The
Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul
by Francis Crick, Nobel Laureate
Reviews
Booknews, Inc. , April 1, 1994
The British physicist and biochemist who
collaborated to demonstrate the structure of DNA maps out the neurobiology
of vision and extrapolates from there into the nature of human consciousness.
Accessible to the non-scientist. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland,
Or.
From Booklist, December 1, 1993
Winner, with James Watson, of a Nobel Prize
in 1962 for their world-changing discovery of the molecular structure of
DNA, Crick here devotes his considerable mental powers to the study of
the brain and the nature of consciousness. No topic could be more demanding
or fraught with subjectivity - not to mention mysticism - but Crick insists
upon the value of rational thought, logic, and experimental verification.
This perspective underlies the "Astonishing Hypothesis," which states
"that you, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions,
your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than
the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."
How's that for reductionism? But think about it. Could anything actually
be more astonishing than learning that neurons make, store, and retrieve
memories? Create moods? Or, and this is Crick's focus, interpret light
as images? Given the impossibility of tackling consciousness in its entirety,
Crick has chosen to concentrate on one crucial manifestation, visual awareness,
a process far more complicated than most of us realize. While scientists
have begun to understand how the brain breaks down visual information,
no one knows how it puts it back together. What Crick presents is a lucid,
if challenging, explanation of the components and actions of neurons, the
many levels of "neural architecture" in the neocortex, and all the dynamic
and constructive cognitive processes relating to vision that evolve from
the incessant pulse of a myriad of molecular events. Donna Seaman -
Copyright© 1993, American Library Association. All rights reserved
You can spend your time better!
A reader from New York City, New York,
August 17, 1999
My God! ( if you'll pardon the expression).
Does Crick need the money that bad? This is a good book for Neuroscientists
interested in getting up to date on specific knowledge of the visual cortex.
Why the cover states that this is "The Scientific Search for the Soul"
is a puzzle to me. Is it to get this book on the popular science charts?
As a scientist and physician I found the book mildly interesting - the
resource lists at the end are quite good. As a spiritual human being
and a physician I am convinced that many of the reviewers never read this
book as it has NOTHING to do with soul. In addition any scientist and/or
theologian knows that a "Scientific Search" for the soul is as meaningless
an effort as describing the sound blue makes. Religion doesn't need science
to support it and science doesn't need religion to support it. Crick seems
to know this as he never attempts to marry the two in his book. The insult
is that the publishers seem to think he does! Read Paul
Davies if you insist on linking these two disciplines. That can be
an enjoyable and intellectually challenging endeavor.
From Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 1993
It's exactly 40 years since Watson and Crick
published their landmark double-helix papers in Nature, setting biology
on a revolutionary course. In the meantime, Watson has continued to reign
supreme in matters genomic, while Crick (now at the Salk Institute) has
pursued lifelong interests: the origin of life and the nature of the brain.
Lest anyone doubt, Crick hasn't suddenly got religion; the "astonishing"
of the title refers to his reductionist conviction that we're merely a
reflection of how our nerve cells behave. As for soul, this is a book about
consciousness: "Soul" hardly enters in except by way of denying mystical
entities, ghosts, or other personae in the machine. Moreover, Crick omits
discussion of self- consciousness and uses visual awareness as his surrogate
for consciousness in general. His reasons are that humans are strongly
visual animals; that much is known about the visual system in primates
and humans; and that many experiments have and can be done to test hypotheses.
So after some introductory historical material, he plunges into several
hundred pages of review on the organization of the brain and the visual
pathways. None of this is likely to entrance readers outside of neuroanatomy
classes, but at least one point is well taken: Computer folk won't get
anywhere trying to model the brain with digital approaches - the brain
is a super parallel processor that "degrades gracefully" (it can afford
some loss of neurons without ill effects) compared with "brittle" PCs.
In the end, Crick (as well as Cal Tech colleague Christof Koch) sees the
virtue in some neural network models and argues that the brain's thalamus
may be the central integrating unit in consciousness, with the process
perhaps requiring some aspects of memory and attention and involving synchronous
firing of groups of neurons. These are plausible, interesting, testable
ideas - but, as Crick admits, there's a long way to go... Copyright
©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Synopsis
Applying the methodology of science to the
search for the soul, the winner of the Nobel Prize for the discovery of
DNA explores the fundamental questions of human consciousness, challenging
science, philosophy, and religion.
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