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Title: Cerebral Symphony: Seashore Reflections on the Structure of Consciousness by William H. Calvin ISBN: 0-553-05707-3 Publisher: Bantam Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 1990 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3 (2 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Get the big picture.
Comment: I read Calvin's Cerebral Symphony some years ago and found it a refreshing and accessible look at a topic with which I had some passing familiarity and interest. As a sociology and anthropology instructor I could only have tangential knowledge in the neurosciences. I'm not suggesting that reading Calvin made me an expert in the field, but his writing technique and approach opened a new dimension of exploration for me and "connected" with a growing anthropological and archaeological literature on the nature of thought, language and the relationship of brain development and speech. His subsequent work has been even more relevant to my corner or academia.
Another Amazon reviewer has soundly panned Cerebral Symphony and I think, unfairly. Granted, there are books more stylistically compelling. For instance, Robert Persig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is much more carefully crafted than Cerebral Symphony, but I was left with the same sense after reading both of these books that I had read books that addressed in a highly engaging way topics that will prove to be pivotal in the history of scholarship.

Rating: 1
Summary: It's the writing style.
Comment: Too wordy and disjointed. Too complicated. That's complicated, not complex. I can handle complex. Douglas Hofstadter talks about complex things, but I can understand him. I can remember what he wrote. And if I can understand Hofstadter, I must have SOME reading abilities. But this book of Calvin's I found forgettable, because his sentences and paragraphs and topics wander too much. And I like this stuff, the topic, that is. I eat this stuff up, books about consciousness and neuropsychology and psychology in general. But this... I read a few years ago, found it slippery at the time, and can barely remember what I got out of it. Here's a sample: "Consciousness is a very overused word, the same string of syllables being used to designate a multitide of meanings. It's much worse than the multiple meanings of brain, which, besides denoting the three pounds of nerve cells inside our heads, is also used as a verb (to club, aiming at a head), as the opposite of brawn, as a surname in England, as a term for a studious student or the chief planner of an enterprise, and more recently to designate something as inanimate as a computer. Being a neurophsyiologist, I tend to avoid the nonneurological uses of the word [WHICH ONE?], but I doubt that I'll convert the rest of the Englsih-speaking world to my more restrictive usage" (p.75).

And trust me, it gets worse in the next few sentences. Redundant. 90% of that first sentence above is tangent. By the time I get to the end I don't remember what the subject was. This guy likes to hear himself talk. I don't mean that personally, maybe he's a great guy, I don't know, but I think he needs some help with the writing style. And it wouldn't be so bad if he eventually got to some point about consciousness or psychology, but sometimes I can't find why all that tangent was there.

I can't (or won't) critique what the book is about; I think the writing style overrides it. (The type it's set in didn't help, either. Sounds like quibbling but it's true. Somehow it added to the muddiness. Too squished, maybe. I think the quoted sentence reads more clearly as I've typed it here than when one reads it on paper in the book.)