Rick Grush and Patricia Churchland

(As seen through the eyes of Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff.)

Pat and I wrote a critical review of the Penrose/Hameroff theory of the connection between quantum mechanics and consciousness (this paper is available from this website under the 'Papers' menu), and in their reply this rather amusing illustration appears. I'm the one with the 'G' on its hiney. Roger Penrose is the rabbit, of course, and Stuart Hameroff is the caterpillar. In the last line of our paper, Pat and I characterize the Penrose/Hameroff thesis as "no better supported than any one of a gazzilion caterpillar-with-hookah hypotheses" (a line I wish I could take credit for, but alas, it was Pat's). To this, Penrose and Hameroff reply with this drawing, and this little poem:

It's not that we're in Wonderland,
But p'raps their heads are in the sand.