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

This book is my introduction to Dr. Edelman, and I was stunned. Yes, I understand that this is a synopsis of his overall trilogy, and I am thankful for that. Now I can go to those volumes to dig deeper, if I don't move on to more recent works. I read this as a result of a recommendation in response to someone reviewing Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works (see my review of of that, if they'll print it). Edelman is clear, concise, and informative (and I like his wry humor). He shows all the marks of a great teacher, especially by patiently walking us through the tough neurologic stuff. I call this review Brilliantly Sobering because, once I had absorbed and understood his Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, the whole thought process business (and evolutionary and developmental progression of same) made sense for a change (unlike with Pinker's lame computational analog), and that actually startled me into thinking about HOW I think (and then, as a result, how I act -- what a change of pace for a student of Buddhism). Like I said, sobering. So next thing I did was pick up a copy of The Symbolic Quest: Basic Concepts of Analytical Psychology by Edward C. Whitmont (highly recommended) to help figure out WHY I think the way I think. Anyway, thank you, Dr. Edelman, I look forward to following you to where you've gone next. Meanwhile, I think I think I'll have a beer.

This is a very important book.It proves convincingly that consciousness is a matter of ... matter (the biological matter of the brain) and that it is the outcome of a long history of biological adaptations.It also proves that the mind is not a computer or a Turing machine, that human language is not a computer language and that physics is not sufficient to explain its working. The morphology of the brain goes deep, but not as deep as to attain the quantum level.On the contrary, Edelman explains clearly that the mind is a process that operates in a 4 dimensional world; that it doesn't have a perfect memory or doesn't order events or objects logically. It is subject to mutation in order to select and to adapt and creates itself aspects of the reality by cultural and language interaction. Into the bargain, the biological structure of the brain is different for every individual.Edelman's theory has also far reaching philosophical implications. It is the death of essentialism (there are no 'essences', only populations with different individuals) and of idealism (the world was there before the mind).Is Edelman's TNGS (theory of neural group selection) the end of the story? Absolutely not. It is only the beginning. It forms the basis for further investigations. But it clearly indicates which way to follow and which ways not.I have only one reservation: Edelman's nearly unconditional admiration for Freud.This is an essential read.

The worst kind of reviewers are those who come when the play is half over. There is no "royal road" to the truth, either in mathematics, as the old tale has it, or in philosophy and science. Ethically, you can struggle through the basics and talk about your conclusions; or you should shut up. If you have no inkling about the Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, you have no inkling about consciousness. Go back and do your homework. So Edelman's books are tough going? Did you expect to understand calculus without taking algebra? I read "Neural Darwinism" right after it was published, and gagged. My biology background is thin; one college course. I looked up "natural selection" and found Dawkins; I read all of his books and knew something about genetics. I read "ND" again, understanding a bit more, especially the part about "ground-breaking" ... When "Topobiology" appeared, I read it. I had to reread "ND" to get through it, but I began to understand the vocabulary, the ideas, the logic, the structure. Same thing with "Remembered Present". At that point I was working in a university psychology department (strictly as a hardware specialist, never having had a single psychology course). I mentioned this exciting work to a few professors in developmental psych who might have been expected to look at it; none of them did. Not till 1999, when a visiting professor offered a course in "Consciousness" based on "The Remembered Present", was there any hint that Edelman had some relevance for those researching the development of the mind. Draw your own conclusions. If you're not afraid to know the facts, if you really want to know the answers to the hard questions (What is life? Why is the universe only 4-dimensional? Where does thought come from?), dig for them; they do exist. Start with Edelman.

More than a quarter of a century ago, Edelman was distinguished with a Nobel Price for his research on the immunity system. Later he switched to neurology. He sees a parallel between the way the immunity system is programmed and the way the brain is programmed. These procedures have much in common with Darwins process of evolution by way of natural selection. Edelman speaks of "neural Darwinism". When you just think about it, after reading the arguments Edelman brings forward, you will see that evolution could hardly have produced something as complex as the human brain (or even more simple animal brains) by any other means. A lot has to be investigated yet, of course, but I think Edelman has shown the way to a deeper understanding of our brain.It is a pity Edelman and Daniel Dennet get along so badly. Edelman never mentions Dennet, and Dennet is extremely critical in the few remarks he makes about Edelmans work. I think their approaches are complementary, not contradictory. Yes, the human brain is a computer of sorts. Edelman has the clearest ideas about the structure of this computer, but he denies that the metaphor of the computer is valid. I think that, even taking Edelmans ideas about the deeper structure in account, the metaphor remains valid, up to a point at least. Really, Edelman has much more in common with Dennet (whom he seems to despise) than with the "mysterian" Searle, whom he praises.

In Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, Gerald M. Edelman accomplishes what seems to be an almost impossible task: He helps the non-scientist to understand the connections between what is known about the mind with what is beginning to be known about the brain. For Edelman, this subject "is the most important one imaginable" because it is charged "with the excitement of being on the threshold of knowing how we know." At the outset, he poses "some commonsense notions":1. Things do not have minds.2. Normal humans have minds; some animals act as if they do.3. Beings with minds can refer to other beings or things; things without minds do not refer to beings or things.The book is divided into four main parts (Problems, Origins, Proposals, and Harmonies), concluding with "Mind Without Biology: A Critical Postscript" in which Edelman dispels the notion that the mind can be understood in the absence of biology. Stated another way (in Chapter 2), "There must be ways to put the mind back into nature that are concordant with how it got there in the first place."Obviously, this is not a book for browsers, for grasshoppers, or for dilettantes. It makes great demands on the mind (and patience) of its reader. But consider Edelman's original objective: to explore the connections between what is known about the mind with what is beginning to be known about the brain. For him, this subject is (to reiterate) "the most important one imaginable" because it is charged "with the excitement of being on the threshold of knowing how we know."Is there any other knowledge of greater importance?