# What organs other than the brain have been thought to be the seat of thought? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 11, 2007, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-organs-other-than-the-brain-have-been-thought-to-be-the-seat-of-thought/399721 "2007-04-11T23:05:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2007, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-organs-other-than-the-brain-have-been-thought-to-be-the-seat-of-thought/399721/1 "2007-04-11T23:05:15Z")
I am having a small brain fart. I seem to recall knowing, once upon a time, that before it the brain’s central role in cognition was known, other organs were thought to have that role. My personal copy of that organ must be misfiring, becauase I can’t remember which one it might be–other than the heart, of course. Anyone know what I’m thinking of? (I want to say spleen, but that seems wrong). ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2007, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-organs-other-than-the-brain-have-been-thought-to-be-the-seat-of-thought/399721/2 "2007-04-11T23:08:23Z")
Many ancient Greeks believed the heart was the seat of the spirit and consciousness. [http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc\_WTX023667.html](http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTX023667.html) ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2007, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-organs-other-than-the-brain-have-been-thought-to-be-the-seat-of-thought/399721/3 "2007-04-11T23:19:28Z")
[QUOTE=Shagnasty] Many ancient Greeks believed the heart was the seat of the spirit and consciousness. [http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc\_WTX023667.html](http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTX023667.html) [/QUOTE] Yeah, I know; there’s fundamentalist Christians who still think that too. But I was looking for others. ---
**Author:** ![GreedySmurf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a698b9/32.png) [@GreedySmurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreedySmurf)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2007, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-organs-other-than-the-brain-have-been-thought-to-be-the-seat-of-thought/399721/4 "2007-04-11T23:23:58Z")
Many tribes in Papua New Guinea believed that the liver was the organ that did all the thinking. No I unfortunately don’t have a cite immediately to hand. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2007, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-organs-other-than-the-brain-have-been-thought-to-be-the-seat-of-thought/399721/5 "2007-04-11T23:32:37Z")
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer] Yeah, I know; there’s fundamentalist Christians who still think that too. But I was looking for others. [/QUOTE] Oops, I missed that. Popular media would suggest that it is the “dick”, at least for the men. I don’t know how women think which is a puzzle to this day even among leading scientists. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2007, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-organs-other-than-the-brain-have-been-thought-to-be-the-seat-of-thought/399721/6 "2007-04-11T23:49:17Z")
[Good article here](http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1993/1/1brain93.html). In summary, to the extent that primitive science understood thought at all they belived it was located in numerous organs. For example, the heart controlling emotional thought, the kidneys controlling empathy/social thought, the intestines controlling desire (naturally since they control hunger), the liver controlling rational thorught, the blood controlling subconscious thought and so forth. In fact even that isn’t very accurate. In reality most primitive ideas on thought started with an assumption that a human had a soul, and that the soul did the actual thinking. The thought processes of the soul were constantly being affected by the body, just as they could be affected by lack of sleep or alcohol. In other words pre-scientific ideas assumed that the soul thought ‘properly’ but that the various organs and humours constantly ‘drugged’ the soul and made it act with altered efficiency, making it sometimes courageous, sometimes lustful, sometimes lethergic and so forth. It was less that the organs actually did the thinking than that the modified the thought processes of a thinking soul that had no specific organ of residence. ---
**Author:** ![WoodenTaco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/45deac/32.png) [@WoodenTaco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WoodenTaco)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2007, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-organs-other-than-the-brain-have-been-thought-to-be-the-seat-of-thought/399721/7 "2007-04-12T00:02:28Z")
The Romans ascribed a lot of peoples’ thoughts and emotions to the liver. Love, in particular, was believed to be concentrated in the liver. The Chinese believed that the spleen held your emotions - irritability was thought to be symptomatic of a bad spleen. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2007, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-organs-other-than-the-brain-have-been-thought-to-be-the-seat-of-thought/399721/8 "2007-04-12T00:16:15Z")
[QUOTE=Shagnasty] Oops, I missed that. Popular media would suggest that it is the “dick”, at least for the men. I don’t know how women think which is a puzzle to this day even among leading scientists. [/QUOTE] I once attended a sermon in my parents’ church in which the minister opined that heart transplants were evil because they put an alien spirit in the recipient’s body. Science was entirely wrong about where the mind and soul resided,he explained; it was the heart, and the brain was just for cooling. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2007, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-organs-other-than-the-brain-have-been-thought-to-be-the-seat-of-thought/399721/9 "2007-04-12T02:00:08Z")
[QUOTE=Shagnasty] Oops, I missed that. Popular media would suggest that it is the “dick”, at least for the men. I don’t know how women think which is a puzzle to this day even among leading scientists. [/QUOTE] Female neuron finds itself in a male skull. Totally empty; no-one around. She starts hollering: “Hey!! Where is everyone?!!” Finally, (way off in the distance) a faint cry: “We’re all down heeerrre…” ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2007, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-organs-other-than-the-brain-have-been-thought-to-be-the-seat-of-thought/399721/10 "2007-04-12T06:15:11Z")
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer] I once attended a sermon in my parents’ church in which the minister opined that heart transplants were evil because they put an alien spirit in the recipient’s body. Science was entirely wrong about where the mind and soul resided,he explained; it was the heart, and the brain was just for cooling. [/QUOTE] You’re kidding! Did you offer to remove his brain and pack his head with ice, since that would be much more efficient? Seriously, what church (or at least what denomination) was this? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2007, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-organs-other-than-the-brain-have-been-thought-to-be-the-seat-of-thought/399721/11 "2007-04-12T09:19:36Z")
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer] I once attended a sermon in my parents’ church in which the minister opined that heart transplants were evil because they put an alien spirit in the recipient’s body. Science was entirely wrong about where the mind and soul resided,he explained; it was the heart, and the brain was just for cooling. [/QUOTE] Sweet Jesus, that’s the Aristotelic description… one of the problems that the Renaissance naturalists had when they insisted upon studying actual bodies rather than reading Aristotle is that their conclussions never matched his. _E pour si muove_ indeedy (yes, I know that was about a different body). ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2007, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-organs-other-than-the-brain-have-been-thought-to-be-the-seat-of-thought/399721/12 "2007-04-12T11:45:12Z")
[QUOTE=Alan Smithee] You’re kidding! Did you offer to remove his brain and pack his head with ice, since that would be much more efficient? Seriously, what church (or at least what denomination) was this? [/QUOTE] COGIC. I was torn between being aghast at his obscurantism and overjoyed to have an opportunity to use the word “obscurantism.”