The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.52 (668 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0684194317 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 317 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 0000-00-00 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Early chapters include numerous interactive illustrations to demonstrate the brain's shortcuts, tricks and habits of visual perception. Geared to serious lay readers and scientists, this speculative study argues that our minds can be explained, without recourse to religious concepts of a soul, in terms of the interactions of a vast assembly of nerve cells and associated molecules. Crick delves into the nature of consciousness by focusing on visual awareness, an active, constructive process in which the brain selectively combines discrete elements into meaningful images. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. . From Publishers Weekly Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Crick (co-discoverer with James Watson of DNA's do
"Flawed, but still worth it" according to Amazon Customer. The astonishing hypothesis referred to in the title of Crick's book is that all of your phenomenological experience is ultimately reducible to "no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules." So, just how is consciousness neurally instantiated? What the reader should take away from the book is just how difficult of a question this is.Francis Crick was a thorough going empiricist and he strongly believed that the experimental method was the only way of successfully tackling the problem of consciousness. Along with his close collaborator, Christof Koch, Crick chose visual awaren. The Not So Astonishing Hypothesis Edgar Foster I purchased "The Astonishing Hypothesis" by Francis Crick with great expectations. I am very much interested in the scientific search for what some call "soul" and was under the impression that Crick (co-discoverer of the double helix DNA structure) had marshalled plausible or powerful evidence that the soul merely is a person's mental activities that result from the behavior of nerve cells, glial cells, atoms, molecules and ions that influence glial or nerve cells. For the most part, mutatis mutandis, I affirm Crick's hypothesis. However, I don't think "The Astonishing Hypothesis" comes anywhere close to providing infor. "Not a light read" according to Atheen. Francis Crick is probably best known to most of us from high school biology classes for his pioneer work with James Watson on the structure and function of DNA. In his book the Astonishing Hypothesis he tackles a topic hardly less complex, the origin of awareness. Although the subtitle would suggest that the discussion is the scientific proof for the existence of the soul--and possibly thereby the existence of God--the reader who takes up the book with this expectation will be resoundingly disappointed. Instead he or she will find a very convoluted discussion of brain neurophysiology, the theoretical basis of sensory sys
The Nobel Prize-winning physicist who discovered the molecular structure of DNA examines what makes humans sentient beings, offering an analysis and description of how the brain sees.