Neuroscience:
a branch of the life sciences that deals with anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, or molecular biology of nerves and nervous tissue and especially with their relation to behavior and learning.
Chaos/Noise:
virtually undetectable discrepancies in environment which play a major role in mutations that allow for evolution and environmental adaptations.
Darwinism:
a widely accepted theory that the origin and perpetuation of species of animals and plants occurs through natural selection and environmental adaptation due to mutation.
Materialism:
a theory that physical matter is the only or the fundamental reality and that all being, processes, and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or results of matter.
Physicalism:
a theory that the description terms of scientific language are reducible to terms which refer to spatiotemporal - defined by having space and time qualities - things or events or to their properties.
Determinism:
theory that acts of the will, occurrences in nature, or social or psychological phenomena are causally determined by preceding events or natural laws. (Thus it would be possible to fully determine the outcome of any process).
Dualism:
a theory generated by Descartes ("I sink, therefore I swam?") which states that body (matter) and mind (spirit) are separate entities. Also a viewpoint used to describe the internal "self" in relation to the external universe.
Consciousness:
1. "Clean, nice, precise definitions are what you get after you’ve done the science and you’ve got a nice theory. Before you have a good theory, often what you have to do is go with good examples, with phenomena where you’ve got quite a lot of agreement (Churchland)." 2. "perceiving, apprehending, or noticing with a degree of controlled thought or observation; awake; aware (Merriam 245)."
plutonic) (charonic