SHERRINGTON’S ))NAN ON HIS NATURED. 65

Extra-physical Mental Features a .Necessary Conseyuence of Mind’s Extra-physical Gombinative Contingencies.

Another circumstance contributes still more to elevating Mind above the physically sensible and examinable. This is the fact, that Mental Integration comprises combinative contingencies un- realized and unrealizable in the inanimate physcial world. A limitation, which otherwise always attaches to four-dimensional space-time contingencies, has been removed in the Mental, and nicntalIy registered events can therefore combine in supra- or extra-physical ways as regards conjunction in time and space. Even if every elementary component of such a n integrative system were of materio-energetical nature itself, neither the system as a whole nor its higher and more complexly synthetized components could possibly fail to exhibit extraphysical features if the elements be con- joined in time and space with greater freedom than ever occurs in inanimate Space-time. Small wonder that Mind rises above what is material, energetical, spatial; above what is physically sensible. Nothing could elevate Mind more potently here than greater freedom to dispose of events in space and time. The essen- tial and mutual interdependence of the Physical and the Inani- mate Space-time testify to this potency; and so does the Quantum Field-Theory and Space-time Geometry.

Chapter 10: The Psycho-physical Dudism Compared to Wnve- dk Pnrticle-behaviour Dualism.

Other points especially stressed by Sherrington (Man on his Nature, p. 350) are also rendered very evident by the above, namely, that mental patterns are not altogether comparable to Quantum ones; that particle-wave dualisms are less profound or ))thorough-going)) than are psychological-physical dualisms; and that physical dualisms therefore only present certain analogies and parallels but in no way can be taken to contain any real solution of the psychological-physical enigma. The appearance and gradual evolution of higher a.nd lower forms of life, all bodily organs, func- tions, cells, and structures; the whole of metabolism, genetics, and all apsychical nervous functions including a multitude of ex- ceedingly complex rcflex patterns can and must, according to Sherrington, be reduced to Chemistry and Physics. Again, the whole

66 GOSTA EKEHORN.

of both organic and inorganic Chemistry and Physics in their turn can and must be reduced to Quantum Mechanics, to conjunc- tions and combinative effects of Quantum Packets arushing about with great velocity through general emptiness,. And the infinitely manifold ways in which these Packets can combine and build up however complex synthetic atonis and molecules can and must - just as corresponding energetical manifestations - be reduced to two basic kinds of Patterns, namely, Patterns of particle- resp. wave-behaviour and to secondary combinations or derivations thereof. Everything Physical and Chemical, including everything Bio-physical and -chemical, must accrue from these two Pattern- types resp. from the still more remote space-time Geometrical Field, from which these two Patterns may finally derive (Schroe- dinger). However, nothing of bodily life, forms, structures, or func- tions; nothing of Metabolism, Genetics, or Reflex neurology, etc.; nothing of all this takes us outside the Cheillical or Physical: the whole of it is describable in terms of matter and energy up to the very point where physical elements become too small to retain distinct individuality and definite per se qualities. First here a t the deepest foundations of physical phenomena does anything Transcendental appear in Physics, namely, the Transcenden- talism of pure and direct Causation divested of derived and indirect effects. And here this Transcendentalism remains, build- ing up basic patterns, and conjoining and spezifying pattern- elements. The entire mateIio-energetical world is then built up from these basic physical patterns and their elements; no end of further quantities, qualities, and phenomena are integrated from these basic patterns and elements; phenoniena not speci- fied in the elements are created by endless successions of in- tegrative syntheses and re-syntheses.

But all this successive specification and integrative creation of new synthetic factors and qualities i s tlLoroughly pliysicccl throughout the inanimate world; it proceeds from beginning to end under the ultimate direction of inanimate Space-time Geometry and its con- sequent particle- and wave-behaviour Patterns. However wonder- ful all these integrative specifications and syntlietic creations may be, they are all of the same great generah k ind , tlbe Physical: they never transcend or deviate from the Physical road as once established by the basic patterns of particle-or wave-behsviour. Nothing extra-physical can possibly introduce itself as long as basic Patterns remain physical - i . e. ,subject to the general contin-

SFIERRINGTON’S XMAN ON HIS NATURE,,. 67

gencies and limitations of usual four-dimensional space-time Geometry; there is nowhere any place for the extra-physical here.

First the removal of some principal and characteristic limitation otherwise always present in both basic and derived Patterns can here introduce essentially different Patterns, i. e. Patterns that trans- cend the combinative contingencies present in ordinary Space- time Geometry and its derivations. Radically new and different conibinative Contingencies thus becoming possible, essentially d i f - ferent spthetic combinations become possible as well.

Hence, a new potentiality has arisen in Mind, and certain pre- viously non-existing possibilities have been created, and nothing can now prevent factors and events from combining, sooner or later, in the way thus rendered possible, provided only that they are sufficiently undetermined so as not to possess characters un- suitable for dovetailing in with the new contingencies. And the required indeterminacy may have some connection to the facts, that really basic physical elements actually are rather in- determinate in themselves, and that their qualities depend upoii the patterns in which they partake, and upon the combinative contingencies of these patterns.

Chapter 11 : Alexis Carrel on Physiological Time’.

The idea that the Mental essentially differs from everything Physical and Reflex because of greater freedom of conjunction in Time and consequently also in Space (see p. 53-57) takes us apparently far away from the ordinary regions and problems of biological research. But Sherrington is adamantine in his views that the Mental is not entirely reducible to matter, energy, or purely physical patterns; that the Mental therefore comprises Something re,aching outside or above the purely physical and re- flex; and that this Something is responsible for the difference be- tween the blind, mechanical, robot-like, and genetically predeter- mined features of all reflex and biochemical or biophysical inte- gration resp. the much freer and more pliable actions of Mind. He finds this difference every time and everywhere the Mental and the Non-mental are compared; and the more he discusses and con-

A. Carrcl. Rockefeller Institute: Physiological Time; Science, Dec. l?, 1931, vol. 74, no. 1929, p. 618-21. I remain indebted for this reference to Carrel’s former pupil and collaborator, Dr. Lars Santesson of Stockholm.