As the title, more so the subtitle suggests this books is about consciousness but also about Koch's career in neuroscience and his personal life.This quote explains the romantic reductionist part of the subtitle: "...reductionist, because I seek quantitative explanations for consciousness in the ceaseless and ever-varied activity of billions of tiny nerve cells, each with their tens of thousands of synapses; romantic, because of my insistence that the universe has contrails of meaning that can be deciphered in the sky above us and deep within us."
Koch spends a certain amount of time telling the reader what consciousness isn't but not a lot defining what it is.
Francis Crick was a mentor to Koch. He worked with him for years on the question of consciousness. Part of their work involved trying to narrow consciousness down to a certain part(s) of the brain.
At the beginning of the book, Koch gives a brief summary of his life until he started working with Crick and then he sprinkles parts of his personal life throughout.
There were some interesting factoids and ideas in this book but I was left disappointed because Koch doesn't add anything significant to the question of consciousness and I ended up not liking him as a person.
No comments:
Post a Comment