Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind

A nobel laureates revolutionary vision of how the mind originates in the brain. One of the worlds foremost brain scientists gives us a glimpse into the workings of the human brainthe most complex material object in the universe. He argues that biology will provide the key to understanding the brain and ultimately the mind. We are on the verge of a revolution in neuroscience as significant as the Galilean revolution in physics or the Darwinian revolution in biology. Nobel laureate Gerald M. Edelman takes issue with the many current cognitive and behavioral approaches to the brain that leave biology out of the picture, and argues that the workings of the brain more closely resemble the living ecology of a jungle than they do the activities of a computer. Some startling conclusions emerge from these ideas: individuality is necessarily at the very center of what it means to have a mind, no creature is born value-free, and no physical theory of the universe can claim to be a theory of everything without including an account of how the brain gives rise to the mind. There is no greater scientific challenge than understanding the brain. Bright Air, Brilliant Fire is a book that provides a window on that understanding.