Thus The New York Times today. “Research on the brain has highlighted gaps in understanding, a paradox that a former theoretical physicist is addressing,” explains the newspaper. Apparently, research on the brain is surging. Much money is being spent on it across the globe, and there is much information accumulated over the years. Yet, little is known about the brain at this juncture. Larry Abbott from Columbia University has switched fields to better understand this paradox, and the article is dedicated to him and his colleagues. A former theoretical physicist, he has become one of the leading theoreticians in neuroscience. For instance, he has developed theoretical models of how perception works in some fish, but the human brain is still out of his reach. To his credit, he is willing and able to work with the messiness of real neuroscience rather than theoretical models as such. The article leaves it at this, though. Whether or not humans have the intelligence to figure out how their brain works is, at least in part, a theoretical problem, or so he argues. Following this line of argument, it is obvious to me that it would take a species of appreciably higher than human intelligence to figure out how the human brain works. In short, he should stick with fish. Even monkeys are well beyond his and his colleagues’ ken, I am quite sure. Paradox, what paradox?