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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It's a busy place in there, 4 Mar 2005
Exploring the mechanisms of being human inevitably leads us to the mind and its workings. Gerard Edelman has engaged in making those discovery journeys for many years. His stack of published works must stand many centimetres in height. Yet he has been able to distil all that accumulated material into a brief, highly informative book well designed for the general public. That is a stupendous task, yet he's achieved it admirably in this excellent book. In this presentation of human consciousness, Edelman sweeps away much of the mystery. There have been many books attempting to explain our perception of the world. A number of them actually result in a more obscuring than enlightening presentation. Not so in Edelman's case.Using an Emily Dickinson poem to establish the framework for his thesis, the author declares that consciousness resides in the physical brain. We must understand how that developed, Edelman asserts. The answer, of course, lies in the evolutionary development of the human brain and how that led to our version of consciousness. He stresses that we must not discount the cognitive abilities of other animals. Theirs hasn't achieved the complexity of the human mind, but there are countless hints from theirs as to how ours works. The development of human consciousness is a process, not something granted to us. Much of the process occurs in early life, but whether increasing or growing impaired with age, the process never ceases. Given that condition, Edelman rejects the proposition that the brain is a computer, a structure far too rigid to be equated with our form of consciousness. Building maps of the brain has been one of science's lengthy undertakings. As details of where brain functions are located emerged, understanding their links to the body grew. Edelman is quick to point out those "areas" are dominated by identified functions, but far from limited to them. The brain is a highly integrated signalling network - Nature's supreme multi-tasking device. Edelman uses a shorthand term TNGS [Theory of Neuronal Group Selection] to explain the networking process. Some shorthand is required in explaining a system of millions of cells with trillions of connections. The appropriateness of Dickinson's aphorism becomes clear as Edelman details the operations of these extensive networks. The book is assertedly Edelman's. While he doesn't declare that all the findings on brain science are his, neither does he acknowledge who provided the foundation for some of his insights. References are almost all to William James, American founder of cognitive studies. His "Bibliographic Note" is a clear compromise between a full reading list and a teasing call for further reading. He provides an excellent Glossary, to which the new reader to this field should turn at the outset. A number of representational diagrams are provided to enhance the text. In all, Edelman has accomplished his intention - to describe the underpinning of human consciousness in a way we all can comprehend. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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