User:Jtwsaddress42/Quotes/Edelman, Gerald M. 1975a

Recognition and Memory in the Immune and Nervous Systems "'[I]t is not difficult to see that both the brain and the immune system are recognition systems.  Both  can recognize  and  therefore  distinguish  positively  among different  objects in a set (in the one case via sensory signals, in the other via molecular complementarity between the shapes of antigens and the combining sites of antibodies). By positive recognition  I  mean that they do not merely exclude an object by subjecting it to a match with a fixed  pattern, but rather that they can name or tag an object uniquely. This is a much more  powerful kind  of recognition  than the exclusive one embodied, say, in the construction of a combination lock. Furthermore, both systems have the capacity to store a recognition event ('memory' and 'immunological memory') as well as  the capacity to forget.'

Gerald M. Edelman (1975)"