Heart and Brain
Lin Wei

In the West, parents tell their children "to follow the head, not the heart" and "not to be absent-minded while learning", whereas in China since ancient times, there have been sayings such as "The heart is the very organ generating thought" and "All wishes, from the bottom of one's heart, may come true". Where is thinking taking place then—in the brain or in the heart? Should the answer to the discrepancy be found on a scientific or a cultural ground?
Scientifically speaking, "heart" in Western medicine and "xin" (heart" in traditional Chinese medicine are not the same thing. The former is purely a biological concept based on anatomy, biology and neurology, etc.; while the latter is the "dwelling place of the spirit", filled with connotations of culture, philosophy, religion and even metaphysics, which are far beyond the domain of medicine.
The way to grasp the essence of "brain" and "heart" in fact should not be confined to a scientific approach; rather it ought to be viewed cross-culturally. Otherwise, certain issues can be beyond comprehension. For example, if purely from a scientific point of view, "psychology" –the scientific study of the human mind and its functions—is deemed to have been mistranslated into Chinese as "xin li xue" (the scientific study of the brain) accordingly.
In traditional Chinese culture, man is viewed holistically as an inseparable unit of heart and mind, which is reflected in a common phenomenon where concentrated mind may cause palpitations. Fortunately, modern medicine, on the other hand, has also revealed that psychology is such a complicated functional process that all the relevant components of the body—not confined to the brain—are called upon to complete that task. More surprisingly, recent medical cases have demonstrated that once a person's heart has been transplanted, his character has altered as well.
Westerners also say something like "my heart tells me one things, but my mind tells my another", by which the "heart" is meant emotions and the "brain" reasoning. They are contradictorily coexisting as part of human emotional intelligence, with which can make Heaven to be Hell, and Hell to be Heaven.
The brain and heart are therefore perfectly endowed with our body, functioning differently but harmoniously. The scientific and cultural aspects of the exploration into the constitution both internally and externally, across the board, will surely benefit our understanding of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic communication as human beings.