The Undiscovered Mind: How the Brain Defies Explanation (Maps of the Mind) - Hardcover

Horgan, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297842250 ISBN 13: 9780297842255

Publisher: W&N, 1999

Synopsis

What is the mind? The question has always fascinated writers and philosophers, but only recently has it become a fashionable line of scientific enquiry. Even more recently, the pursuit of 'final theories' and 'theories of everything' - that would rationally explain all human behaviour - have become a reigning human obsession. In The Undiscovered Mind, John Horgan takes us inside laboratories, hospitals and universities to meet the presumed experts on how the brain works - the 'psientists' as Horgan calls them. Building on these exciting encounters, he demonstrates that we cannot absolutely understand what is happening inside our heads; that science has achieved virtually nothing in explaining the mind, despite the recent remarkable progress in our understanding of the brain and its function, at all levels, from the molecular to the systemic; and that what makes us human is as impervious to science as ever. In doing so, Horgan boldly contradicts all standard views in the area, including those of eminent researchers such as Steven Pinker and E. O. Wilson. Ultimately, Horgan turns his study into a gripping, funny, shocking and uplifting story of human nature trying to understand itself. Drawing on his outstanding investigative skills as well as his accessible writing style, he guides readers through a complex world only to return them to the fundamentals of human nature - hope and belief.

About this title

Review:

Since antiquity, philosophers have speculated upon the workings of the human mind, as much as they have puzzled over the nature of the night sky. Today, as books like Marcus Chown's The Magic Furnace so eloquently demonstrate, we know much about the size and substance of the universe. But how much do we really know about the human brain?

In his previous, controversial work, The End of Science John Horgan argued that science had explained almost everything that it could explain about the world and that, in a universe so complex and various, there were bound to be phenomena that defied scientific scrutiny. (No-one, for example, would seriously seek a scientific explanation for anything so complex as a human being's life story but would turn rather to, say, biography).

The Undiscovered Mind applies the lessons of the earlier book to the sciences of the mind. There are many models of how we think, remember, perceive and emote. Many of them are mutually exclusive; none of them disprove any of the others. Horgan likens this state of affairs to science's precursor alchemy and claims that, with a phenomenon as complex andv arious as human thought, alchemical explanations are the best we'll ever get.

Horgan is good at fleshing out the social and political contexts of brain science and offers real ammunition to cynics. Alas, he enjoys himself too much, finding weakness and failure in the very debates, controversies and animosities that to many would suggest healthy progress in the field. This is a clever and provocative book; it is not altogether good-natured.--Simon Ings

About the Author:

John Horgan, author of The End of Science, was senior writer at Scientific American. He has also contributed to The New York Times, The New Republic, The Washington Post, The Times (London) and Discover, among other publications.

About this edition

• Publisher: W&N
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0297842250
• ISBN 13: 9780297842255
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 325