Kirjahaku

A renowned neuroscientist explains how our brains and bodies give rise to knowledge, creativity, and mental experience Burgeoning advancements in brain science are opening up new perspectives on how we acquire knowledge. Indeed, it is now possible to explore consciousness—the very center of human concern—by scientific means. In this illuminating book, Dr. Gerald M. Edelman offers a new theory of knowledge based on striking scientific findings about how the brain works. And he addresses the related compelling question: Does the latest research imply that all knowledge can be reduced to scientific description? Edelman’s brain-based approach to knowledge has rich implications for our understanding of creativity, of the normal and abnormal functioning of the brain, and of the connections among the different ways we have of knowing. While the gulf between science and the humanities and their respective views of the world has seemed enormous in the past, the author shows that their differences can be dissolved by considering their origins in brain functions. He foresees a day when brain-based devices will be conscious, and he reflects on this and other fascinating ideas about how we come to know the world and ourselves.

If you had a complete copy of a dinosaur's DNA and the genetic code, you still would not be able to make a dinosaur,or even determine what one looked like. Why? How do animals get their shape and how does shape evolve? In this important book, Nobel laureate Gerald M. Edelman challenges the notion that an understanding of the genetic code and of cell differentiation is sufficient to answer these questions. Rather, he argues, a trio of related issues must also be investigated,the development of form, the evolution of form, and the morphological and functional bases of behaviour. Topobiology presents an introduction to molecular embryology and describes a comprehensive hypothesis to account for the evolution and development of animal form.

The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side, The one the other will includeWith ease and you beside?, wrote the American poet Emily Dickinson in the mid-nineteenth century. The fundamental mechanI'ms governing mental life are now the subject of scientific study. In this book, Gerald Edelman examines a major aspect of the mied - consciousness.How can the firing of neurons give rise to subjective sensations, thoughts and emotions? How can the disparate domains of mied and body be reconciled? A scientific explanation of consciousness must take into account the causal connections between these two domains. Such a theory must show how the neural bases of consciousness appeared during the evolutionary process and how certain animals developed consciousness. These are some of the key issues that Gerald Edelman examines here.He shows that consciousness cannot be located in a specific area of the brain, because it is a process linked to how the brain functions as a whole, to its wealth of connections and to its great complexity. The brain, he argues, is not a kied of computer.Edelman is regarded as one of the greatest theoreticians of the brain, and his notion of consciousness dominates all discussions on the subject among the international scientific community. This book offers the most accessible version of his theories that is available today.The winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize in Medicine, Gerald Edelman heads the Institute for Neurosciences, in La Jolla, California.