Potential landscapes

And here is now my (dynamic) view of the brain:

"POTENTIAL landscape" is a term used by mathematicians, physicists, chemists, et al.

Originally (see Pokorny 1959 in [1]), the age-old indoeuropean term "poti" itself perhaps only meant "self" and can still be seen in terms like "omnipotence", "possibility", Latin "posse" (= "potis sum" = "I am mighty" > "CAN", "I am ABLE to"), "to possess" (< potis + sedere > to be RICH, i.e., to have a lot of possibilities), etc.

Interestingly, a map-maker (or: Self? brain? nervous system? body?) may also be viewed as such a dynamic Potential landscape. Out of such a dynamic Potential landscape – virtually containing perhaps myriads of superposed and permanently shifting “attractor landscapes” –, only a few POSSibilities (or maps or “state spaces” or "attractor landscapes") may actually be “active” or “realized” or “retrieved” or “reached” or “attained” in this very moment “here and now”.

And interestingly enough, potential landscapes have now been modelled on several spatial and temporal scales – from macroscopic evolutionary fitness landscapes and ontogenetic landscapes down to microscopic membrane potentials and molecular energy density functionals...

However, "we" still lack a total map (or: total potential function) of the brain on all spatio-temporal scales. That means: "we" still lack a Laplacian demon of an individual's brain – which would enABLE "us" to predict ALL its behavioural possibilities...

And such a Laplacian demon of the brain may indeed be imPOSSIBLE, since the "brain" as an open (and ever-shifting...) system is also permanently modified by contingent perturbations ("sensory stimulation"), so that "we" would even have to have the potential function of at least the individual's environment (or "Umwelt")...

And that's why Nicholas of Cusa already noted in the 15th century, that such a potential function may always be reserved to a "God" itself (as the "potential itself" or in Cusanus' Latin: as the "posse ipsum").

In the meantime – during this "hunt" for potential functions on all levels – please also note that maps themselves may (only) be potential Landscapes... (or: Potential landscapes?). But the mapological terms (map-maker, maps) are much more "neutral" than all these terms used by physicists, biologists, et al. (like "Potential landscape", "attractor landscape", "basin of attraction", "spin glass transition", "fitness landscape", etc.).

And by the way: the only thing that you CAN really POSSESS at all, is neither sex nor money, but only "your brain" or POTENTIAL landscape...

(See also my text: "What is mapology?", point 23, in [2] and > My Static Map of the Brain [3] )

(Cf. also my Dallas Lecture of Feb 2008 at [4], Slide 23. - For the animation above I would like to thank here the Max-Planck-Institutes of Tübingen (Prof. Valentino Braitenberg, Prof. Dr. Almut Schüz, Matthias Valverde, Dr. Steffen Stoewer, and Martin Breidt), and Norbert Welsch from www.welsch.com).