual, predatory, inter-male, territorial, hierarchical aggression naturally became the core and content of all human social games. However, the force of aggression in itself did not guarantee success in these games, and then the search for advantages developed the so-called deceit, a property that is all the more effective, the better its consequences were predicted. This phenomenon has been perfectly worked out by evolution in the mimicry of fish and insects, it is present in the mating, hunting, and conflict behavior of many animals, and in human culture, lying has developed into such an important factor that today “inability to lie” is a diagnostic sign of such diseases like Asperger's syndrome and other varieties of autism.

About labor

Labor was a special, "double-edged" factor. He provoked both simple (labor) forecasting and complex (social) forecasting, generated by the desire to free oneself from labor in general or from its most painful variations. I think that the emergence of social relations (estates, classes, dynasties, hierarchies, property and rights) is, first of all, the history of the desire and ability of a part of homo to evade the necessity of labor.

Alexander Nevzorov

Origo personae et cerebri hominis

Experimentum generalium notitiarum neurophysiologiae classicae Alexander Nevzorov The origin of human personality and intelligence Experience of generalizing the data of classical neurophysiology

Moscow "ACT"

ASTREL SPb

UDC 572 BBK 28.71 N40

Nevzorov, Alexander Glebovich

H40 The origin of the personality and intellect of man. The experience of generalizing the data of classical neurophysiology / Alexander Nevzorov. - Moscow: ACT, 2013. - 541 p., ill.

ISBN 978-5-17-079795-0

In this book, Alexander Nevzorov - director, screenwriter, writer, member of the All-Russian Scientific Society of Anatomists, Histologists and Embryologists - offers clear, detailed interpretations of such concepts as "consciousness", "mind", "personality", "thinking" and "intelligence" , based only on those discoveries that were made by the classical schools of neurophysiology, and on the natural scientific interpretation of any processes in the human brain or other mammalian animal.

UDC 572 BBK 28.71

Project curator Lidia Nevzorova Project coordinator Tamara Komissarova Project curator Lidia Nevzorova Project coordinator Tamara Komissarova Managing editor Stasia Zolotova Latin editor Yelena Ryigas IT director Elizaveta Makarova Art editor, photographer Dmitry Raikin

Assistants:

Ekaterina Aralbaeva, Tatiana Time, Alina Nos, Alexandra Oranskaya, Evgenia Shevchenko, Victoria Terenina

LIST OF LATIN WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS

The reason for this book. "Storekeeper". Question history. Brain in Ancient Egypt. Hippocrates. Galen. Vesalius.

Descartes. Gall. Brain in the Bible. Translationism. Darwinism. Theory of the reticular formation. Pavlov. Homo brain variability. Unstable coordinates.

I have had a need for this book for a long time.

To be honest, I would have preferred someone else to write it, but I would have received it ready-made, with a good reference and bibliographic apparatus and a set of worthy illustration tables.

It would be better in every sense of the word: et lupi saturi et oves integrae.

I waited patiently for a long time, without even thinking of taking it on myself, since I am not looking for extra work, and I believe that such books should be made by those whose direct duty it is.

Ceterum, I probably never became the readership for which it is worth writing and publishing a book that would summarize indisputable scientific facts about the morphology and evolutionary history of the functions of the human brain.

Atque, the formal summation did not suit me very well. I needed conclusions that are a natural continuation and generation of these facts, so much so that in each specific case I could “feel the umbilical cord” that goes directly from the fact to the conclusion.

I needed clear, detailed, but not obscured by "psychology" interpretations of such concepts as "consciousness", "mind", "personality", "thinking" and "intelligence". These interpretations could be arbitrarily bold or paradoxical, but at the same time they should not contradict even the most radical dogmas of classical neuroanatomy and classical evolutionary neurophysiology. Moreover, they had to be a direct consequence of these dogmas.

Repeto, I needed a similar book at hand, and I was completely indifferent to who is its author and whose name is on its cover.

In the same way it is indifferent to me now.

The presence of my name on the book is a mere coincidence. Anyone could have written it, since the facts and discoveries in this area have already formed an extremely coherent picture, which, I believe, is obvious to everyone without exception. My authorship is explained only by the fact that I turned out to be less lazy than my contemporaries.

