Posts filed under: meme

Thomas Kuhn (1970) arrived at his concept of the paradigm from his interest in the history of science. Because science is so well documented in objective form, it provides the ideal resource for study of the way a group advances...
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I learned psychiatry in a mental hospital, which had its spectacular moments of irrational chaos, but the loony bin I analyse in my book, “Welcome”, is this world that contains us all. As a psychiatrist I had no difficulty recognising the insanity...
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In 1954 the first antipsychotic drug, chlorpromazine, appeared. It calmed the acutely disturbed psychotic patient remarkably well. In the decade that followed chemists produced variations, which did much the same, but all had side-effects. They induce a dullness of mind...
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We feel the masters of our thoughts. We have no awareness of the automatic processing that makes perception meaningful and thought possible. Nor does self-awareness bring home how much our ideas come from others. We use the knowledge and skills...
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Pill pushing has inevitability in the best of all possible worlds. It brings good and bad. It reflects the free enterprise that built the modern world. The bonanza of effective medication that capitalism produced seen besides the insignificant output of...
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The Ancient Greeks made great strides in knowledge using mind exercises alone. The analysis of the irreducible units of matter brought Democritus to a remarkably modern understanding of atoms and energy. Aristotle sought the atom, so to speak, of thought....
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Schizophrenia produces the epitome of madness. It generates wild ideas of contact with the metaphysical and supernatural, compelling hallucinations and utter strangeness, which made it seem to pre-modern societies divine or satanic possession. It deranges meme production (see “The Atoms...
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