The Undiscovered Mind: How the Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation - Softcover

Horgan, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684865785 ISBN 13: 9780684865782

Publisher: Free Press, 2000

Synopsis

Lively account of the state of research into the human mind. Science writer Horgan explores the complexity of the subject and assesses the efforts and claims of neuro-scientists, geneticists, psychologists and co. Some light shelfwear but clean and tight. Very good condition

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 is the author of The End of Science, a U.S. bestseller that has been translated into ten languages. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times (London), The New Republic, Lingua Franca, Slate, The Sciences, and Discover, among other publications in the United States and Europe. He lives in Garrison, New York.

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0684865785
• ISBN 13: 9780684865782
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336