ABSTRACT
Learning is a physical, biological process, the ability to modify output adaptively in response to experience. The physical basis of learning implies some basic features of human learning. The first constraint is that there are physical limits to what we can learn as a single individual (though we can learn far more than we do at present). A more sophisticated set of constraints are about how people learn, such as the limits imposed by the senses, though they are not as rigid as they might seem. For example, surgeons can carry out microsurgery with movements that are hard to see with the naked eye, people can understand speech played at hundreds of words per minute, and extraordinarily difficult calculations can be performed in seconds by some
savants (or people who train themselves in calculations). The mind is essentially a function of the brain: the brain is the organ; the mind is the pattern of activity within it. Understanding learning will mean understanding the process of making minds.
