Everything in the universe is supposed to be made of entities called "atoms"?

Question

Therefore, the brain is made of atoms. The brain is presumably the mechanism through which we perceive (and attain our understanding of) the universe. But, how can we gain any real understanding of the universe (which, since the universe is made of atoms, is equivalent to gaining an understanding of atoms) by using the very entities (atoms, which make up the brain) that we're trying to understand? Isn't there something circular going on here?

Answer 1

It is circular.  We are trying to understand and learn about a system when we are a part of that system.  We influence it by being part of it.  The universe is observed by us to be the way it is because we're the ones doing the observing.  If you follow this line of reasoning, you're leaving pure science and getting into the arena of the philosophers.

Answer 2

Indeed there is something circular. However, circular logic often works. The problem, I think, is that we can very easily understand the idea of atoms. Just for fun, though, try to imagine a place where there are no atoms. What would this look like? Who knows, because we just can't comprehend space without matter. Therefore, we cannot understand our universe because we cannot comprehend how the universe can be contained or how it can be infinite. I think it is something we are not meant to know, and therefore never will.

This is where we would typically get into an argument over the existance of the sole. If we don't have a sole, then the information in our brains really is just like a computer, a network of connection which allow electrical impulse.If we do have a sole, then there is something that we cannot comprehend about ourselves, and that to me, seems more logical in a way!

Answer 3

The brain is not only atoms, the brain has something called intelligence

Answer 4

Atoms are made of mostly empty space.  The universe is mostly empty space.  Our brains are mostly empty space.  So all three are correlated.

What is an atom?  A configuration of probabilistic energy waves/particles.  And yet somehow they give rise to Life.  If you accept that there is a qualitative difference between non living and living matter, then as living matter, our brain, or at least its neural pathways, produce consciousness, another qualitative difference insofar as it is non-material. Consciousness can reflect on its own composition (and, ergo, that of the universe) which means that it transcends the matter of which it is composed. The cycle of materialist reductionism is broken because consciousness and the mind are different in kind than the matter that gives rise to them.