Re: ABR article: "the heart does think"

It seems rather strange to me that people who speak of learning something
by heart or venting their spleens or having guts without meaning these
idioms literally think that they have to take a somewhat similar
expression in the Bible literally.

Gordon Brown
Department of Mathematics
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0395

On Tue, 17 May 2005, Hon Wai Lai wrote:

> Is there any scientific basis for the physiological claim below?
>
> ...........................................
> ABR ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER
> Vol. 5, Issue 5
> May 15, 2005
> http://www.biblearchaeology.org
>
> "Does the Heart 'Think'?"
>
> The wording of Genesis 6:5 makes it sounds of as if the human heart is
> capable of thinking, or at least of having some sort of emotional
> capacity: "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the
> earth, and that every imagination of THE THOUGHTS OF HIS HEART was only
> evil continually." Critics deem this expression to be unscientific,
> since the heart is viewed as a purely mechanical pump. However, the
> science journal Discover, in a review of the book A Man after His Own
> Heart by Charles Siebert, reported that Siebert's book recognized
>
>
> ...that the heart is no mere pump, as some physicians still insist, but
> a sophisticated participant in the regulation of emotion. The heart has
> a mind of its own: It secretes its own brainlike hormones and actively
> partakes in a dialogue among the internal organs-a dialogue on which
> cardiac researchers are only beginning to eavesdrop. The heart likewise
> undergoes all manner of organic change inflicted on it by the
> tempestuous brain and its neurochemicals. As one doctor explains, people
> do suffer heartbreak, literally. (Burdick 2004: 72).
> The journal used the real-life example of William Schroeder, who was the
> second (as well as the longest-surviving) recipient of the Jarvik-7
> artificial heart. As a purely mechanical pump of his blood, the device
> kept Schroeder alive for an unprecedented 620 days. However, as Discover
> reported:
>
>
> The patient's mental state was another matter. Schroeder was weepy and
> deeply despondent. (Barney Clark, the first Jarvik-7 recipient,
> expressed a wish to die or be killed.) The blood still circulated, but
> something vital-some emotionally charged communication between heart and
> mind-had been lost... Affirming all [alleged] myths, the hear truly is a
> seat of human emotion. The Jarvik-7, in contrast, was deaf to the song
> of human experience; built to invigorate its patient, it instead
> alienated him, supplying Schroeder with everything but the will to live.
> He had the look, Siebert writes, 'of a man who has lost his heart'
> (Burdick 2004: 72).
> It is discoveries like these that should caution us not to be too quick
> in judging the Book of Genesis as scientifically unsound.
>
> Reference:
>
> Burdick, A. 2004. Review of A Man after His Own Heart, by Charles
> Siebert. Discover 25, no. 5.
>
> Stephen Caesar holds his master's degree in anthropology/archaeology
> from Harvard. He is a staff member at Associates for Biblical Research
> and the author of the e-book The Bible Encounters Modern Science,
> available at www.authorhouse.com.
>
>
>
Received on Wed May 18 18:02:14 2005