Kirjahaku

This title is printed in full color throughout. From one of the most original and influential neuroscientists at work today, here is an exploration of consciousness unlike any other--as told by Galileo, who opened the way for the objectivity of science and is now intent on making subjective experience a part of science as well. Galileo's journey has three parts, each with a different guide. In the first, accompanied by a scientist who resembles Francis Crick, he learns why certain parts of the brain are important and not others, and why consciousness fades with sleep. In the second part, when his companion seems to be named Alturi (Galileo is hard of hearing; his companion's name is actually Alan Turing), he sees how the facts assembled in the first part can be unified and understood through a scientific theory--a theory that links consciousness to the notion of integrated information (also known as phi). In the third part, accompanied by a bearded man who can only be Charles Darwin, he meditates on how consciousness is an evolving, developing, ever-deepening awareness of ourselves in history and culture--that it is everything we have and everything we are. Not since G del, Escher, Bach has there been a book that interweaves science, art, and the imagination with such originality. This beautiful and arresting narrative will transform the way we think of ourselves and the world.

Let us imagine Galileo locked up with a photodiode in a room that alternately lights up and darkens. Both can indicate whether it is lit or not. If Galileo is aware of it, why not say that the photodiode is too? Through a series of thought experiments, which Galileo invented, this book seeks to solve the enigma of consciousness. How is consciousness produced by the brain? Is it always? Is a dreamless sleep a state of consciousness? Do the right brain and the left brain give two different consciousnesses when they are separated? Why does the removal of the cerebellum have no effect on consciousness when it has more nerve cells than the brain? By following Galileo step by step, from thought experiment to thought experiment, Giulio Tononi proposes here a scientific theory of consciousness. Giulio Tononi is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin in Madison (USA). He published, with Gerald M. Edelman, How Matter Becomes Consciousness.