The chair has come to symbolise the importance of sitting within the realm of intelligence and wisdom.
"The chair has been available for human use and hence for philosophical metaphor for some five millennia, and I am struck that it is the sitting position that is spontaneously invoked in the philosophy of mind when one speaks of the seat of the soul, or of intelligence, or of a wisdom or reason".[2]
"Descartes spoke of the pineal gland, a mysterious organ suspended like the seat of Breuer's Wassily chair midway between the cerebral hemisphere, as the seat of the thinking essence of man".[3]