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In Second Nature, Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Gerald Edelman argues that the brain and mind are unified, but he has little patience with the claim that the brain is a computer. Fortunately for the general reader, his explanations of brain function are accessible, reinforced by concrete examples and metaphors.Edelman suggests that thanks to the recent development of instruments capable of measuring brain structure within millimeters and brain activity within milliseconds, perceptions, thoughts, memories, willed acts, and other mind matters traditionally considered private and impenetrable to scientific scrutiny now can be correlated with brain activity.The author describes three unifying insights that correlate mind matters with brain activity. First, even distant neurons will establish meaningful connections (circuits) if their patterns are synchronized. Second, experience can either strengthen or weaken synapses (neuronal connections). Finally, there is reentry, the continued signaling from one brain region to another and back again along massively parallel nerve fibers.Edelman concedes that neurological explanations for consciousness and other aspects of mind are not currently available, but he is confident that they will be soon. Meanwhile, he is comfortably hazarding a guess: "All of our mental life.., is based on the structure and dynamics of our brain," Despite this optimism about the explanatory powers of neuroscience, Edelman acknowledges the pitfalls in attempting to explain all aspects of the mind in neurological terms. Indeed, culture--not biology--is the primary determinant of the brain"s evolution, and has been since the emergence of language, he notes.However, I was surprised to learn that he considers Sigmund Freud "the key expositor of the effects of unconscious processes on behavior". Such a comment ignores how slightly Freud"s conception of the unconscious, with its emphasis on sexuality and aggression, resembles the cognitive unconscious studied by neuroscientists.Still, Second Nature is well worth reading. It serves as a bridge between the traditionally separate camps of "hard" science and the humanities. Readers without at least some familiarity with brain science will likely find the going difficult at certain points. Nonetheless, Edelman has achieved his goal of producing a provocative exploration of"how we come to know the world and ourselves". The author disagrees with the idea that the neuroscience-based cognitive unconscious can be______
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In Second Nature, Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Gerald Edelman argues that the brain and mind are unified, but he has little patience with the claim that the brain is a computer. Fortunately for the general reader, his explanations of brain function are accessible, reinforced by concrete examples and metaphors.Edelman suggests that thanks to the recent development of instruments capable of measuring brain structure within millimeters and brain activity within milliseconds, perceptions, thoughts, memories, willed acts, and other mind matters traditionally considered private and impenetrable to scientific scrutiny now can be correlated with brain activity.The author describes three unifying insights that correlate mind matters with brain activity. First, even distant neurons will establish meaningful connections (circuits) if their patterns are synchronized. Second, experience can either strengthen or weaken synapses (neuronal connections). Finally, there is reentry, the continued signaling from one brain region to another and back again along massively parallel nerve fibers.Edelman concedes that neurological explanations for consciousness and other aspects of mind are not currently available, but he is confident that they will be soon. Meanwhile, he is comfortably hazarding a guess: "All of our mental life.., is based on the structure and dynamics of our brain," Despite this optimism about the explanatory powers of neuroscience, Edelman acknowledges the pitfalls in attempting to explain all aspects of the mind in neurological terms. Indeed, culture--not biology--is the primary determinant of the brain"s evolution, and has been since the emergence of language, he notes.However, I was surprised to learn that he considers Sigmund Freud "the key expositor of the effects of unconscious processes on behavior". Such a comment ignores how slightly Freud"s conception of the unconscious, with its emphasis on sexuality and aggression, resembles the cognitive unconscious studied by neuroscientists.Still, Second Nature is well worth reading. It serves as a bridge between the traditionally separate camps of "hard" science and the humanities. Readers without at least some familiarity with brain science will likely find the going difficult at certain points. Nonetheless, Edelman has achieved his goal of producing a provocative exploration of"how we come to know the world and ourselves". Edelman firmly believes that______
Our trouble lies in a simple confusion, one to which economists have been prone since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Growth and ecology operate by different rules. Economists tend to assume that every problem of scarcity can be solved by substitution, by replacing tuna with tilapia, without factoring in the long-term environmental implications of either. But whereas economies might expand, ecosystems do not. They change--pine gives way to oak, coyotes arrive in New England--and they reproduce themselves, but they do not increase in extent or abundance year after year. Most economists think of scarcity as a labor problem. Imagining that only energy and technology place limits on production. To harvest more wood, build a better chain saw; to pump more oil, drill more wells; to get more food, invent pest-resistant plants.That logic thrived on new frontiers and more intensive production, and it held off the prophets of scarcity- from Thomas Robert Malthus to Paul Ehrlich- whose predictions of famine and shortage