[The thought-brain relationship. New facts. New hypotheses]

The close links between Thought and the brain having been amply demonstrated by the neurosciences, it is now time to draw conclusions. After having shown that the specific characteristic of thought is the self, the author underlines the impossibility of explaining the self by objective study and the consequent need to preserve for the thought its specificity in relation to Matter-Energy. After having excluded, by this statement, attitudes tending to deny explicitly or implicitly the specificity of Thought and having rejected spiritualist hypotheses as not conforming to scientific data, only two possible interpretations remain: that of the identity of Thought and Matter-Energy treats Thought as the other face of Energy, that of creation makes it necessary to admit a transformation from Energy to Thought (E = KP). The problems of thermodynamics and of the quantification of Thought thus raised are considered. Whatever the solution, it is necessary to admit that a "Universal Thought" exists. The universe is conscious of itself. The effort of cerebralisation in the evolution of species seems a mean of giving autonomy to individual thought which is necessarily included in Universal Thought.