Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #505091 in Books
• Published on: 1993-05-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Customer Reviews

Edelman went where no man went before
Although Edelman tried to make "Bright Air, Brilliant Fire : On the Matter of the Mind" a self-contained story, it really is based on his trilogy of books "Topobiology : An Introduction to Molecular Embryology", "Neural Darwinism; The Theory of Neuronal Group Selection", and "The Remembered Present : A Biological Theory of Consciousness". I am not sure that any mortal can read only "Bright Air" and really understand what Edelman is talking about.

The claim that Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS) "does not appear to have the potential to really crack the problem" of how a brain makes a mind is a claim that is often made without any suggestion of exactly what Edelman might have missed. These claims are like people in the 1940's saying, "a rocket does not have what it takes to get to the moon." Certainly a 1940's rocket could not reach the moon, and certainly Edelman's TNGS is not a complete theory of mind, but Edelman, like von Braun, was visionary in being able to see that with future improvements, the path to the desired future was in sight. The claim that no correct materialistic theory of mind will ever be found is now nearly as impossible to defend as the claim that "men will never walk on the moon" would have been in 1965.

Speculation about why Edelman's books so annoy and infuriate his critics: 1) Edelman has constructed an new language which he uses to describe his theory mind. He provides no glossary with definitions of his terms. This alone is a horrible tactical error that can only alienate his readers. 2) Edelman builds his theory from a foundation that is unfamiliar to most of his critics.People like Crick, Dennett, and Johnson have never read the literature of "topobiology" and they are also not able to conceptualize how synapse regulation rules must be integrated into the proper types of neural networks in order to allow for learning and memory. 3) Philosophers of Mind, in particular, the many who are "Functionalists" as well as the huge swarm of Parallel Distributed Processing connectionists are shown by Edelman to be taking an inferior approach to mind. Having your professional career side-swiped by an interloper from Biolgy is enough to enrage most philosophers and AI researchers.

New species arise from subtle recombinations of mutations and their birth is a fragile process. The fundamentally correct components of Neural Edelmanism will survive the memetic selection process within the Science of Mind. In the next century Edelman will be viewed in much the same way biologists of this century now view Gregor Mendel and Charles Darwin: men who published their ideas well before science as a whole was ready.

Revolutionary and On Track.
Edelman is absolutely right to approach the problems of consciousness in the manner he does. Consciousness is a biological phenomena which can only be understood in terms of it's biological, evolutionary, and developmental context. The compleation of Darwin's Program is a must if consciousness is to be integrated into the larger body of scientific knowledge that is biology. While the Theory of Neuronal Group Selection is only in it's tenative stages, the approach has shown a light on the path that may ultimately lead to a comprehensible theory that is consistent with the rest of the sciences. Gerald Edelman will be to future generations of neuroscientists and lay-persons alike what Charles Darwin is to us today.

impressive
Dr. Edelman has many critics, who all sound the same in their attacks on his work. First, a sly remark about his personality, his egomania, his obsession with grandeur. Then they claim that he cannot write clearly, that he obscures with his highly technical language. And then you get the usual complaint about the lack of empirical evidence, etc., etc. finally, they claim that they, even being the experts that they are, cannot understand Edelman at all. All these critisms seem convincing enough until one reads Edelman's recent book. Yes, he is highly ambitious, attempting to construct a complex theory of consciousness. But he is a clear and direct writer, who exposes the problems at every step instead of hiding them; he is modest, generously acknowledging his debts to earlier work, providing a helpful bibliography for the interested reader. As to his theory, I find it more convincing than all the theories offered by his critics. That is not to say that it's flawless. Edelman himself, in fact, explicitly says that many aspects of the theory are in need of further revision based on empirical evidence. But his work, clearly the product of a powerful and erudite mind, seems to me the best there is in this immature theoretical field. It needs criticism, but not stupid cricism, as offered by his current critics (e.g. Crick, Dennett, Johnson, etc.), who are obviously off the mark. It would be interesting to speculate why Edelman's books so annoy and infuriate them; after all, it is just another theory, why all the sound and fury when most people in the neuroscience community haven't even read the new book, or any of the previous ones. Is it dangerous--to certain people, for certain unknown reason? Now I hope that Dr. Edelman will continue his line of work, writing more enlightening books that will gradually engage the specific problems he mentioned in his previous work.