What's Inside Our Heads

There are things we can only understand by comparing them to something else, something different but similar in some way. We understand by analogy and metaphor. Science couldn't understand the mechanics of the human heart until the steam engine was invented. The mind is a persistent puzzle because its workings are invisible, but we understand it a bit better because we've created artificial intelligence. The brain works a bit like the internet, with all its imperfections and unreliability. Firing off thoughts, collating them, making judgments, balancing belief and disbelief. I guess that's what this drawing is about. It's a sketch of a floating metaphor. The guy contemplating it from above makes me think of Rembrandt's painting of Aristotle contemplating the bust of Homer. I always think of that painting when I pull down our Julia Child cookbook with its photograph of Julia contemplating a lump of bread dough.