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Title: A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination by Gerald M. Edelman, Giulio Tonomi, Giulio Tononi ISBN: 0-465-01377-5 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 06 March, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (15 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: WORLD KNOT UNTIED & RETIED
Comment: The Authors ambitious attempt to carve their niche in the universe of consciousness was blighted by too much new jargon: dynamic core hypothesis, functional cluster, reentry, degeneracy and non representational memory. They seemed to be saying that the firing of neurons paints reality in the brain like an artist paints on a canvas. However, half of reality still lies hidden beneath the brain's view. One can't define their way to new discovery. This new terminology shows their impatience with what past neuroscientists have written (which I share), but it in no way moves us up the mountain.
Most of the book was mentally stimulating but the jargon in Part V, Untangling the Knot, became a hair ball that wouldn't cough up. By their own admission the knot would not come untied. It quickly gets tiresome to hear how brain image resolution has not advanced to the point of solving the neuron's place in unraveling consciousness. The book was thick with tautological niceties such as "consciousness is the ability of being conscious of being conscious." Their attempt to divide the subject into primary consciousness and higher order consciousness was equally arbitrary. For me, re-tieing the mind-body knot in a "less tangled form," didn't pull the little red wagon forward very much. Still the authors paved the way for genetic, sub-neuron investigations that may well untie the knot. There is a mountain to scale here and it does little good to pretend you are near the top. But yes, the hardcover was well worth its reasonable price.
Rating: 5
Summary: Dawn of a new era
Comment: This book marks the end of many thousand years of theological, philosophical, and psychological speculations about man's soul. In three previous books Edelman has laid the foundation of his own theory of the human mind. Now, together with his colleague at the Neurosciences Institute in California, Giulio Tononi, he offers a neat and very readable survey of his ideas. Edelman has laid the foundation of a scientific, biological approach to the study of consciousness, the mind. And we might add, the soul. What used to be looked upon as a complete mystery is now becoming amenable to purely scientific inquiry. In other words, the mental can, at long last, be be treated in biological, concretely material and quantitative terms. The authors' presentation of their complex subject is admirably clear. Each of the six main parts is introduced by an overview which places it in a wider perspective. Also, each of the seventeen fairly short chapters is introduced by a brief summary. The reader can thus start by getting a broad idea of what the authors are aiming at, and is placed in a position to read the individual chapters with full attention to the often intricate details. Edelman's first lauched his basic ideas in his1987 book Neural Darwinism, where he applied Darwin's revolutionary theory of Natural Selection, not only to the formation and evolution of species, but also to the individual cells in the brain. The development of the brain cells are of course under general genetic control. The genes themselves, naturally, have developed as a result of the natural selection of the organism which has carried them through thousands or millions of generations. Darwin's Natural selection replaced former mentalistic or theological ideas, involving a purposeful Mind, by a thoroughly scientific explanation in terms of a random variation subjected to selection by means of the survival and continued reproduction of those best fitted to the environment in which the organism happened to live. Neural Darwinism extends this idea to the population of billions of neurons, and their billions of billions of connections with other cells. The brain adapts to the kinds of operations it sets going And just as Darwin's theory dispensed with the philosophically unacceptable idea of a Purposeful Mind giving rise to the successive evolutionary variations of species, Edelman's idea dispenses with the equally unacceptable idea of a kind of General Director inside the brain. The British philosopher Gilbert Ryle, in 1947, somewhat flippantly named this entity "The Ghost in the Machine". Behaviorist psychologists, realizing that the Ghost could not be observed, decided to use only objectively observable behavior in order to find out the secrets of what they, in turn, called "The Black Box". Without much success. Edelman goes much further than just outlining his theory. He and Tononi subject it to experimental tests. First, they utilise recent techniques for registering in detail the spatial and temporal distribution of neural activity as it executes various tasks, both conscious and unconscious. At the same time, they stress that the brain is n o t like a computer. Its connections are chemical, and are modified by chemical (hormonal and other) impulses. Further, memories are not located in individual cells, or even groups of cells. Instead, they consist of processes in groups of interconnected neurons. It is of course not only the sheer number of possible interconnections between the neurons of the brain, but also its structure, that makes the brain so unique: n o two brains, even of identical twins, are exactly alike. In regard to consciousness, the authors especially stress the phenomenon of "re-entry", implying that the interconnections between areas of the brain are typically reciprocal, so that they can be effectively correlated. Consciousness occurs when a sufficient number of re-entrant connections are active, engaging different parts of the brain for a sufficient period of time. This book marks the dawn of a new era in the study of the mind.
Rating: 3
Summary: Interesting, intelligent work that aims a bit too high
Comment: There is no doubt in my mind, after reading this book, that the authors have done excellent scientific work and made very interesting discoveries. On the other hand, it has certain problems.
To start with, it seems clear that they do not have a full grasp of the philosophical problems they are attempting to resolve - or if they do, they avoid going into the stickier points. This is not necessarily a reason to condemn the book; there are huge volumes of philosophy on this subject, and it would be futile to try and fit a quick resolution into one small volume already full of other facts. Nonetheless, they probably should have avoided the philosophical aspect entirely if all they were going to do is attack the mind/body problem in a way that arguably does nothing but shift the terms around a bit to produce the appearance of a resolution. There is essentially nothing new here, philosophically, and they certainly had more than enough interesting material for a book without attempting this.
A second thing that disappointed me is the lack of contrasting points of view. It seems unfair to ask an author to present a summary of theories which argue against his own, but in fact it's in the best interest of an author/scientist. What are the points of contention between theories, and what are the alternate explanations? This gives the author an ideal chance to explain why their theory is superior, what it has that the others lack... and in turn it gives the reader the chance to be convinced (or not) by the force of the argument, which is always more intellectually satisfying than being led by the nose.
Stylistically, also, it could have used a bit of revision. Long, complex sentences are fine (great, even) for something like Proust. When you populate those sentences - even if they're perfect grammatically - with large and generally unfamiliar scientific terms, it can be quite awkward. This happened just frequently enough to be a nuisance, as far as I was concerned.
So, apart from these criticisms, the subject material is still interesting. I would be inclined, however, to look for a more recent title by these authors (or others) on the subject. A lot can be discovered in a few years, and hopefully the experience they gained in writing this book will help them produce a work with a bit more polish.
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Title: The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness by Antonio R. Damasio ISBN: 0156010755 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 10 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Descartes' Error : Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain by Antonio R. Damasio ISBN: 0380726475 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 01 November, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Wider than the Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness by Gerald M. Edelman ISBN: 0300102291 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: 10 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are by Joseph Ledoux ISBN: 0142001783 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 28 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind by Gerald M. Edelman ISBN: 0465007643 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: May, 1993 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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