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Sir John Eccles
John Eccles, at his lab bench
Born	27 January 1903(1903-01-27) Melbourne, Australia
Died	2 May 1997 (aged 94)
Nationality	Australian
Fields	Neuroscience
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1963)

Sir John Carew Eccles, AC FRS FRACP FRSNZ FAAS (27 January 1903 – 2 May 1997) was an Australian neurophysiologist who won the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the synapse. He shared the prize together with Andrew Fielding Huxley and Alan Lloyd Hodgkin.

Biography

Eccles was born in Melbourne, Australia. He was one of three children as he had two sisters. He was tutored much by his parents who were both teachers as they influenced him greatly on his life. He initially attended Warrnambool College, (where a science wing is named in his honour), then completed his final year of schooling at Melbourne High School and graduated from Melbourne University in 1925. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study under Charles Scott Sherrington at Magdalen College, Oxford University, where he received his Doctor of Philosophy in 1929.

In 1937 Eccles returned to Australia, where he worked on military research during World War II. After the war, he became a professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand. From 1952 to 1962 he worked as a professor at the Australian National University.

He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in 1958 in recognition of services to physiological research. ^[1]

He won the Australian of the Year Award in 1963, the same year he won the Nobel Prize.

In 1966 he moved to the United States to work at the Institute for Biomedical Research in Chicago. Unhappy with the working conditions there, he left to become a professor at the University at Buffalo from 1968 until he retired in 1975. After retirement, he moved to Switzerland and wrote on the mind-body problem.

In 1990 he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in recognition of service to science, particularly in the field of neurophysiology. ^[2] He died in 1997 in Locarno, Switzerland.

Eccles was a devout theist and a sometime Roman Catholic, and is regarded by many Christians as an exemplar of the successful melding of a life of science with one of faith. A biography states that, "although not always a practicing Catholic, Eccles was a theist and a spiritual person, and he believed 'that there is a Divine Providence operating over and above the materialistic happenings of biological evolution'..."

Eccles was President of the Australian Academy of Science from 1957 to 1961 at the time of the construction of the Shine Dome.

In the early 1950s, Eccles and his colleagues performed the research that would win Eccles the Nobel Prize. To study synapses in the peripheral nervous system, Eccles and colleagues used the stretch reflex as a model. This reflex is easily studied because it consists of only two neurons: a sensory neuron (the muscle spindle fiber) and the motor neuron. The sensory neuron synapses onto the motor neuron in the spinal cord. When Eccles passed a current into the sensory neuron in the quadriceps, the motor neuron innervating the quadriceps produced a small excitatory postsynaptic potential (EPSP). When he passed the same current through the hamstring, the opposing muscle to the quadriceps, he saw an inhibitory postsynaptic potential (IPSP) in the quadriceps motor neuron. Although a single EPSP was not enough to fire an action potential in the motor neuron, the sum of several EPSPs from multiple sensory neurons synapsing onto the motor neuron could cause the motor neuron to fire, thus contracting the quadriceps. On the other hand, IPSPs could subtract from this sum of EPSPs, preventing the motor neuron from firing.

Apart from these seminal experiments, Eccles was key to a number of important developments in neuroscience. Until around 1949, Eccles believed that synaptic transmission was primarily electrical rather than chemical. Although he was wrong in this hypothesis, his arguments led him and others to perform some of the experiments which proved chemical synaptic transmission. Bernard Katz and Eccles worked together on some of the experiments which elucidated the role of acetylcholine as a neurotransmitter.

Philosophy

Czech psychiatrist Cyril Höschl (left) and Sir John Carew Eccles (1993).

In 'Understanding the Human Brain' (1973), Eccles summarizes his philosophy as follows:

"Now before discussing brain function in detail I will at the beginning give an account of my philosophical position on the so-called brain-mind problem so that you will be able to relate the experimental evidence to this philosophical position. I have written at length on this philosophy in my book 'Facing Reality'. In Fig. 6-1 you will be able to see that I fully accept the recent philosophical achievements of Sir Karl Popper with his concept of three worlds. I was a dualist, now I am a trialist! Cartesian dualism has become unfashionable with many people. They embrace monism in order to escape the enigma of brain-mind interaction with its perplexing problems. But Sir Karl Popper and I are interactionists, and what is more, trialist interactionists! The three worlds are very easily defined. I believe that in the classification of Fig. 6-1 there is nothing left out. It takes care of everything that is in existence and in our experience. All can be classified in one or other of the categories enumerated under Worlds 1, 2. and 3.

