At the edge of chaos: the neuroscience of Bruce Lee

We know a lot about Bruce Lee.

We know he began learning Wing Chun under Yip Man at age 13. We know he pulled from fencing, boxing and bodybuilding to develop his insane training regimen. We know he developed  a system called Jeet Kune Do which he himself was very reluctant to name.

We know a lot.

As a fan of Bruce Lee, however, I am impatiently waiting for a neuroscientist to tell us what was going on inside the brain of the world's most influential martial artist. (If anybody has written the book/post,  let me know).

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In Bruce Lee's own words:

As long as I can remember I feel I have had this great creative and spiritual force within me that is greater than faith, greater than ambition, greater than confidence, greater than determination, greater than vision. It is all these combined. My brain becomes magnetized with this dominating force which I hold in my hand.

What is this force he speaks of? What is going on in this dude's brain?

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In his book Proust was a Neuroscientist, Jonah Lehrer explores creative thinkers and their ability to map out the wiring of the mind well before scientists catch up with the scientific method.

Lehrer traces the work of 8 writers and discusses their work as intuitive glimpses into the workings of the human brain:

This book is about artists who anticipated the discoveries of neuroscience. It is about writers and painters and composers who discovered truths about the human mind -- real, tangible truths -- that science is only now rediscovering. Their imaginations foretold the facts of the future.

I believe Bruce Lee is part of this same class of creatives and that his writings are a glimpse into the nature of the driven, adapting human mind.

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In his own words:

“All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.”

“Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system.”

These Bruce Lee quotes resonate with a scientific concept called 'self-organized criticality,' an important discovery within complexity studies which helps explain natural phenomena like earthquakes and avalanches.

New Scientist explains:

In technical terms, systems on the edge of chaos are said to be in a state of "self-organised criticality". These systems are right on the boundary between stable, orderly behaviour - such as a swinging pendulum - and the unpredictable world of chaos, as exemplified by turbulence.

The quintessential example of self-organised criticality is a growing sand pile. As grains build up, the pile grows in a predictable way until, suddenly and without warning, it hits a critical point and collapses. These "sand avalanches" occur spontaneously and are almost impossible to predict, so the system is said to be both critical and self-organising.

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Some scientists think forces similar to those that cause sand piles to shift or 'avalanche' are  active in our brains and that these forces drive us to adapt and optimize problem solving:

It might seem precarious to have a brain that plunges randomly into periods of instability, but the disorder is actually essential to the brain's ability to transmit information and solve problems. "Lying at the critical point allows the brain to rapidly adapt to new circumstances," says Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg from the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany.

While his language is different, I think Bruce Lee's writings reflect an awareness of conditions involved in achieving self-organized criticality.

“If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”

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Is it possible that Bruce Lee rewired his own nervous system for radical adaptation by cultivating forces similar to those behind avalanches and earthquakes?

I'm starting to think he may have learned to leverage the logic of  self-organised criticality and turned the edge of chaos into a productive, even necessary, workspace.