Brainteasers; Writing about the mind; Writing about the mind.(Books and Arts)(Brief Article)

Economist (US), The, June, 2001

IT IS surprising quite how many popular books by distinguished scientists-from Roger Penrose to Francis Crick and Gerald Edelman-tackle problems of consciousness and the mind. All of them face a difficult double task: to explain scientific results to the general reader and to use these results to illuminate the deepest mysteries of the human mind. Few really succeed.

Their declared aim is not to debunk the traditional philosophical problems, but to solve them using rigorous science. Among the dangers implicit here is that in trying to synthesise very different areas of knowledge, a thinker can easily neglect subtleties in areas where he or she is not an expert. Another is that the significance of particular scientific discoveries is often difficult to...

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