Out of Your Mind: The Biggest Mysteries of the Human Brain by Jorge Cham and Dwayne Godwin
Out of Your Mind: The Biggest Mysteries of the Human Brain by Jorge Cham and Dwayne Godwin
The human brain is complicated, but in Out of Your Mind, Jorge Cham and Dwayne Godwin draw a simple picture of its workings. Cham is a cartoonist, Godwin is a neuroscientist, and together they construct an easy to follow narrative in words and drawings. They confess to unanswered mysteries, such as: “What is it about certain people that makes us love them?” What is it about that certain someone that triggers the brain’s “reward system”?
On the vexing question of free will, a problem posed by philosophers, theologians and scientists for at least 3,000 years, Cham and Godwin get beyond the mechanistic determinism of the Enlightenment and look to quantum physics. “Fortunately, Isaac Newtown wasn’t quite right,” Godwin writes. At the smallest levels, matter is uncertain. We haves inherent characteristics, inherited, obeying physical laws, but that may leave room for actions that are not predetermined. They leave the question open.
The authors also hold that science is not “an oracle capable of providing complete answers to important questions.” It’s a process.
Get Out of Your Mind at Amazon here.
Paid link