have not come to pass. The Agricultural Revolution that began in seventeenth-centur) England radically increased the amount of food that could be grown on an acre of land, and the same happened in the 1960s and 1970s when fertilizer and hybridized seeds arrived in India and Mexico. But the picture looks entirely different when we change the scale. Industrial society is roughly 250 years old: make the last ten thousand years equal to twenty-four hours, and we have been producing consumer goods and CO2for only the last thirty-six minutes. Do the same for the past 1 million years of human evolution, and every thing from the steam engine to the search engine fits into the past twenty-one seconds. If we are not careful, hunting and gathering will look like a far more successful strategy of survival than economic growth. The latter has changed sc much about the earth and human societies in so little time that it makes more sense to be cautious than triumphant.Although food scarcity, when it occurs, is a localized problem, other kinds of scarcity are already here. Groundwater is alarmingly low in regions all over the world, but the most immediate threat to growth is surely petroleum. What happened in the 1960s and 1970s
Our trouble lies in a simple confusion, one to which economists have been prone since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Growth and ecology operate by different rules. Economists tend to assume that every problem of scarcity can be solved by substitution, by replacing tuna with tilapia, without factoring in the long-term environmental implications of either. But whereas economies might expand, ecosystems do not. They change--pine gives way to oak, coyotes arrive in New England--and they reproduce themselves, but they do not increase in extent or abundance year after year. Most economists think of scarcity as a labor problem. Imagining that only energy and technology place limits on production. To harvest more wood, build a better chain saw; to pump more oil, drill more wells; to get more food, invent pest-resistant plants.That logic thrived on new frontiers and more intensive production, and it held off the prophets of scarcity- from Thomas Robert Malthus to Paul Ehrlich- whose predictions of famine and shortage have not come to pass. The Agricultural Revolution that began in seventeenth-centur) England radically increased the amount of food that could be grown on an acre of land, and the same happened in the 1960s and 1970s when fertilizer and hybridized seeds arrived in India and Mexico. But the picture looks entirely different when we change the scale. Industrial society is roughly 250 years old: make the last ten thousand years equal to twenty-four hours, and we have been producing consumer goods and CO2for only the last thirty-six minutes. Do the same for the past 1 million years of human evolution, and every thing from the steam engine to the search engine fits into the past twenty-one seconds. If we are not careful, hunting and gathering will look like a far more successful strategy of survival than economic growth. The latter has changed sc much about the earth and human societies in so little time that it makes more sense to be cautious than triumphant.Although food scarcity, when it occurs, is a localized problem, other kinds of scarcity are already here. Groundwater is alarmingly low in regions all over the world, but the most immediate threat to growth is surely petroleum. What does the passage say about the predictions made by Thomas Robert Malthus and Paul Ehrlich
In Second Nature, Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Gerald Edelman argues that the brain and mind are unified, but he has little patience with the claim that the brain is a computer. Fortunately for the general reader, his explanations of brain function are accessible, reinforced by concrete examples and metaphors.Edelman suggests that thanks to the recent development of instruments capable of measuring brain structure within millimeters and brain activity within milliseconds, perceptions, thoughts, memories, willed acts, and other mind matters traditionally considered private and impenetrable to scientific scrutiny now can be correlated with brain activity.The author describes three unifying insights that correlate mind matters with brain activity. First, even distant neurons will establish meaningful connections (circuits) if their patterns are synchronized. Second, experience can either strengthen or weaken synapses (neuronal connections). Finally, there is reentry, the continued signaling from one brain region to another and back again along massively parallel nerve fibers.Edelman concedes that neurological explanations for consciousness and other aspects of mind are not currently available, but he is confident that they will be soon. Meanwhile, he is comfortably hazarding a guess: "All of our mental life.., is based on the structure and dynamics of our brain," Despite this optimism about the explanatory powers of neuroscience, Edelman acknowledges the pitfalls in attempting to explain all aspects of the mind in neurological terms. Indeed, culture--not biology--is the primary determinant of the brain"s evolution, and has been since the emergence of language, he notes.However, I was surprised to learn that he considers Sigmund Freud "the key expositor of the effects of unconscious processes on behavior". Such a comment ignores how slightly Freud"s conception of the unconscious, with its emphasis on sexuality and aggression, resembles the cognitive unconscious studied by neuroscientists.Still, Second Nature is well worth reading. It serves as a bridge between the traditionally separate camps of "hard" science and the humanities. Readers without at least some familiarity with brain science will likely find the going difficult at certain points. Nonetheless, Edelman has achieved his goal of producing a provocative exploration of"how we come to know the world and ourselves". According to Edelman, to provide a thorough explanation of the human mind, neuroscience will be______
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