Even mouse brain for the win?

 Even a Mouse Brain Reveals Staggering Complexity

Denyse O' Leary

The science media have been ablaze recently with a major achievement: Princeton neuroscientists have mapped the staggering complexity of a cubic millimetre of the visual area of a mouse’s brain — about a poppy seed’s worth. That was a remarkable achievement on account of the complexity of even a mouse’s brain.

Mouse Meets Matrix

PBS tells us that the mouse gave the scientists’ data by watching, among other things, The Matrix: (1999):

Thanks to a mouse watching clips from “The Matrix,” scientists have created the largest functional map of a brain to date — a diagram of the wiring connecting 84,000 neurons as they fire off messages.

Using a piece of that mouse’s brain about the size of a poppy seed, the researchers identified those neurons and traced how they communicated via branch-like fibers through a surprising 500 million junctions called synapses.

The massive dataset, published Wednesday by the journal Nature, marks a step toward unraveling the mystery of how our brains work. The data, assembled in a 3D reconstruction colored to delineate different brain circuitry, is open to scientists worldwide for additional research — and for the simply curious to take a peek. 

“HOW A MOUSE WATCHING ‘THE MATRIX’ HELPED SCIENTISTS CREATE THE LARGEST MAP OF A BRAIN TO DATE,” APRIL 9, 2025. THE PAPERS FROM THE PROJECT ARE HERE

At  the New York Times, science writer Carl Zimmer provides a bit of perspective.

The human brain is so complex that scientific brains have a hard time making sense of it. A piece of neural tissue the size of a grain of sand might be packed with hundreds of thousands of cells linked together by miles of wiring. In 1979, Francis Crick, the Nobel-prize-winning scientist, concluded that the anatomy and activity in just a cubic millimeter of brain matter would forever exceed our understanding.

“It is no use asking for the impossible,” Dr. Crick wrote.

Forty-six years later, a team of more than 100 scientists has achieved that impossible, by recording the cellular activity and mapping the structure in a cubic millimeter of a mouse’s brain — less than one percent of its full volume. In accomplishing this feat, they amassed 1.6 petabytes of data — the equivalent of 22 years of nonstop high-definition video. 

“AN ADVANCE IN BRAIN RESEARCH THAT WAS ONCE CONSIDERED IMPOSSIBLE”, APRIL 9, 2025

At the New York Times, science writer Carl Zimmer provides a bit of perspective:

The human brain is so complex that scientific brains have a hard time making sense of it. A piece of neural tissue the size of a grain of sand might be packed with hundreds of thousands of cells linked together by miles of wiring. In 1979, Francis Crick, the Nobel-prize-winning scientist, concluded that the anatomy and activity in just a cubic millimeter of brain matter would forever exceed our understanding.

“It is no use asking for the impossible,” Dr. Crick wrote.

Forty-six years later, a team of more than 100 scientists has achieved that impossible, by recording the cellular activity and mapping the structure in a cubic millimeter of a mouse’s brain — less than one percent of its full volume. In accomplishing this feat, they amassed 1.6 petabytes of data — the equivalent of 22 years of nonstop high-definition video. 

“AN ADVANCE IN BRAIN RESEARCH THAT WAS ONCE CONSIDERED IMPOSSIBLE”, APRIL 9, 2025

Materialism’s Last Stop

The underlying message of Zimmer’s article is that the human brain is really the same sort of thing, just more complex, and we will reduce it to a map. And, although no one quite says it, the human mind is to be understood as merely the output of a complex brain. The news release from Princeton made that clear:

“It’s just a beginning,” [team co-lead] Seung said. “But it’s opening the door to a new era of realistic brain simulations. And so the next question becomes — and people will ask — can that ever be done with a human brain? And then the next question is, well, even if you could simulate a human brain, and it was very faithful, would it be conscious?”

When asked what he thought about it, he laughed. “I don’t have any more authority to make a statement on that than you do. But when people say, ‘I don’t believe a simulation of a brain would be conscious,’ then I say, ‘Well, how do you know you’re not a simulation?’” 

SCOTT LYON, “SCIENTISTS MAP THE HALF-BILLION CONNECTIONS THAT ALLOW MICE TO SEE,” APRIL 9, 2025

The  problem with Seung’s reasoning is, of course, this: If we don’t know that we are not simulations, we also don’t know that anything we think we know is real. Life in The Matrix is a high price to pay in order to maintain a materialist view of the mind.

