I am keeping myself from shopping new book titles to review what I already have. One of the early purchases was "A User's Guide to the Brain" by John J. Ratey, MD. I have read other Ratey books and I benefit from his writing. When I read some of that book before, it was about 2008. I wasn't familiar with the Kindle's ability to highlight worthwhile comments and create a single file of them so I really didn't highlight much. Now as I go through the book, I find very valuable insights.
In graduate school, I, like many others, was interested in WFF's, - well-formed formulas. I was being charmed by certainty, perfection, total correctness. Ratey wrote in 2002 that "The sooner we replace our mechanistic model of the brain with an ecologically centered, system-view, the better off we will be, for such a model better accounts for much of human experience." I translate this sentence with an awareness of the fascination with developing the RIGHT formula. Ratey emphasized that we humans do not operate formulaically but instead work with metaphors and impressions.
