I summarize three millennia of exploration of mind and brain, with the conclusions that observations on brain biology in relation to behavior provide our best source of new understanding, that we have sufficient data to provide new insights into the human condition, that we need new concepts by which to organize the data, and that recent developments in nonlinear dynamics can give us the necessary foundation. I review the nature of state variables.
Dynamics is the study of change in the state of something.
In brains that thing has been identified over the centuries with nerve spirits, energy, information, and quanta. I explain how to model Neuroactivity with dynamics from measurements of electrochemical brain operations. To that end I define the emergent activities of masses of neurons forming populations, for which some but not all of their macroscopic properties can be derived from the microscopic properties of their component neurons. I sketch the relations between observed movements of bodies and minds as the structure of behavior. I propose a central role for the limbic system as the organ of intentionality.