Genes, Networks, Behavior, and Beyond:
Thinking Backwards About the Brain and Education

A Starting Question: Why Do People Behave the Way They Do?

• Innate characteristics?
• Individual experiences (including culture)?
• Free will?
• Other unknown (unknowable?) forces?

The Neuronal Network As a Way to Make the Question Approachable

• The network as the material substrate of behavior
• Are networks influenced by genes?
• Are networks influenced by individual experience?
• Is behavior predictable if the network is known?

Learning To Think Backwards About Science and the Brain

• Getting it "less wrong" rather than "right"
• Questioning the concept of "predictability" as a measure of success
• Challenging the concept of the brain as an input/output device

Thinking Backwards about Behavior:
Implications for Education

• Experience AND genes AND ...
• Appreciating behavior as cause and as result
• Recognizing unpredictability as the characteristic
  of an active, exploratory agent
• Considering education as an active rather than a passive process
• The information revolution as the right tool