HBM Chapter 9 Exercises

Here are some thoughts to help us digest the meaning of this chapter.

[1] Page 64, Paragraph 2. Here the author is telling us that the human biological machine functions entirely by reflex. Is this true in your case? Can you sense the depth of this process?

[2] Page 65, Paragraph 1. In the middle of this first paragraph, Gold suggests that we study the machine in “the same way that an anthropologist would study any other primate.” Try this experiment. Watch your fellow inhabitants on this small planet. What do they do? Watch carefully. When you have developed that eye of observation, turn it then, onto the observation of yourself.

[3] Page 66, Paragraph 1. Why do we fall into and out of the waking state?

[4] Page 69, Paragraph 7. Here EJ Gold is addressing certain sensations of the process of waking up. Can you sense the transition to this stage of the awakening process?

[5] Page 71, Paragraph 4. We are given an example of being at a cusp of a choice of sorts. Do you have experiences in life where you pushed on? Describe one such event.

[6] Page 75, Paragraph 6. What is the significance of the Heisenberg Principle in the study of the sleep of the machine?

[7] Page 79, Paragraph 5. What are the three types of evidence we will gather in the study of the machine?