Letter: Political beliefs

Neuroscientists can't seriously be pursuing the hypothesis that political ideologies are "hardwired" into the brain (your report, 29 December).

This is but a modern variation of the chimera known as the "mind-body question" posed by Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago. Isn't it just as wrong-headed to assume brain and mind are the same thing, as to argue mind is wholly a social and cultural process?

Maybe it is the ability to acquire and use language which is "hardwired" into the human brain. But what is acquired, like the "language" of political ideology, is social and cultural.

Ellis Thorpe

Old Chapel Walk

Inverurie