Making life and mind as clear as possible, but not clearer.

Neuroscience needs theory. Ideas without data are blind, and yet mechanisms without concepts are empty. Friston's free energy principle paradigmatically illustrates the power and pitfalls of current theoretical biology. Mighty metaphors, turned into mathematical models, can become mindless metaphysics. Then, seeking to understand everything in principle, we may explain nothing in practice. Life can't live in a map.