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Wired for Evolution
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20248 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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7 / 1992 |
3,621 Words |
| Author
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Richard M. Restak
Richard M. Restak, a neurologist and neuropsychiatrist, is
the author of six books on the human brain, including The
Brain Has a Mind of Its Owns. |
BRIGHT AIR, BRILLIANT FIRE
On the Matter of the Mind
Gerlad M. Edelman
New York: Basic Books, 1992
280 pp., $25.00
Gerald Edelman has a favorite joke. It concerns two Jewish visitors from America on their first trip to Israel. Following a day of touring they wander into a nightclub where a comedian is delivering one-liners in Hebrew. After sitting silently for a few minutes, one of the tourists breaks into uncontrollable laughter. Wondering, his companion asks: "What are you laughing at? You don't even understand Hebrew." The other, still laughing hysterically, responds: "That doesn't matter. I trust these people."
While reading Bright air, Brilliant Fire I found myself, at one time or another, identifying with both these tourists. I encountered things I had difficulty understanding. But I felt I had reason to trust Edelman: Nobel laureate, director of the Neurosciences Institute, and presently, Vincent Astor Professor at the Rockefeller University in New York City.
Edelman encourages us to think of the mind as something arising from the activity of enormously complicated brain systems operating at various levels of organization. Included are molecules, networks of brain cells, and large brain assemblies. The result is an interconnected network that extends from things too small to be seen (the passage of chemicals from one nerve cell to another) to everyday behavioral events that we observe with the naked eye.
It is startling to realize how many connections project from any one level to another--from a fear response induced by a warning cry to a biochemical process that affects future behavior; from a viral infection to a change in brain development that alters maturation; from the perception of a pattern to the chemistry of changes in a muscle; from any of these at some critical time of development to how a human child develops a self-image--strong or inadequate, detached or dependent.
Bridge Between The Physical And Mental
This viewpoint differs from traditional accounts that consider the mind to be outside the context of biology. The subtitle "On the Matter of the Mind" emphasizes one of Edelman's main points: The mind is a dynamic living
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