LECTURE ABSTRACT – by J. A. Scott Kelso This lecture comes in three “movements” and arises out of a new book (Kelso, J. A. S. & D. A. Engstrom, The Complementary Nature, (2006 MIT Press). The first movement explores the central role of ubiquitous “contrarieties” in the history of ideas (both in philosophy and science). We refer to all such contrarieties as “complementary pairs”...

A considerable amount of evidence and theory suggests that transient, short-lived phase-coupled oscillations within and between specialized areas of the brain provide a mechanism for neural integration. The idea is that these oscillations are coupled or “bound” together into a coherent network when people attend to a stimulus, perceive, remember, think and act. However, information processing in the brain requires a...