Ancient History of Neuroscience

Only as recently as the past few decades, technology and collaboration with different fields of science has developed to the point of today's effective brain mapping technologies. Where did brain science start, and what are the limitations of our technological adolescence?
Aristotle, during 4BC deemed the brain to be the AirConditioner of the body, its principle function he assumed, was to prevent the body from overheating due to the heart's activity. He famously said "There is nothing in the intellect that is not in the Senses" he assumed all the sense "spirits", (what we may call information) must come together in a sensus communis.

A Roman Physician, called Galen in 1AD was the first to see and describe what we now know as the purpose of the brain. Based on the observations done himself and by other early Alexandrian anatomists, Galen noted that the brain must be the space of mental activity, (not the heart as Aristotle had thought and taught.) Galen noticed a correlation between brain injuries and abnormal behaviour states leading him to the conclusion that the brain is the seat of the animal soul, that which governs our animal-like behaviour. Galen also described two other souls he believed were contained in the body.

Over the Middle ages and Renaissance, anatomy and study of the human body got better and more ofthe body was understood by the physicians and anatomists. The brain however was less understood, more structures and processes were seen and defined, yet still the supernatural ideas of animal soul and spirits that take up space dominated study of the brain.

It wasn't until the 1600s that skeptism over the concept of an animal soul and sense spirits began. English Physician Thomas Willis and Danish anatomist Nicolaus Steno both published works on the anatomy of the brain with critiques of previous conclusions on the nature of the mind and brain. About sensus communis Steno said, " That beautifully arched cavity does not exist" and further, that that brain was not formed as a God's design for the purpose of containing spirits, but the structure must have formed "accidently from the complication of the brain". (this is still a sound theory)

Mind became synonymous with Soul and the Brain was (and still is by many) thought to contain the immaterial spiritual soul.. the stuff that makes us conscious and human.

By the 1800s the problem of other minds was brought up as an epistemological(theory of knowledge) critique by philosophers like Mills and Bertrand Russell. The thought is that I can never know for sure that other people have minds (like I know I have a mind) based by observing other's behaviour alone. The concept of zombies, the fact that in our imaginations it is not so far fetched to imagine mindless creatures, looking and acting like a human but clearly not alive, only responding to an urge to devour and destroy. Mindless. How can we say for sure

anyone around us really has a brain? How can we really tell we aren't living in the matrix. From the Stanford Philosophy Dictionary, “There is general agreement among philosophers that the problem of other minds is concerned with the fundamental issue of what entitles us to our basic belief that other human beings do have inner lives rather than whether we are able in specific cases to be sure what is happening in those inner lives.”
There are many examples in Neuroscience that shed light on this famous problem. For one, Mirror Neurons are those that are activated in response to watching someone else do something. These specialized cells are activated empathetically and do not illicit motor responses.. ie they don’t actively force the body to move an arm when we see someone else do it. We do however have some sort of experience of what it is like mentally to raise an arm as another does. This is evolutionarily advantageous as it allows us to learn without doing…. By watching and experiencing the actions of someone else. Doing this, assumes an intelligent inner world that
We also see things in nature and engineering that we assume must have brains or at least complex microchips driving them, their behaviour is so lifelike., on closer examinations like in Theo Jensen's sculptures, we can see how intelligent engineering; with only geometry, curved feet and the wind can give an illusion of some sort of intelligence, or a mind contained within. Jensen considers his kinetic sculptures, creatures of a sort and has basic binary navigation system on some of them. This creates even more of an illusion of intellect or reasoning.