Mountcastle’s idea is as surprising and profound as Darwin’s discovery of evolution. Darwin proposed a mechanism—an algorithm, if you will—that explains the incredible diversity of life. What on the surface appears to be many different animals and plants, many types of living things, are in reality manifestations of the same underlying evolutionary algorithm. In turn, Mountcastle is proposing that all the things we associate with intelligence, which on the surface appear to be different, are, in reality, manifestations of the same underlying cortical algorithm.
