"Wonder, or radical amazement, is a way of going beyond what is given in thing and thought. Refusing to take anything for granted, to regard anything as final."[1]
Not so long ago my laboratory came into the proud possession of a computer. Very quickly we learned the fun of communicating with this mechanical mentor. Our first encounter involved twelve rather mysterious switches which had to be set up (U) or down (D) in a sequence of patterns, each pattern to be deposited in the computer memory before resetting the switches. Twenty such instructions or patterns constituted what is called the "bootstrap" program. Only after this had been entered could we "talk" to the computer–and it to us–via an attached teletype. For example:
DUUUUUDDDDUD
DDDDDDDDUUDD
DUUUDDUDUUUD
DUDDUDDDUUDU
DDUDDDDUUUUU and so on.
Bootstrapping is not necessarily an occasional occurrence. Whenever a fairly serious mistake is made–and mistakes were made often at the beginning–the computer's control operations are disrupted and we must start anew by bootstrapping.
Imagine setting a dozen switches twenty times and repeating the process from the beginning every time an error is committed. Imagine our annoyance when the bootstrap didn't work because perhaps on the nineteenth instruction an error was made in setting the eighth switch. Obviously, this was no way to proceed.
Computer programmers had early faced this problem and solved it simply. Conceptually, the twelve switches are divided into four triads and each combination of up or down within each triad is given an Arabic numeral. Thus,
D D D became 0
D D U became 1
D U D became 2
D U U became 3
U D D became 4
U D U became 5
U U D became 6
U U U became 7
Conceptually, switching the first toggle on the right becomes a 1, the next left becomes a 2, the next after this a 4, and the next an 8. If more than a triad of switches had been necessary, if, for instance, our computer had come with sixteen switches, we should have conceptually divided the array into quads. Thus the bootstrapping program now consisted of a sequence of twenty patterns of four Arabic numerals, such as:
3722
0014
3456
2215
1037 etc.
and we were surprised at how quickly those who bootstrapped repeatedly, actually came to know the program by heart. Certainly fewer errors were made in depositing the necessary configurations–the entire process was speeded and became, in most cases, rapidly routine and habitual. Once the computer is bootstrapped it can be talked to via a teletype in simple alphabetical terms, for example, JMP for jump, CLA for clear the accumulator, TAD for add, etc. But each of these mnemonic devices merely stands for a configuration of switches. In fact, in the computer handbook the arrangement for each mnemonic is given in Arabic notation: e.g. CLA = 7200. This in turn is easily translated into UUUDUDDDDDDD should we be forced to set the switches on the computer by hand because the teletype has gone out of commission.
In the first instance, then, programming is found to be the art of devising codes, codes that when hierarchically organized facilitate learning, remembering and reasoning. The power of the coding process is not to be underestimated. Should you doubt this, try next month to check your bank statement against your record of expenditures and do it all using Roman rather than Arabic numerals. Can you imagine working out our national budget in the Roman system? Next let me turn to an analysis of the classes of codes engendered by the brain. These must account for the existence of subjective states such as perceptions and feelings; for the achievement of acts in the organism's environment; for the construction of signs and symbols by which organisms communicate with each other; and for the composition of propositions, the tools with which man reasons and has fashioned his culture. Research on the brain mechanisms relevant to each of these classes has in recent years yielded some fascinating surprises (Pribram, 1971) [9]. Let me share some of these surprises with you in the search for meaning even if at times the connection between brain, behavior and meaning will appear to be remote. My route is a deliberate one, however, because for me: "Knowing [about meaning has not been] due to coming upon something, naming and explaining it. Knowing has been due to something forcing itself on [me]." [1].
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