And if it takes a hundred scientists to map a cubic millimeter of a mouse’s brain, even the material world — never mind the immaterial world of the mind — is not likely to have a simple explanation.

On the triumph of the design heuristic

 Plato’s Revenge: Mathematical Biologist Richard Sternberg Foresaw Major Developments in Biology

Brian Miller

A week from today, Discovery Institute Press will release David Klinghoffer’s book Plato’s Revenge: The New Science of the Immaterial Genome. It can be pre-ordered here. The book traces the ideas and the intellectual journey of mathematical biologist Richard Sternberg, who offers rigorous scientific evidence that the true control center of life lies not in DNA alone, but in a timeless, non-material mathematical structure. Influenced by the renowned theoretical biologist Robert Rosen, Sternberg carries forward the tradition of relational biology — a framework increasingly recognized by visionary scientists as a foundation for the future of biological understanding. Drawing on its principles, Sternberg anticipated many of the most significant biological discoveries of the past two decades

Demise of Junk DNA

One of the clearest tests of the predictive power of evolutionary theory versus intelligent design concerns the proportion of the human genome that is nonfunctional. Under the evolutionary framework, a substantial amount of “junk DNA” — nonfunctional genetic material — is expected as a byproduct of random mutations ( here, here). In contrast, proponents of intelligent design predicted that most of the genome would have a function, even if not yet fully understood. 

In 2002, Richard Sternberg published a paper in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences challenging the assumption that vast portions of the genome are nonfunctional, proposing instead that much of this DNA likely serves important biological roles, such as regulating protein production. Other intelligent design theorists, including Forrest Mims, William Dembski, and Jonathan Wells, also predicted function in junk DNA. Subsequent research by the ENCODE project and other groups has supported this view, demonstrating that most of the genome is biochemically functional and undermining the earlier assumption that “junk DNA” was largely useless (here, here).

Information Beyond DNA

Sternberg also anticipated decades ago that much of the information for life resides outside of DNA. Multiple studies have confirmed this prediction. Jonathan Wells provided several examples in his 2014 review article “Membrane Patterns Carry Ontogenetic Information That Is Specified Independently of DNA.” More recently, Oxford physiologist Denis Noble argued that DNA is not the privileged center of control for organisms, but instead, “organisms control their genomes.” He summarizes his dethroning of DNA as follows:

To think that the genome completely determines the organism is almost as absurd as thinking that the pipes in a large cathedral organ determine what the organist plays. Of course, it was the composer who did that in writing the score, and the organist himself who interprets it. The pipes are his passive instruments until he brings them to life in a pattern that he imposes on them, just as multi-cellular organisms use the same genome to generate all the 200 or so different types of cells in their bodies by activating different expression patterns.

Similarly, developmental and synthetic biologist Michael Levin, at Harvard and Tufts, has argued that an animal’s overall body architecture is not directly determined by DNA but by electric fields generated by the developing embryo. He has also argued (here) for higher levels in the organizational hierarchy controlling lower levels:

A top-down model would specify how the target morphology is represented within tissues, what cellular processes underlie the computations that drive the system from a novel starting condition to that goal state (and stop when it has been achieved), and how those computations about large-scale anatomical metrics become transduced into low-level marching orders for cells and molecular signalling cascades….Patterns of bioelectric signalling have been shown to serve as master regulators (module activators) and prepatterns for complex anatomical structures, coordinating downstream gene expression cascades and single cell behaviours towards specific patterning. 

These and other researchers have validated Sternberg’s expectation of an extended genome (i.e., information beyond DNA). 

Mind Before Matter

Sternberg’s most striking prediction is that the genome is immaterial, implying that standard algorithms do not govern biological processes. This non-algorithmic view of life is gaining increasing recognition. As I wrote here last week, Garte, Marshall, and Kauffman (2025) recently emphasized emerging research that not only supports the non-algorithmic nature of biology but also argues that life is fundamentally governed by cognition (see, “New Article Calls for a Philosophical Revolution in Biology, Placing Mind Over Matter”). The centrality of cognition is further emphasized in the Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology volume Evolution “On Purpose”: Teleonomy in Living Systems, edited by Peter A. Corning et al., which features multiple chapters defending the foundational role of cognition and advancing the case for goal-directedness and purpose in biological systems.

