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“Gap thinking” is perhaps the most salient feature of modernity. Around 1900, the gap - the space between things - became the focal point not only of synaptic transmission, but also of art, literature, criticism, all branches of science and thought. This book is at once an encyclopedia and a history of gap thinking. The book itself is built like a brain, with juxtaposed quotes and images, like brain cells. The narrative appears as the reader crosses the gaps with her power of understanding.
Twenty-five hundred years ago, the Greeks used the word “atomo” for the individual, a human being distinct and separate from the community. Lucretius used “atom” for the discrete particles that composed matter. The scientific (Sir Francis Bacon) revolution depended on generating theories, finding patterns in discrete pieces of evidence, or particulars. But only in the 1890’s did human beings recognize that our brains are composed of discrete cells that communicate with each other. By the 1830’s we knew that living matter was composed of cells - which by definition are discrete units that communicate with each other.
Yet many scientists adhered to the reticular theory of the brain. No one had seen
the ramification of a single nerve cell, so, many scientists thought, the brain must be like a single vast interconnected web. In the early 1890s Santiago Ramon y Cajal saw, with newly developed staining techniques, the discrete nerve endings in the brain of a baby calf. It turns out, our brain functions by crossing millions of synaptic gaps every second. This neural network is defined by the gaps at nodes. Individual cells or links must communicate across gaps in a neural network. Concurrently, around 1900, the gap became more and more of a focus in art, literature, other branches of science. African art, which had many gap characteristics, entered Western art. At the same time, women, who themselves have represented the gap, and Jews, whose textual beliefs promoted gap thinking, were increasingly integrated into the public sphere. “The gap” is overdetermined. Multiple forces work to make it the pre-eminent sign of modernity.