Department of Redundancy Department

Science asks questions. When science gets an answer it's easy, for the media especially, though scientists have been guilty as well, to think that it is the answer. More and more evidence indicates that many biological systems, especially the human nervous system, are naturally and necessarily redundant. We can regulate our body temperature by storing fat or sweating, we can write a letter with a pencil or a computer, etc. Though redundancy seems to be an inefficient use of energy, it makes a system much more stable and durable.

When a person is forming complex words, for example, "walked", there are two language mechanisms available; you can simply memorize the world "walked" as a single unit, or you can consciously construct it from "walk" and "-ed." Recent studies show that rather than using one mechanism all the time, people tend to use a specific mechanism depending on the situation. People tend to memorize high frequency words like "walked" and construct rare words, like "balked." An interesting side note, estrogen is a memory aid, so women use the memorization method for more words (on average) than men.

Many of the new findings in neuroscience may make more sense if we try to see how they might fit in a redundant system, rather than what they do on their own.

This portion of CogSigh brought to you, in part, by Michael Ullman, a Professor of Neuroscience at Georgetown University in his article "More is Sometimes More."