Gary Poster, with essential assists from Galyn Norwood, Phiroon Phihakendr, Jose Quijada, Pavandeep Kalra. The Human Genome Project aims to specify the location and structure of all 100,000 or so genes in the human body. But that catalog, which will soon be completed, will be simply the springboard for understanding what all the genes do. Only then shall we understand the subtleties of human behavior and how human personality evolves in the course of early life by the interaction of genetic and environmental influences. How the brain manages to think is a conundrum with a millennial time scale.
All animals have brains so as to be able to move about.
But thinking involves the consideration of alternative responses, many of which have not been experienced but have been merely imagined. The faculty of being conscious of what is going on in the head is an extra puzzle. Then there came into being a tiny speck of superheated space that contained enough energy to create all the stars and galaxies that fill the sky-with enough left over to drive the expansion of the universe ever since. One of the intellectual triumphs of our century, which stems from what is called quantum physics, is the understanding of how very high temperatures can create matter. Temperature is inseparable from radiation.