Secundum naturam, a significant part of this work is a collection of those brilliant discoveries that were made long before me, or conclusions that are possible only on the basis of research by I. M. Sechenov, C. S. Sherrington, V. M. Bekhterev, U. G. Penfield, G. Magun, I. Pavlov, A. Severtsov, P. Brock, K. Wernicke, T. G. Huxley, A. Brodal, L. Roberts, G. Jasper, S. R. Cahal, S. Oleneva, I. Filimonova, I. S. Beritashvili (Beritova), S. Blinkov, J. Eccles, X. Delgado, E. Sepp, G. Bastian, K. Lashley, D. Olds.

Here I am obliged to quote Sir Isaac Newton's saying: "If I have seen a little farther than others, it is only because I stood on the shoulders of giants." (I'm not so sure about "seeing further than others," but as I understand it, this does not save me from following a funny quote ritual.)

In toto, I am only acting as a storekeeper who, rattling keys, can lead you through the bins where ingenious discoveries gather dust.

Naturally, like any storekeeper, I can afford a couple of maxims about the contents of this pantry.

Since, as the reader of this book, I saw myself first of all, I, accordingly, was extremely concerned about the accuracy of formulations and quotations, about the balance of the conclusions and their purity from any categorism. (Categorism, "ideas", trends - you can and should regale the public, but not yourself.)

The Latin, which I (probably) overuse a bit, is not just old age pampering. In addition to all its other advantages, it creates significant interference and inconvenience to those whom I would not like to see among the so-called. readers this study.

Hypotheses and theories about the origin of intelligence are a field of conflicting doctrines. Some of them are frankly "mystical", some allow a certain percentage of "mysticism", i.e. confuses neurophysiology with the principles of "unknowable" and "sacred".

I am firmly based only on those discoveries that were made by the classical schools of neuroanatomy, and on the physiological, natural-science interpretation of any processes in the human brain or other mammalian animal.

Alias, for romantics and mystics of any kind, this book is absolutely meaningless and unpleasant.

Puto, any talk about the “secrets” of the brain and the “mysteries” of consciousness is possible only if the classical basic doctrines of neurophysiology are deliberately ignored, in the absence of a long and thoughtful sectional practice on brain preparations, on the unwillingness to evaluate consciousness, mind, thinking and intelligence as a direct and understandable consequence physiological processes and evolutionary history of the vertebrate brain.

Some complexity of the issue under study lies in its multidimensionality, in the impossibility of its solution only by the methods of neuroanatomy or neurophysiology.

If we limit ourselves to these two disciplines, we get the well-known effect of "phenomeni observantis se ipsum" (a phenomenon that observes itself, or, more precisely, a phenomenon that studies itself).

Sine dubio, consciousness, mind and thinking, taking place in a small space of the brain skull, obey, first of all, the laws of neurophysiology, respectively, can be understood and explained only in strict accordance with these laws. But there are a number of external (i.e., beyond the limits of neurophysiology itself) influential factors that must necessarily be taken into account in the study of thinking or mind.

These include data from geochronology, evolutionism, paleoanthropology, paleozoology, comparative anatomy and physiology, fixed history, histology, and (partly) genetics and clinical psychiatry.

Moreover, not a single phenomenon is able to evaluate itself, its size, place in the world order, significance and importance. To understand any natural phenomenon, it is necessary to understand its origin, “size” and meaning.

This applies to thinking and reason to the same extent as to any other natural phenomenon.

An idea of their development, since it is (first of all) the history of the physiological substrate of the brain and its functions, can partly be given by paleoanthropology and paleozoology.

But the questions of “size” and the place of these phenomena in the system of the universe can be solved only strictly “from outside”, i.e. only by methods accepted in that science that is accustomed to accurately, freely and coldly evaluate both worlds and molecules.

We have many examples of how “one-dimensional” attempts to resolve the issue of the essence of consciousness, mind, thinking and intellect as a result led to “psychological verbosity”, vulgar theology or some kind of confusion, which surprisingly could coexist with the most sophisticated understanding of the principle of operation of brain mechanisms. .