Peter Putnam was a physicist who’d palled around with Albert Einstein, John Archibald Wheeler, and Niels Bohr — three of the 20th century’s most brilliant minds. Working as a janitor in Houma, Louisiana he died to a drunk driver in 1987.
Only two or three times in my life have I met thinkers with insights so far reaching, a breadth of vision so great, and a mind so keen as Putnam’s
This individual has piqued my interest, I’ve become fascinated with their work and have spent the past few hours reading into them. I’ll be returning to his ideas many times before I can really grok some of them.
Excerpt from Search for Putnam
The papers are extremely difficult to read. Putnam gives exacting, meanings to old words and you need to get a foothold inside to begin to understand. You will not skim a few pages and get enlightenment. It took me many years to break into some understanding. But I believe Putnam’s brain model works.
The below quotation describes cutting edge theory in neuroscience. It closely mirrors what Putnam wrote and taught about sixty years ago. Putnam’s description is in the language of physics model building. Neuroscientists need to definitively determine that language before it becomes real for them. Every thousand years or so someone comes along and integrates the current science and current morals into a single comprehensive world view - think Augustine and Aquinas. I believe Putnam is in that order.
Thinking…involves interactions between signaling pathways. Decision-making appears to be a “winner take all” process in which many different neuron clusters representing alternate action choices compete by inhibiting each other. Evidence supporting each action choice increases the spiking activity of the neurons representing that choice. These neurons inhibit the neurons representing other choices, leading to a multi-way competition among neuron clusters. Eventually the evidence supporting one choice as optimal overtakes all the others and succeeds in suppressing the alternatives, becoming the clear winner. Once one hypothesis or choice begins to overtake others, the activated neuron cluster (called a “cell assembly”) sets into motion the processes of action and motor control that produces a behavior of some sort, such as announcing a decision or acting. The above description is a dramatic simplification of what is actually occurring based on current theories and models. Almost none of this has been definitively determined yet
Paul King, Neuroscientist, 2020