|
We are on the brink of understanding ancient
mysteries: how we know, what governs our nature, what makes
a person different from a thing. In the last decade, more
than twenty disciplines dealing with every aspect of the
brain have contributed to a revolution in the neurosciences
-- a revolution as significant, in the view of many observers,
as the Galilean and Copernican revolutions in mathematics
and physics or the Darwinian revolution in biology.
In this book, one of the world's foremost
brain scientists gives us a glimpse into the workings of
the human brain -- the most complex material object in the
universe. A match head's worth of the brain contains about
a billion connections that can combine in ways which can
only be described as hyperastronomical -- on the order of
ten followed by millions of zeros (there are only about
ten followed by eighty zeros' worth of positively charged
particles in the whole known universe).
Gerald Edelman takes us on a dazzling tour
through such diverse topics as Turing machines, Darwin's
"program," Jamesian flights and perchings, genetics,
quantum physics, and the nature of perception, language,
and individuality. He argues that biology will provide the
key to understanding the brain and ultimately the mind.
Underlying this argument is the evolutionary view that the
mind arose at a definite time in history.
This sweeping book considers our place in
nature and how we came to be able to describe and change
it. It examines the implications of understanding the brain
for philosophy, for curing mental disease, and for the possibility
of building conscious artifacts. Edelman does not hesitate
to take on cognitive and behavioural approaches that leave
biology out of the picture, as well as the currently fashionable
view of the brain as a computer. He argues that the workings
of the brain more closely resemble the living ecology of
a jungle than they do the activities of an electric company.
Some startling conclusions emerge from these
ideas: individuality is necessarily at the very center of
what it means to have a mind; no creature is born value-free;
no physical theory of the universe can claim to be a "theory
of everything" without including an account of how
the brain gives rise to the mind.
There is no greater scientific challenge
than understanding the brain. Here's the book that provides
a window on that understanding.
Gerald M. Edelman is Director of the
Neurosciences Institute and Chairman of the Scripps Research
Institute. He received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or
Medicine in 1972. He is the author of Neural Darwinism
(1987), Topobiology (1988), and The Remembered
Present (1989), all published by Basic Books.
|