FIG. 6-1, Three Worlds

"In Fig. 6-1, World 1 is the world of physical objects and states. It comprises the whole cosmos of matter and energy, all of biology including human brains, and all artifacts that man has made for coding information, as for example, the paper and ink of books or the material base of works of art. World 1 is the total world of the materialists. They recognize nothing else. All else is fantasy.

"World 2 is the world of states of consciousness and subjective knowledge of all kinds. The totality of our perceptions comes in this world. But there are several levels. In agreement with Polten, I tend to recognize three kinds of levels of World 2, as indicated in Fig. 6-2, but it may be more correct to think of it as a spectrum.

FIG. 6-2, World of Consciousness

"The first level (outer sense) would be the ordinary perceptions provided by all our sense organs, hearing and touch and sight and smell and pain. All of these perceptions are in World 2, of course: vision with light and colour; sound with music and harmony; touch with all its qualities and vibration; the range of odours and tastes, and so on. These qualities do not exist in World 1, where correspondingly there are but electromagnetic waves, pressure waves in the atmosphere, material objects, and chemical substances.

"In addition there is a level of inner sense, which is the world of more subtle perceptions. It is the world of your emotions, of your feelings of joy and sadness and fear and anger and so on. It includes all your memory, and all your imaginings and planning into the future. In fact there is a whole range of levels which could be described at length. All the subtle experiences of the human person are in this inner sensory world. It is all private to you but you can reveal it in linguistic expression, and by gestures of all levels of subtlety.

"Finally, at the core of World 2 there is the self or pure ego, which is the basis of our unity as an experiencing being throughout our whole lifetime.

"This World 2 is our primary reality. Our conscious experiences are the basis of our knowledge of World 1, which is thus a world of secondary reality, a derivative world. Whenever I am doing a scientific experiment, for example, I have to plan it cognitively, all in my thoughts, and then consciously carry out my plan of action in the experiment. Finally I have to look at the results and evaluate them in thought. For example, I have to see the traces of the oscilloscope and their photographic records or hear the signals on the loudspeaker. The various signals from the recording equipment have to be received by my sense organs, transmitted to my brain, and so to my consciousness, then appropriately measured and compared before I can begin to think about the significance of the experimental results. We are all the time, in every action we do, incessantly playing backwards and forwards between World 1 and World 2.

"And what is World 3? As shown in Fig. 6-1 it is the whole world of culture. It is the world that was created by man and that reciprocally made man. This is my message in which I follow Popper unreservedly. The whole of language is here. All our means of communication, all our intellectual efforts coded in books, coded in the artistic and technological treasures in the museums, coded in every artifact left by man from primitive times--this is World 3 right up to the present time. It is the world of civilization and culture. Education is the means whereby each human being is brought into relation with World 3. In this manner he becomes immersed in it throughout life, participating in the heritage of mankind and so becoming fully human. World 3 is the world that uniquely relates to man. It is the world which is completely unknown to animals. They are blind to all of World 3. I say that without any reservations. This is then the first part of my story.

"Now I come to consider the way in which the three worlds interact..."^[3]

Bibliography

• 1932, Reflex Activity of the Spinal Cord.
• 1953, The neurophysiological basic of the mind: The principles of neurophysiology, Oxford: Clarendon.
• 1957, The Physiology of Nerve Cells.
• 1964, The Physiology of Synapses.
• 1965, The brain and the unity of conscious experience, London: Cambridge University Press.
• 1969, The Inhibitory Pathways of the Central Nervous System.
• 1970, Facing reality: Philosophical Adventures by a Brain Scientist, Berlin: Springer.
• 1973, The Understanding of the Brain.
• 1977, The Self and Its Brain, with Karl Popper, Berlin: Springer.
• 1979, The human mystery, Berlin: Springer.
• 1980, The Human Psyche.
• 1984, The Wonder of Being Human - Our Brain & Our Mind, with Daniel N. Robinson, New York, Free Press.
• 1985, Mind and Brain: The Many-Faceted Problems, (Editor), New York : Paragon House.
• 1989, Evolution Of The Brain : Creation Of The Self.
• 1994, How the Self Controls Its Brain.

Styles

• Mr John Eccles (1903-1929)
• Dr John Eccles (1929-1944)
• Prof. John Eccles (1944-1958)
• Sir John Eccles (1958-1990)
• Sir John Eccles AC (1990-1997)

External links

• Sir John Eccles Biography. Nobel Foundation.
• Pratt, D.: John Eccles on Mind and Brain. A theosophical view.
• Sabbatini, R.M.E.: Neurons and synapses. The history of its discovery IV. Chemical transmission. Brain & Mind, 2004.

