Science as a quest: Don Quixote, neuroscience and the interrogation of truth

Abstract

Neuroscientist Rodrigo Quian Quiroga has wondered whether «scientists, embarked upon their personal quests – their quixotic endeavours – spend their time just thinking». This adjectival invocation of Cervantes’s Don Quixote pitches science as an epic quest that equates scientific rationality with the Don’s delusions. Does science quest after truth in a quixotic, literary way that philosopher Nicholas Maxwell terms «rationalistically neurotic»?

Keywords

• Quixote
• quest
• neuroscience
• brain
• Borges.