A difficult subject lucidly illuminated, if not fully explained.
A journey into the concept of the mind, mixing neurology, philosophy, technology, and other disciplines.
Although everyone has a mind, few experts agree on its makeup. Ball, longtime editor at scientific journal Nature and author of Patterns in Nature and other books, delivers a fine investigation of the possibilities. He points out that early cultures awarded “mind and motive” to everything: rivers, rocks, trees, weather, gods. Regarding modern conceptions of “minds” in nature, the author writes, “our habit of treating animals as though they are dim-witted humans explains a great deal about our disregard for their well-being; giving them fully fledged, Disneyfied human minds is only the flipside of the same coin.” We use our minds to experience the world, but we can only understand the mind by using the mind. Yes, it’s tautological, but few readers will object to Ball’s efforts. Traveling the world and talking to experts, the author has learned that the mind is not the same thing as consciousness. The mind has been called the software of the brain, but that brings up artificial intelligence, a sore subject with computer scientists, many of whom have discarded the notion that brain function can inform AI developers. Despite impressive advances in neurophysiology, “we can examine the brain as a biological organ all we like, but we still can’t get inside the mind it helps create, and see what is going on.” On the positive side, he adds, consciousness is intimately involved, perhaps even synonymous. The mind maintains consciousness as “a uniquely human ability to build and sustain a picture of ourselves as autonomous entities with a history and identity.” By the halfway point, it’s clear that Ball is writing a book as much about consciousness as the mind. Many of his topics are among the hottest in neuroscience today, explored by scores of academics and popularizers such as Oliver Sacks, Antonio Damasio, and Daniel Dennett. Building on their theories and others, Ball makes a useful addition to the literature.
A difficult subject lucidly illuminated, if not fully explained.Pub Date: July 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-226-79587-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