References

From Wikiquote

Sir John Carew Eccles (27 January 1903 – 2 May 1997) was an Australian neurophysiologist who won the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the synapse. He shared the prize together with Andrew Fielding Huxley and Alan Lloyd Hodgkin.

Sourced

• I can now rejoice even in the falsification of a cherished theory, because even this is a scientific success.
  • As quoted in the Introduction of Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963) by Karl Popper

• In order that a "self" may exist there must be some continuity of mental experiences and, particularly, continuity bridging gaps of unconsciousness. For example, the continuity of our "self" is resumed after sleep, anaesthesia, and the temporary amnesias of concussion and convulsions.
  • As quoted in "Eccles' Model of the Self Controlling Its Brain : The Irrelevance of Dualist-Interactionism" (2003) by Donald E. Watson and Bernard O. Williams

Facing Reality (1970)

Facing Reality : Philosophical Adventures by a Brain Scientist (1970) ISBN 0387900144

• I believe that there is a fundamental mystery in my existence, transcending any biological account of the development of my body (including my brain) with its genetic inheritance and its evolutionary origin. ... I cannot believe that this wonderful gift of a conscious existence has no further future, no possibility of another existence under some other unimaginable conditions.
  • p. 83

• Our coming-to-be is as mysterious as our ceasing-to-be at death. Can we therefore not derive hope because our ignorance about our origin matches our ignorance about our destiny? Cannot life be lived as a challenging and wonderful adventure that has meaning yet to be discovered? (95)
  • Ch. 5.

The Self and Its Brain (1977)

The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism (with Karl Popper)

• I have read a great deal now on the neurological side and much on the anthropological side and on the philosophical side and we have had all these discussions and all the time I have the feeling that something may break. I mean that some little light at the end of the tunnel may be sensed or some flash of insight may come. I of course know very well that there is no guarantee it will come, but I have already got myself into this state of expectancy that something will come to my imagination which has some germ of truth about it in this most difficult field.
  • p. 467

Evolution of the Brain: Creation of the Self (1989)

• I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity. This belief must be classed as a superstition ... we have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world.
  • p. 241

How the Self Controls Its Brain (1994)

• The more we discover scientifically about the brain the more clearly do we distinguish between the brain events and the mental phenomena and the more wonderful do the mental phenomena become. Promissory materialism is simply a superstition held by dogmatic materialists. It has all the features of a Messianic prophecy, with the promise of a future freed of all problems—a kind of Nirvana for our unfortunate successors.

• The materialist critics argue that insuperable difficulties are encountered by the hypothesis that immaterial mental events can act in any way on material structures such as neurons. Such a presumed action is alleged to be incompatible with the conservation laws of physics, in particular of the first law of thermodynamics. This objection would certainly be sustained by nineteenth century physicists, and by neuroscientists and philosophers who are still ideologically in the physics of the nineteenth century, not recognizing the revolution wrought by quantum physicists in the twentieth century.

• Induction was shown to be untenable as a scientific method by Popper in The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959). Instead, advances in scientific understanding come ideally from hypothetico-deductivism: firstly, development of a hypothesis in relation to a problem situation, and secondly, its testing in relation to all relevant knowledge and furthermore by its great explanatory power.

• The concept of substance leads to a materialist aspect of the mind. I speak instead of the spiritual existence of the self without mentioning any 'substance' properties. The great problem is 'how the self controls its brain'. This is dualistic, but not in terms of two substances. Instead it relates to the two worlds of Popper.

• The hypothesis has been proposed that all mental events and experiences, in fact the whole of the outer and inner sensory experiences, are a composite of elemental or unitary mental experiences at all levels of intensity. Each of these mental units is reciprocally linked in some unitary manner to a dendron ... Appropriately we name these proposed mental units 'psychons.' Psychons are not perceptual paths to experiences. They are the experiences in all their diversity and uniqueness. There could be millions of psychons each linked uniquely to the millions of dendrons. It is hypothesized that it is the very nature of psychons to link together in providing a unified experience.
  • He here refers to his proposal in "A unitary hypothesis of mind-brain interaction in the cerebral cortex" (1990); published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B 240, p. 433 - 451

External links

Wikipedia has an article about:

John Carew Eccles

• Sir John Eccles Biography. Nobel Foundation.
• Pratt, D.: John Eccles on Mind and Brain. A theosophical view.
• Sabbatini, R.M.E.: Neurons and synapses. The history of its discovery IV. Chemical transmission. Brain & Mind, 2004.