Professor Michael Levin, mentioned earlier, coincides still more strikingly with Sternberg by arguing (here) that biology is governed by Platonic forms:

Here, I discuss an unconventional research program into the origin of these patterns. I argue that genetics and environment are not sufficient to explain or make use of the remarkable intelligence of the agential material of life. I argue that the current reliance on emergence is a mysterian approach that limits progress, and instead propose a systematic investigation of the patterns of life and mind that ingress into both biological and synthetic embodiments. In short, I make the metaphysical hypothesis that the emergent patterns we observe are not random but are part of an ordered Platonic space of forms which have a causal influence on the outcomes of evolution and engineering. 

He even argues that some of the Platonic forms correspond to minds:

I have argued for a Pythagorean or radical Platonist view in which some of the causal input into mind and life originates outside the physical world. A number of mathematicians, computer scientists, and even physicists, including Heisenberg, Tegmark, Deutsch, Ellis, and Penrose have expressed variants of this stance. But this position is unpopular with philosophers of mind because it is fundamentally a dualist theory (by emphasizing causes that are not to be found in physical events), and implies panpsychism (because a very wide range of physical objects could be interfaces to varieties of minds). I have argued that a kind of panpsychism is unavoidable, and it seems that by taking what mathematicians do seriously, we have already abandoned the physicalist worldview; all that remains is to notice that evolution (not just human mathematicians) is exploring the same space of patterns and embrace the idea that since we are patterns too, patterns can be agential (and thus, Platonic space can include minds, not just passive truths)

Sternberg may well have predicted and laid the groundwork for the next great scientific revolution. Only time will tell. 

What's in a name?VII

  

Find article here.

 

 

 

 

4. There is strong evidence that Matthew (and possibly other NT writers) wrote his Gospel in Hebrew (Aramaic). If this is so, the inspired Bible writer would surely have used the personal name of God! The Hebrew manuscripts at that time (and for many hundreds of years thereafter) contained the Name nearly 7000 times. Whenever Matthew (and the Hebrew-speaking Jesus and his Apostles) quoted from the Hebrew scriptures, he would have used the Name just as it is found in the Hebrew scriptures.

The WT Society also believes Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew (Aramaic):

"In the fourth century, Jerome, who translated the Latin Vulgate, reported: `Matthew, who is also Levi, and who from a publican came to be an apostle, first of all composed a Gospel of Christ in Judaea in the Hebrew language.... Who translated it after that in Greek is not sufficiently ascertained. Moreover, the Hebrew itself is preserved to this day in the library at Caesarea.' Since Matthew wrote in Hebrew, it is inconceivable that he did not use God's name, especially when quoting from parts of the `Old Testament' that contained the name." - p. 24, The Divine Name That Will Endure Forever, WTBTS, 1984.

Noted trinitarian scholar F. F. Bruce agrees that the Gospel of Matthew (at least) was originally written in Hebrew (Aramaic) and cites another source as evidence:

"Aramaic is known to have been the common language of Palestine, and especially of Galilee, in the time of Christ, and was in all probability the language which He and his Apostles habitually spoke. The New Testament writers usually call it `Hebrew,' thus not distinguishing between it and its sister language in which most of the Old Testament was written. Now, we have evidence of an early Aramaic document in another fragment of Papias [c. 60-130 A. D.]: `Matthew compiled the Logia [literally, "the collection" - Thayer] in the `Hebrew' speech [i.e. Aramaic], and everyone translated them [into Greek] as best he could.' " - p. 38, The New Testament Documents, Eerdmans Publ., 1992 printing.

So, whether originally written in Greek or "Hebrew," the writings of the New Testament should have used the Name of God, especially in quotes from the Old Testament.

And when we restore the name of God to the NT, we eliminate the confusing contradiction of Matt. 22:43-45 and its parallels (Mk 12:36-37; Lk. 20:42-44) where Jesus quoted Ps. 110:1.

"How does David in the Spirit call him `Lord,' [kurios] saying, `The LORD [kurios] said to my Lord [kurios], "sit at my right hand, until I put thine enemies beneath thy feet." ' If David then calls him `Lord,' [kurios] how is he his son?" - Matt. 22:43-45, NASB.

