Despite being separated by more than 2,000 years of history, neuroscience and philosophy have a strong link that unites them: they both share an interest in the brain.
Hippocrates said that “walking is man’s best medicine”
Aristotle founded his school, the Lyceum, on the outskirts of Athens, by walking while teaching, and from this emerged the peripatetic school (thinking while walking).
Kant took almost methodical daily walks at the same time and along the same route through the woods near his home town (present-day Kaliningrad), because it was essential for his intellectual work.
Rousseau also became fan of long walks after writing his “Discourse on the Sciences”, and he captured this in his “Daydreams of the Solitary Stroller”, in which he linked thinking, dreaming and walking.
Nietzsche said that walking maintained the fluidity of his thought and that only thoughts that come to us on foot are of value and that they are of value.
Thoureau also acknowledged that “the moment my legs start to move, my thoughts start to flow”.
Kierkegaard wrote that “every day I come closer to wellness and walk away from illness”.
Dickens, Baudelaire, Woolf, among others, were also fans of walking to keep their minds clear. One of the most famous, well-known and celebrated walks in the world is the Philosophenweg (Philosophers’ Walk) in Heildelberg.
Closer in time we have examples such as chess master Bobby Fischer playing tennis before his games. Gary Gasparov also prepared his brain for chess by doing physical exercise every day. Nowadays, there are also well-known meetings of large technology companies that are held by walking, “cowalking”, to stimulate thinking. to stimulate thinking.
What philosophers already intuited and experienced, neuroscience now explains: moving is mainly beneficial for the brain. Movement is intelligence because it requires continuous decision-making in order to adapt as well as possible to the change caused by movement. Without movement there is no learning. Therefore, if you want to improve intelligence, creativity, mood and concentration, movement is a good way.
The body and the brain constitute a single functional organism with a very complex, fragile, singular and mobile functioning. Its functioning is based on the interaction between the different organs that mutually feed each other and that, through the mind, interact with a physical and social environment. And as such, and from this perspective of the unique functional system, we must recognise that just as there is no doubt about the role of the brain on the body, the body itself has an important role in the capacity to influence the brain.
No one will dispute the importance and hierarchical superiority that the brain and the entire Central Nervous System has within the control and direction system of our organism. But that does not mean that it is independent. On the contrary, all brain functions rely on the stimuli it perceives from the environment to adapt.
“The brain is in constant communication with the body. The body’s physical signals give it a quick summary of what is happening and what can be done”.
D. Eagleman in “The Brain: Our Story“
It is well known that many of the great thinkers who have existed maintained a routine of daily physical activity because, as F. Nietzsche pointed out, “Walking helps to maintain the fluidity of thought”. In fact, for Nietzsche the history of philosophy is the history of a misunderstanding of the body because questions produced rational or intellectual answers that were not only separate from the body but in opposition to it. Nietzsche’s philosophical idea sought to reclaim the importance of the body and to place it at the centre of gravity of life. He believed that consciousness is the most imperfect and defective mental tool because it is the most recent in the development of the human being and because it depends to a large extent on drives that are outside of knowledge.
However, there is still a certain dual thinking that separates the brain and the body. Although it was another philosopher, Descartes, who was the main representative of this separation, others have already experienced that this relationship is much deeper and that we are still far from understanding it. Professor Antonio Damasio in his book “Descartes’ error” explains that Descartes’ famous phrase “I think, therefore I am” is just the opposite of the interpretation of the relationship between the body and the mind. Professor Damasio rather puts it as: I exist, I have a living organism that moves, therefore I think.
Even in different times and with different perspectives, Philosophy undoubtedly has a lot to do with Neuroscience. One knows while the other explains what is known.