The Nobel-prize-winning Cambridge theoretical physicist Brian Josephson has released a short paper titled, How we might be able to Understand the Brain (PDF format). In it he proposes an abstract framework upon which unified theories of the brain could be built. This would replace the current piecemeal manner of studying and theorizing about particular mechanism or aspects of the brain in isolation. Josephson has also suggested that the study of the brain is tied to the study of abstraction in general.