Mind from Matter Cloth

The full title of this book is "Mind From Matter? An Essay of Evolutionary Epistemology". It is a compilation of lectures delivered at Caltech in the mid 70's by Max Delbruck, one of the preeminent biologists of the 20th century. The insights in this book are so refreshing and deep, I must wonder why this book has not received far greater attention than it has. It is one of the best books I have ever come across for demonstrating just how critically important science is to philosophy. If you have any interest in how science impinges on epistemology in particular, this book is a "must read"; put it at the top of your to-do list. Even if your interest is much broader, and you are not intimidated by equations and scientific jargon, then you will enjoy this book greatly. It is extremely well-written, beautifully illustrated with concise line drawings, and best of all, it explores an astonishingly wide range of topics in both science and philosophy. To give you some idea of its breadth, this book covers perception, genetics, time, cognition, causality, number theory, evolution, computability, paradoxes, relativity, quantum mechanics, mind/brain duality, logic and artificial intelligence, and discusses what all of this has to say about how we know anything; that is, epistemology. It's a stunning synthesis.One of the central tenets of this book, which impinges forcefully on epistemology, is summed up nicely beginning on page 117: "...the empiricist argument that knowledge about the world can enter the mind only through experience is valid if we consider only the ontogenetic development of man, from fertilized human egg to adult person. But once we also take into account the phylogenic development of the human brain through evolutionary history, it becomes clear that persons can know something of the world innately, prior to and independent of their experience."In essence, Delbruck argues that we acquire knowledge not only through direct interaction, during development onward, but also through the accumulated experience of our ancestors, handed down by way of our genes, which have been shaped by eons of previous experience. The distinction between "ontogenetic" learning and "phylogenetic" learning is revisited many times in the book and explored in great depth, both philosophically and scientifically. As a biologist, Delbruck is not content to simply assert that something happened; he wants to understand the mechanisms. Delbruck offers many deep insights: "What is learned phylogenetically is not how to enter the world with ready-made adaptive concepts but how to have the brain so interact with the world before, during, and after birth that is certain to develop adaptive rather than maladaptive categories of thought."This is an outstanding book. Be warned, however, that it is not an easy read. It is not science-made-palatable. Rather, it is a carefully argued synthesis of wide-ranging scientific knowledge, and an exploration of the philosophical implicati