Souls, special energies, occult forces, and other non physical things

"By the nineteenth century , a few scientists, but especially Hermann von Helmholtz , realized that souls, special energies, occult forces, and other non physical things were likely a dead end so far as explanations of mental functions such as perception , thinking, and feeling were concerned. With great insight , Helmholtz proposed that many brain operations happen without conscious awareness. He came to this hypothesis while pondering the fact that when you look around, you can see and size up a complex visual scene in less than half a second (500 milliseconds), all without any conscious thinking. Sizing up a scene is very complicated, since the only thing that stimulates your retina are patterns of light . Yet you see colors, shapes, motion , relative position in space, and you instantly recognize familiar faces and other objects. So how does the brain get from patterns of light to “Hey , that’s Queen Elizabeth!”?"