All animals share the capability to react on the dynamics of their living environments by coordinated body movements. Evolution has developed various solutions to implement such capabilities. How complex behaviours work in non-vertebrates may quite differ from the implementation within the central nervous system of vertebrates. For vertebrates, the neurosciences have revealed that most body movements are controlled by multiple, coordinated activities in the sensory cortex and the motor cortex. However, that does not mean that these behaviours follow prescribed algorithms. Animals including humans are no automata that reproduce the same behaviours constantly.
Evolution has found a remarkable efficient solution to let vertebrates adopt to changing characteristics in their living environments. Vertebrates are system thinkers. They have an understanding of the scenarios they are exposed to including the current state and how it may develop. As long as reality follows this scenario view, they feel relaxed and continue their current activities (Goldstein, 2015). This changes, if something unexpected happens or if the further situational development may lead to dangerous situations. Then, attention processing starts to activate multiple regions in the cerebral cortex for evaluating what happens and what may be an adequate response to the threat. One third of a second later, a specific brain wave indicates a moment of consciousness, and afterwards we may be able to talk about the event (Dehaene, 2014).
Some further conclusions may be drawn from the neuroscientific observations. First, while multiple regions within the cerebral cortex show increased activity during attention processing, others may be inhibited by even temporarily reducing the frequency of nerve impulses below the idle frequency necessary to maintain the chemo-electrical equilibrium necessary for survival. This may be a hint that we do not possess a globally consistent world view, and that systems thinking means thinking in scenarios offsite any kind of universal holism. Second, attention processing is not always dependent from actual observations. For example, when relaxed or even sleeping the cerebral cortex sometimes shows similar activity patterns like in attention processing. Most likely, we learn and adopt our scenario views in those phases. Over time, new behavioural patterns are transferred being processed in future by the sensory and motor cortices only.
Observations are phenomena raising attention. Without at least a single observer there are no observations at all. It is at the discretion of the observer to rate phenomena as observations. In the same situation, not all humans will make the same observations as they may pay their attention to different aspects of reality. Individual knowledge and experience influence attention processing. With increasing knowledge and experience in a field, observations concerned with the expertise are more specific usually. The contextual understanding becomes more detailed and wider. The psychologist and Nobel Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman (1934-2024) talked about a ten-years rule to develop reliable intuitions in a particular field (Kahneman, 2011). Empirical research on creativity reports the same result regarding innovations with high societal impact. In addition, genetic and most likely epigenetic dispositions have an impact, too (Weisberg, 2006). Overall, observations are always a creative act of an individual. They become more noticeable as less an observation is shared by others.
Dehaene, S. (2014): Consciousness and the Brain – Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts. Viking, New York NY, US.
Goldstein, E. B. (2015): Cognitive Psychology – Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience. 4th Ed. Cengage Learning, Stamford CT, US.
Kahnemann, D. (2011): Thinking – Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York NY, US.
Weisberg, R. W. (2006): Creativity – Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Science, Invention, and the Arts. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken NJ, US.
