Organization: What Cities And Brains Have In Common

By Mark Changizi | August 27th 2009 08:21 PM | 2 comments |

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ABOUT MARK CHANGIZI

Mark Changizi, PhD, is an assistant professor of cognitive science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His research areas tend to concern the evolutionary function and design principles governing...Full Bio

Mark
Changizi

You may recall the “China Brain” thought experiment about consciousness, which goes something like this: if each person in China were to mimic the activity of a neuron using cell phones to communicate with one another, would this China-sized brain like Chinese food? I may be missing some of the philosophical nuances in the question, but as a one-time philosopher, I know enough about consciousness to know I have nothing remotely worthwhile to say about it.

So let me set consciousness aside. Here’s a different kind of “China Brain” question more up my alley: Are the people of China actually organized in a brain-like fashion? This is not a thought experiment, but a genuine question. A silly question, you might say. But countries do tend to be cohesive complex systems that function via the movement of people, goods and information. In fact, cities are more cohesively organized than countries, and the same question can be asked of them: Are cities organized like brains?/.../