Have you heard the claim that the human brain is the most complex object in the universe? You must have heard it, because it's been stated a thousand times. The only problem is that the claim is absurd and obviously false. Without touching a book or your computer, you can figure out why the claim is obviously false. Doing some research will give you additional reasons for thinking the claim must be false.
First, let us consider the sheer absurdity of making the claim that the brain is the most complex object in the universe. The observable universe consists of many billions of galaxies, and the average galaxy contains billions of stars. It is believed that planets revolving around other stars are extremely common, and thousands of them have been discovered. The estimated number of planets in the observable univese is something like ten to the eighteenth or twentieth power. We know of nothing of the contents of 99.9999999999% of the planets in the universe. So think of how absurd it is to be claiming that something on planet Earth is the most complex object in the universe. It's like saying that on no planet of the universe does anyone make as good a rocket as the rockets made by Elon Musk.
There is a very easy way to figure out how absurd is the claim that the human brain is the most complex object in the universe. Just ask yourself: is the human brain literally part of something much more complex than itself? The answer is: yes. The human brain is part of the human body, and the human body is vastly more complex than the human brain. So it is obviously false to claim that the human brain is the most complex object in the universe, because a human brain is not even as complex as a human body. Because the human brain is part of a human body much more complex than the brain, the human brain is not even the most complex thing in the known universe.
The human brain has about 86 billion neuron cells. It has been estimated that the human body has about 30 trillion cells. From the standpoint of number of cells, the complexity of the brain is less than a hundredth of the complexity of the human body. Neurons are not even the most complex cells in the human body. According to biology professor Charles Bokage, "The egg is the largest and most complex human cell." The most complex cells are generally those that reproduce themselves; but neurons don't even reproduce. A 2018 scientific paper says, "In a single neuron, hundreds to thousands of mitochondria are contained." But according to the source here, "The muscle cells in the heart contain far more mitochondria than any other organ in the human body, with around 5,000 mitochondria in every cell." And the paper here tells us that the average human oocyte cell has about 795,000 mitochondria. The main part of a neuron (the soma) is about 3 to 25 micrometers (microns) in length with a volume of less than 16,000 cubic microns; but for many people fat cells are about as common as neurons in the human body, and fat cells have a volume of something like 600,000 cubic microns. Fat cells many times more massive than neurons are probably more complex than neurons. A human egg cell (oocyte) has a volume of roughly 4,000,000 cubic microns.
If you ever read someone claiming that neurons are the most complex cells in the human body, such a person will typically try to support such a claim not by a consideration of the number of parts or proteins or organelles in a neuron, but by dubious dogmatic claims that neurons can think or remember learned things. Restricting yourself to the physical characteristics of different cell types will lead you to the conclusion that neurons are not at all the most complex cells in the body.
There are further ways of figuring out how false is the claim that the human brain is the most complex object in the universe. One way is to compare the brains of different organisms. The African Elephant has a brain with about three times as many neurons as a human brain. The African Elephant's brain is 5 kilograms (11 pounds), and consists of about 257 billion neurons, far more than the roughly 87 billion neurons in a human brain, with a weight of about 3 pounds. A Scientific American article tells us this:
"The adult sperm whale brain is 8,000 cubic centimeters. Our brain is about 1300 cubic centimeters."
This is all the more reason why it is nonsense to claim the human brain is the most complex object in the universe. The human brain is not even the most complex brain in the animal kingdom.
So how on Earth did we get to a state in which people all over the place are claiming that the human brain is the most complex object in the universe? I think the explanation for this myth goes something like this:
(1) Somewhere someone started to make the silly claim that the human brain is the most complex object in the universe, probably for the sake of bolstering materialist claims that the human brain is the source of all mind effects.
(2) The claim started to be repeated by more and more people, because it makes a powerful-sounding "sound bite" for those claiming that all of the wonders of the human mind can be explained by the brain.
(3) Once the claim "went viral" and started to be repeated by many an authority, more and more people kind of thought to themselves, "I guess it must be true that the brain is the most complex object in the universe, because I've heard so many people say it." In today's world of science academia, the most obviously untrue nonsense may be endlessly repeated, because people naively trust that claims that they keep hearing from scientists must be true.
Something similar has occurred with claims such as the claim that the human brain stores memories. People don't keep repeating this claim because they have any decent evidence to support it. No one has ever discovered anything that looked like school-learned information or episodic memories by microscopically examining human brain tissue, and scientists are lacking any credible theory of how a brain could store all of the many types of things that people can learn, with such scientists having no more than empty catchphrases and vacuous sound bites such as "synaptic strengthening." Nor can any scientist give a credible explanation of how a brain could ever instantly recall exactly the right information when asked a question; for such experts are completely lacking in any credible tale of how such an "instantly finding just the right needle in the haystack" effect could occur in a brain with no addresses, sorting or indexes. So why do people keep saying over and over again that brains store memories? Mainly because they're just repeating something they heard many times, assuming that it must be true because they heard it so often. So just as people keep repeating the easily debunked claim that the human brain is the most complex thing in the universe, people keep repeating the easily debunked claim that the human brain stores all your memories and everything you can recall.
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