ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Neural Darwinism and component-system theory, and proposes a precise "cognitive equation of motion" governing the creative evolution of the network of neural processes. There is almost certainly no hope of methodically building a theory of mind from the neuron level up, based solely on empirical observations of neural behavior, without any 'leaps of level'. The brain is not predictable on the level of individual neuron behavior. The problem of pattern recognition, however, is too hard to be done by exhaustive search; some sort of insight is required to determine what sort of pattern to look for. In the Neural Darwinist view, the mind consists largely of a collection of 'neural maps', competing with one another and symbiotically reinforcing one another with all the complexity of an ecosystem. Edelman suggested that the smallest psychologically relevant entity is not the neuron but the neuronal group, the cluster of densely interconnected neurons containing say 100-100,000 neurons.
