Brain and soul: new ways of looking at an old problem 

Author: José Manuel Giménez Amaya

Brief CV

José Manuel Giménez Amaya is Full Professor of Science, Reason and Faith and director of group of research Science, Reason and Faith of the University of Navarra. D. in Medicine and Surgery from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, where he has also been Full Professor of Anatomy and Embryology in his School of Medicine. D. in Philosophy from the University of Navarra. He has been Visiting Professor of Neuroscience in the following foreign institutions: Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Rochester University Medical School and University of California at San Diego, in the United States; Aarhus Universitet, in Denmark; and Heidelberg Universität, in Germany.

Abstract

The main ideas that I would like to transmit in my chapter are as follows:

1. The neuroscience is a biological discipline, which was aimed in its foundation as an interdisciplinary common research. That is, in my opinion, the main reason for showing a great ability of growing in knowledge integration as we have seen and experienced in the last forty years.

2. However, one of the most remarkable hints in this integrative development could be summarised in the following question: why the humanities studies have recently been of great interest for the neuroscience itself ?

3. To answer this crucial interdisciplinary enquiry, I will try to give you an idea about how difficult it has been for this neurobiological discipline to fully develop an explanation of the human being as a whole from the unique perspective of the functioning of the nervous system.

4. In a final approach and in contrast with the above-mentioned in n. 3, I will attempt to illustrate how coherent and consistent are the recent neurobiological discoveries (specially related to the field of the systems neurobiology) and the anthropological view of the aristotelian-thomistic philosophical tradition.