Awareness may be mostly mystery, but Damasio shapes its hints and glimmerings into an imaginative, informed narrative.
Damasio (Director/Univ. of Southern California Brain and Creativity Inst.; Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, 2003, etc.) seeks to understand “the mystery of consciousness.”
“Consciousness is a state of mind in which there is knowledge of one’s own existence and of the existence of surroundings”—i.e., where the self introduces the property of subjectivity to the mix. The mind emerges as it composes patterns, “mapping” the world as it interacts with it, just as it maps its own processes. It will appropriate the sensory experiences and make them its own. “Ultimately consciousness allows us to perceive maps as images,” writes Damasio, “to manipulate those images, and to apply reasoning to them.” The author entertains the unconventional idea that mind processing begins at the brain-stem level, not in the cerebral cortex alone, and charts the interaction of the brain stem, the cerebral cortex and the thalamus, taking elementary mind processes through to imagination, reasoning and eventually language. He provides a well-rendered explanation for the role of consciousness in the natural selection of evolution by meeting an organism’s needs through orientation and organization. Along the way, Damasio confronts such slippery characters as feelings, emotions, the will to prevail, biological value and homeostasis, and he also looks carefully at neuroanatomical reference. Consciousness, in the author’s well-tempered and rangy explication, “resembles the execution of a symphony of Mahlerian proportions. But the marvel…is that the score and the conductor become reality only as life unfolds.” And its many players are responsible for everything from internal housekeeping to “placing the self in an evanescent here and now, between a thoroughly lived past and an anticipated future, perpetually buffeted between the spent yesterdays and the tomorrows that are nothing but possibilities.”
Awareness may be mostly mystery, but Damasio shapes its hints and glimmerings into an imaginative, informed narrative.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-37875-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A rare treat: cutting-edge science combined with a perceptive portrait of the people who perform it. Dressler (Astronomy/Carnegie Institution) was one of a team that set out to perform a survey of elliptical galaxies and ended by revising a fundamental axiom of modern cosmology. The ``Seven Samurai,'' as they became known on the release of their results, combined expertise in observation and theory, bringing an unusual level of astronomical talent to their task. Dressler gives brief biographies of himself and the other team members and devotes considerable space to detailing their personal interactions over the course of the project, providing an unusually candid look at not only what scientists really do, but how they feel about it and about each other. As the data from their survey accumulated, the team's initial goal of discovering clues to the absolute magnitude of distant galaxies began to fade as they realized that a large number of galaxies were traveling at unexpectedly high velocities—1,000 km per hour or more—that could only be explained by the attraction of a huge mass. Equally important, this discovery forced a reconsideration of the assumption that the velocities of distant galaxies are almost entirely due to the expansion of the universe and directly related to their distances from Earth. The implications of the discovery, and its theoretical underpinnings, take up much of the last part of the book, a generally clear overview of current thinking on the origins of the universe. A readable and engaging glimpse behind the facade of contemporary science; Dressler does for astronomy what James D. Watson's The Double Helix did for molecular biology. (31 photos, illustrations, charts, and graphs) (Library of Science and Astronomy Book Club main selection)
Pub Date: Oct. 16, 1994
ISBN: 0-394-58899-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
A hunt-and-peck collection of 30 pieces assembled to benefit Share Our Strength, a group dedicated to feeding the hungry. Shore (editor, Mysteries of Life and the Universe, 1992) has managed to gather a host of fine nature writers, but with mixed results. Al Gore's flimsy introduction leads with ``John Muir once wrote''—you can almost hear the snores rising off the page. But then there is Diane Ackerman's smart take on summer (``Summer''), with its bright and insightful appreciation of birds. The good and the not-so-good trade punches: Natalie Angier tries to get poetic as she recalls an urban childhood grappling with nature (``Natural Disasters''), but she is no Charles Simic, and the result is Kansas-flat and without humor. Then Edward Hoagland shines even as his eyesight dims (``Mind's Eyes''), and in his melancholy way he gathers a special sense of the land: learning to distinguish trees by the feel of their bark, finding walking ``such a puzzle as to be either exciting or tearful.'' Ted Kerasote (``Logging'') takes the adage ``An unexamined life isn't worth living'' and beats it to death; here it is logging rather than hunting (see Bloodties, 1993) he picks apart, but, Ted, an overexamined life gets darned boring. Thankfully, Karen Pryor delivers an extraordinary throng of birds (``A Gathering of Birds'') of many different feathers which gathered on a bush next to which she sat and stared at her—a bunch of birds out-humaning her, as it were. And so it goes. Half of the contributions are worth the trouble; .500 isn't a bad batting average, but it's not a great percentage when the quality of the authors is considered. Worth the price of admission all the same for the 15 crack nature essays gathered under one roof. (b&w illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-15-100080-8
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
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