by Matthew Cobb ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
A lucid account of brain research, our current knowledge, and problems yet to be solved.
A fresh history and tour d’ horizon of “the most complex object in the known universe.”
Although scientists still struggle to understand the brain, they know a great deal about it; Cobb, a professor of biological sciences, delivers an excellent overview. No one experiences his or her brain, but even the ancients were conscious of their heart, so deep thinkers, led by Aristotle, concluded that it governed human actions, perceptions, and emotions. Some Greeks experimented—on live animals; Cobb’s descriptions are not for the squeamish—but “they merely showed that the brain was complicated. Aristotle’s heart-centered view remained enormously influential, partly because of his immense prestige but above all because it corresponded to everyday experience.” Matters changed only with the scientific revolution, and Cobb writes a riveting account of four centuries of brain research that soon revealed its structure and made slower but steady progress describing its functions, which depend on complex brain cells, neurons, that communicate with each other through electrical signals but don’t actually touch. The author ends the “history” section and begins “present” in the mid-20th century. This may puzzle readers, but he has a point. “Since the 1950s,” he writes, “our ideas have been dominated by concepts that surged from biology into computing—feedback loops, information, codes and computation, but…some of the most brilliant and influential theoretical intuitions about how nervous systems might ‘compute’ have turned out to be completely wrong.” Although the computer metaphor is showing its age, the digital revolution has produced dazzling progress, allowing scientists to study individual neurons, localize brain activity in living subjects, and manipulate objects by thinking. Cobb concludes that this avalanche of new knowledge hasn’t brought us nearer the holy grail of brain research—a neural correlate of consciousness—or led to dramatic advances in treating mental illness or paralysis, but these will happen…eventually.
A lucid account of brain research, our current knowledge, and problems yet to be solved.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5416-4685-8
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 13, 2012
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998
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
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