It always puzzled me as a little boy that when I ate bacon it turned into a boy, and when my cat ate bacon it turned into a cat, even when, as was not unusual, we ate from the same piece of bacon. No matter what we ate in common, his food became a cat and mine became a boy.

Many years later I found myself dealing temporarily with an analogous problem. I was trying to write the electrical differential equations of the nervous system to describe how it is, that whatever the temperature outside may be, the human body stays around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

We have all experienced, willingly or otherwise, the tremendous and continuous high level noise from the loudspeakers of rock groups, or the enormous dynamic range of a full symphony orchestra from almost inaudible to immensely powerful; song bird to thunder storm.

When the explorer Magellan was rowed ashore from his ship to land in the Yucatan, the natives were astonished to see him appear apparently out of nowhere. Captain Cook experienced the same phenomenon when mapping the coasts of New Zealand and other islands in the area. The natives were completely unable to see the great sailing ship anchored just off shore. It was out of their experience and therefore beyond their imagination. So they could not see it. It took a lot of work before the shamans could see the ships and pass on the experience to the tribesmen.

This is history. The same thing happens today when scientists embedded in the rational part of their brain cannot see things that don’t fit into their carefully built left brain categories. Intelligence and the ability to see are irrelevant. The natives had fine vision in the jungles and deserts, but they could not see what they could not think.