Volume 40, Number 7 · April 8, 1993
Making up the Mind
By Oliver Sacks
Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind
by Gerald M. Edelman
Basic Books, 280 pp., $25.00
Five years ago the concepts of 'mind' and 'consciousness' were virtually excluded from scientific discourse. Now they have come back, and every week we see the publication of new books on the subject—Wet Mind by Stephen Kosslyn, Nature's Mind by Michael Gazzaniga, Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett, The Computational Brain by Patricia Churchland and Terry Sejnowski, to mention only a few of the more distinguished. Reading most of this work, we may have a sense of disappointment, even outrage; beneath the enthusiasm about scientific developments, there is a certain thinness, a poverty and unreality compared to what we know of human nature, the complexity and density of the emotions we feel and of the thoughts we have. We read excitedly of the latest chemical, computational, or quantum theory of mind, and then ask, 'Is that all there is to it?'
Review, 8541 words
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