A history of the philosophy of mind in verse.

Here is a pretty darn good poem written by Nick Guice, a student of my sometime co-author and always good buddy Ted Poston.

"A History of the Philosophy of Mind"

Since a thinker first set out to find,

The diff'rence between substance and mind,

Did generations sit and ponder,

Decades, centuries, even longer,

to learn where soul and body bind.



The early Greeks did conjure that,

While on Lyceum steps they sat,

The transmigration of the spirit,

Brought divine awareness with-it,

And so mind wore body like a hat.



So then did come Platonic father,

Who said that Form was like our mother,

Not just giving rise to human beings,

But the origin of ten thousand things,

So the form of mind o'er all did hover.



A mill'nnia then did pass away,

As Christendom did have its way,

For this lengthy span did faith increase,

While such thoughts of mind did nearly cease,

'Till came a frenchman named Rene.



He sat and wrote in a dusky room,

And nearly by his thoughts consumed,

He dug the trench of established thought,

Until at last a foundation wrought,

And he penned, "Cogito ergo sum."



Then came the rise of Empiricism,

And Scientific Materialism,

Which said things were of a single kind,

But could find no place for conscious mind,

Foreboding news for Dualism.



As our scientific prowess grew,

The more convinced that we truly knew,

To physics would everything reduce,

Such simplicity seemed to seduce,

The minds which made possible the view.



Their motivations were not to blame,

Just a wild universe to tame,

Everything put in its ordered place,

In its time or charge or mass or space,

But Mind it seemed was not the same.



To no scientific view would it resign,

Nor success in attempts to de-fine,

No theories have bridged that mighty gap,

Betwixt qualia and its crafty trap,

How can logic's source to logic confine?



So we seek an exit from this maze,

A breeze to cleave through foggy haze,

A comprehension of the mind,

And synthesis to matter find,

So across that gap a bridge we'll raise.