Literally this says in the NT Greek:

"How therefore David in spirit is calling him Lord [kurios] saying Said `Lord [kurios] to the Lord [kurios] of me Be sitting out of right hand of me until likely I should put the enemies of you beneath the feet of you'? If therefore David is calling him Lord [kurios], how son of him is he?"- The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, WTB&TS, 1985.

First, of course, it doesn't say "The LORD said..."; it actually says "LORD said..." because the original was "JEHOVAH" (without "the," of course) and "Lord" was substituted for this name later (still without "the").

Second, in this version there are two uses of "Lord" [kurios], but Jesus speaks as though there is only one (because there really was only one "Lord" [kurios in the Greek here] at the time he spoke it! The other word that later copyists changed to kurios was originally "JEHOVAH" as can be seen by actually looking at the OT manuscripts that have the scripture Jesus was quoting!).

Third, not only is it confusing to have two uses of kurios here, but, if we insist on this version, it would be grammatically much more accurate to select the first use of this word (the substitute for "JEHOVAH") as the one Jesus was referring to. Since he said, "If David calls him `Lord'..." but not "David calls him `the Lord' (or `my Lord')...", it would be proper to say that Jesus was referring to the first `LORD' (which is without the word "the") in that quote from the OT. In reality, of course, he was actually referring to the "second" use of kurios as found in modern texts! All this would be smoothed out if the name were simply restored to the NT where it obviously was originally: "JEHOVAH said to my Lord" as found in the original Hebrew Old Testament Scripture at Ps. 110:1 which Jesus was quoting - ASV.

"Since confession of Jesus as Lord was the mark of the Christian and since for Christians there was no other Lord, it was natural for Paul to speak of `the Lord' when he wished to refer to Jesus. It is true that the same title was used to refer to God the Father, and that this can lead to a certain ambiguity as to whether God or Jesus is meant (this is especially the case in Acts; ...); generally, however, `LORD' is used for God by Paul almost exclusively in quotations from the OT" - p. 590, New Bible Dictionary, Tyndale House Publ., 1982.

Again, if the name of God were restored, there would not be so much "ambiguity" because these uses of `Lord' in quotations from the OT were originally `JEHOVAH' and hence there was no ambiguity or risk of confusion at all until later copyists changed that divine name in the NT manuscripts to kurios!

5. Of course Jesus used the name "JEHOVAH" in such places. He was a speaker of Hebrew who was quoting (or reading) scripture to other speakers of Hebrew. Of course he would use the Hebrew scriptures rather than the Greek Septuagint scriptures when quoting to these people. It would have been ludicrous for Jesus to have quoted from the Septuagint to these people when most of them would not have understood the Greek language of the Septuagint in the first place.

The native-born Jews in Israel spoke, of course, Hebrew. The Roman conquerors and administrators of the Empire spoke Latin. And the many businessmen and commercial travelers who visited and resided in Israel understood, in addition to their own languages, the common language of commerce in the Mediterranean world: Greek.

Of course there were some Jews who could speak Latin and/or Greek. There were some Romans who could speak Greek (and probably even a very few who could speak Hebrew also). And there were undoubtedly some foreigners there who could speak Latin (and probably a very few who could speak Hebrew also). But, by and large, if you wished to communicate with the majority of the Jews, you would have to do it in Hebrew (or the closely-related Aramaic). And if you wished to communicate with the Romans, you would have to do it in Latin, and so on.

So when Jesus was teaching the Jews from the holy scriptures, he was doing so in Hebrew.

If we should doubt such an obvious conclusion that the majority of Jews did not understand Greek (and therefore Jesus would not have taught them by quoting or reading from the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint), we only need to look at John 19:19, 20.

"And Pilate wrote an inscription also .... Therefore this inscription many of the Jews read, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, Latin, and in Greek." - NASB

Obviously the Latin was so the Romans could read the information about Jesus, and the Greek was so the foreign merchants and travelers could read about Jesus. But Pilate certainly would not have gone to the trouble of writing 1/3 of the sign in Hebrew if most of the Jews could already read one of the other two languages on that sign! It is obvious from this passage alone that many of them could not understand Greek and needed to read Hebrew to understand what Pilate wanted them to know!

