William James, writing in the late 1880s, had no way of measuring synchronized neuron firing, but his description of the “highest order of minds” captures something of the chaos mode: Instead of thoughts of concrete things patiently following one another, we have the most abrupt cross-cuts and transitions from one idea to another, the most rarefied abstractions and discriminations, the most unheard-of combinations of elements . . . a seething caldron of ideas, where everything is fizzling and bobbing about in a state of bewildering activity, where partnerships can be joined or loosened in an
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