Does Your Heart Control Your Thoughts?
Okay, I admit that my title is meant to be a bit clickbaity. But with clickbaity gusto, I’ll double down and begin by reminding you that Aristotle, who many well-educated people regard as a pretty smart dude, believed that the conscious mind resided in the heart. If you put down all your modern knowledge for a minute, it’s easier to find the idea quite sensible. Consider this utterly imaginary vignette. Aristotle recognizes, through introspection, that when his mind races with emotion, his heart also changes its pace. Thus, Aristotle hypothesizes that the heart is the seat of the soul and decides to do some experiments. He designs an experiment and replicates it in many different types of animals. In this experiment, Aristotle lesions the animal’s heart, and in every case, all behavior indicative of consciousness immediately ends. The result strongly matches some observational data, where accidents caused lesions to the hearts of humans. He also discovers a method to stop the heartbeat through his studies, but only for brief periods. He boldly asks his research assistant to stop his own heart but only for 45 seconds. In this conclusive study, he finds that when his heart is arrested, he immediately becomes unconscious and remains so for the duration of time his heart is stopped. Yet, when his heart begins functioning again, he quickly regains consciousness.