Therefore, Jesus must have quoted from the Hebrew Bible when reading to the Jews. And the Hebrew Bible which he quoted at

Mt 21:42 actually says: "This is JEHOVAH'S doing; it is marvelous in our eyes" (Ps. 118:23)

Mt 22:37 - "And you shall love JEHOVAH your God with all your heart..." (Deut. 6:5)

Mt 22:44 - "JEHOVAH said to my Lord: `Sit at my right hand...'" (Ps. 110:1)

Jn 12:38 - "... to whom has the arm of JEHOVAH been revealed?" (Is. 53:1)

6.

"Rabbi Yohanan and Rabbi Meir [`Second century rabbi who prepared a systematic edition of traditional Jewish law and doctrine, which paved the way for the final edition of the Mishnah' - p. 479, An Encyclopedia of Religion] are said to have made unfriendly puns on the word Euangelion [`the Greek word for "Gospel"' - p. 102] by altering its vowels to make it read 'Awen-gillayon or `Awon-gillayon, meaning [in Hebrew/Aramaic] something like `Iniquity of the Margin' ...." - p. 102, The New Testament Documents - Are they Reliable?, F. F. Bruce, Eerdmans Publ., 1992 printing.

So the word `margin' (gillayon) was used in a derogatory way for a Gospel ("most probably ... the Gospel according to Matthew" as first written in Hebrew or Aramaic - p. 102) of the Christians by these two very early Rabbis.

And when this word is made plural (`margins') it becomes gillayonim (or gilyohnim). Therefore, it is probable that this word was used derogatorily to denote copies of a Christian Gospel written in Hebrew (or Aramaic).

7. "From the middle of the 2^nd century AD [around 150 AD] Christians who had some training in Greek philosophy began to feel the need to express their faith in its terms [instead of the original traditional Jewish terms]" – The New Encyclopaedia Britannica.

8. We can see that the source of Halleluia in existing copies of the Septuagint is really two words in the original Hebrew. For example the Hahlayloo Yah of Psalm 146:1 is obviously two separate Hebrew words: Hahlayloo [`praise ye'] and Yah [`Jehovah']. And yet, our oldest existing copies of the ancient Septuagint show these two words combined into one `new' word in Greek: Halleluia. And the same Greek word, Halleluia [ JAllhlouia], which was found in the earliest copies of John's Revelation, was likewise treated by copyists of the 2nd century. Whether John himself had combined the two words into one for the benefit of those Hellenic Jews to whom he wrote (who were familiar with the term as it was found in the Septuagint) or whether early copyists had done it to conform with the Septuagint is not the point here.

9. And, of course, it was passed along from its Septuagint use to other early Christian writings:

"The more diligent in prayer are wont to subjoin in their prayers the `Hallelujah,' and such kind of psalms, in the closes of which the company respond. And, of course, every institution is excellent which, for the extolling and honoring of God, aims unitedly to bring Him enriched prayer as a choice victim." - Tertullian (3rd cent. A.D.), ch. 27, `On Prayer,' The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 3, Eerdmans Publ., 1993 printing.

"And afterwards the deacon holding the mingled cup of the oblation shall say the Psalm from those in which is written `Hallelujah' [in the Septuagint].... And afterwards the bishop having offered the cup as is proper for the cup, he shall say the Psalm `Hallelujah.' And all of them as he recites the Psalms shall say `Hallelujah,' which is to say: We praise Him who is God most high" - Hippolytus (c. 160-235 A.D.), `The Apostolic Tradition,' 26:29-30 as quoted from The Treatise on the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus of Rome, The Alban Press, London, 1992 ed.

10. Dr. F. F. Bruce correctly points out that, strictly speaking, the LXX deals only with the Law and not the whole Old Testament. Bruce writes, "The Jews might have gone on at a later time to authorize a standard text of the rest of the Septuagint, but . . . lost interest in the Septuagint altogether. With but few exceptions, every manuscript of the Septuagint which has come down to our day was copied and preserved in Christian, not Jewish, circles." (The Books and the Parchments, p.150). This is important to note because the manuscripts which consist of our LXX today date to the third century AD. Although there are fragments which pre-date Christianity and some of the Hebrew DSS agree with the LXX, the majority of manuscripts we have of the LXX date well into the Christian era. And, not all of these agree. - http://www.purewords.org/kjb1611/html/septuag.htm - RDB.