Brain metaphors have historically been centralizing, mirroring top-down ideals of governance

Evidence

The brain has always been described by means of technological metaphors: as an apparatus relaying excitation with the precision of a mirror reflecting light, as a hydraulic pump driving animal spirits into the muscles, as a central telephone exchange connecting or cutting off communication; in the digital age, as a computer running its programs. These metaphors, as Catherine Malabou remarks, proceed from a centralizing concept of the brain seen as a machine that works from the top down, that orders movement, controls behavior, and brings about a unity of mind, consciousness, and man. In an earlier day, this centralizing and unifying vision truly represented an ideal of governance: one sole leader, one sole head commanding and organizing everything. … His system, subdividing the mind into faculties distributed among different areas of the brain, was seen by the ruling powers as a threat to the unity and stability of the state. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 16

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to how technologies supply the governing metaphors for mind — telegraph, telephone exchange, then computer, a trajectory adjacent to discussions of communication media shaping cognition.