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Loading... Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On The Matter Of The Mind (1992)| 367 | 1 | 69,916 | 
(3.66) | 1 | We are on the verge of a revolution in neuroscience as significant as the Galilean revolution in physics or the Darwinian revolution in biology. Nobel laureate Gerald M. Edelman takes issue with the many current cognitive and behavioral approaches to the brain that leave biology out of the picture, and argues that the workings of the brain more closely resemble the living ecology of a jungle than they do the activities of a computer. 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, and 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. Bright Air, Brilliant Fire is a book that provides a window on that understanding.… (more) |
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For by earth we see earth, by water water; by air bright air, and by fire brilliant fire. -- Empedocles  And going on, we come to things like evil, and beauty, and hope . . . Which is nearer to God; if I may use a religious metaphor. Beauty and hope, or the fundamental laws? I think that the right way, of course, is to say that what we have to look at is the whole structural interconnection of the thing; and that all of the sciences, and not just the sciences but all the efforts of intellectual kinds, are an endeavor to see the connections of the hierarchies, to connect beauty to history, to connect history to man's psychology, man's psychology to the working of the brain, the brain to the neural impulse, the neural impulse to the chemistry, and so forth, up and down, both ways. And today we cannot, and it is no use making believe that we can, draw carefully a line all the way from one end of this thing to the other, because we have only just begun to see that there is this relative hierarchy. -- And I do not think either end is nearer to God. -- Richard Feynman | |
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To the memory of two intellectual pioneers, Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud. In much wisdom, much sadness. | |
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Preface -- I have written this book because I think its subject is the most important one imaginable. We are at the beginning of the neuroscientific revolution. At its end, we shall know how the mind works, what governs our nature, and how we know the world. Indeed, what is now going on in neuroscience may be looked at as a prelude to the largest possible scientific revolution, one with inevitable and important social consequences. | |
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▾References References to this work on external resources.  Wikipedia in English
None ▾Book descriptions We are on the verge of a revolution in neuroscience as significant as the Galilean revolution in physics or the Darwinian revolution in biology. Nobel laureate Gerald M. Edelman takes issue with the many current cognitive and behavioral approaches to the brain that leave biology out of the picture, and argues that the workings of the brain more closely resemble the living ecology of a jungle than they do the activities of a computer. 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, and 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. Bright Air, Brilliant Fire is a book that provides a window on that understanding. ▾Library descriptions No library descriptions found. ▾LibraryThing members' description
| Book description |
Comment pensons-nous ? Qu'est-ce qui fait de nous des êtres doués de conscience, capables de nous souvenir, de percevoir le monde alentour, d'éprouver des passions ?. Ce livre présente l'ensemble des mécanismes qui composent l'esprit humain et dresse le bilan de la révolution accomplie par les neurosciences : la biologie du cerveau et l'étude de son évolution sont en passe de nous fournir la clé de la conscience elle-même | |
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> « Ce qui se passe actuellement en neurosciences peut être considéré comme le prélude à la plus grande des révolutions scientifiques », écrit ce prix Nobel de médecine américain dans ce livre difficile, mais captivant.
—Québec science
> La Théorie de la Sélection des Groupes Neuronaux,
In: Revue 3e millénaire, n°37, Automne 1995 (p. 28)