FATHALI M. MOGHADDAM and NAOMI LEE
Department of Psychology
Georgetown University

Brain Plus Culture Equals Mind? Identifying Enabling Conditions for Human Life

The Mind as a Scientific Object: Between Brain and Culture.
Edited by Christina E. Erneling and David Martel Johnson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. 549 pp. Cloth, $98.50.

The Brain–is wider than the Sky
For–put them side by side
The one the other will contain
With ease–and You–beside
— Emily Dickinson (1980, p. 135)

The mind holds a special, mystical place in contemporary Western culture, something like the heart holds in some Eastern cultures. Modern technologies allow us to examine the brain in action and even record sound and activity in single cells, but this has not dispelled the mystery of the mind, any more than heart surgery has eliminated the mystical significance of the heart in some Eastern cultures. In Farsi the word del () is much more expansive than the word ghalb (), representing the physical entity "heart." Del can be translated as "heart," but it can also mean "mind" and "courage." A complaint in Farsi about "my ghalb" probably would result in a person being taken for a medical checkup, and a complaint about "my del" would be more likely to be seen as a cry for psychological help and sympathy.