Engineering the brain

The brain is an information processing organ. It is also a body organ. It is not a machine. A heart or a lung are also not machines. A machine is a physical object designed and constructed by engineers to fulfill a certain function. Even though our body organs also have functions, they were not designed and constructed by engineers.

It seems like a quibble. And one can certainly re-define words to suit one’s needs. But I think the difference is absolutely crucial. There was no intelligent design, and as a result, body organs do not resemble machines.

Once we start building machines like body organs — with utility functions, self-organization and cells as building blocks, we can mesh engineering and evolutionary principles to arrive at better organisms.