AN ANATOMY OF THOUGHT:
THE ORIGIN AND MACHINERY OF THE MIND by Ian Glynn, 1999
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (pvii-viii)

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    Love, fear, hope, calculus, and game shows--how do all these spring from a few delicate pounds of meat? Neurophysiologist Ian Glynn lays the foundation for answering this question in his expansive An Anatomy of Thought, but stops short of committing to one particular theory. The book is a pleasant challenge, presenting the reader with the latest research and thinking about neuroscience and how it relates to various models of consciousness. Combining the aim of a textbook with the style of a popularization, it provides all the lay reader needs to know to participate in the philosophical debate that is redefining our attitudes about our minds.

    Drawing on the rich history of neurological case studies, Glynn picks through the building blocks of our nervous system, examines our visual and linguistic systems, and probes deeply into our higher thought processes. The stories of great scientists, like Ramon y Cajal, and famous patients, like Sperry's split-brained epileptics, illuminate the scientific issues Glynn selects as essential for understanding consciousness. Some might argue that his lengthy explorations of natural selection overemphasize evolutionary explanations of psychological phenomena, but they must also agree that evolutionary psychology has distanced itself mightily from social Darwinism in recent years and merits a reappraisal. The great "consciousness debate" may form the core of the 21st-century Zeitgeist; get ready for it with An Anatomy of Thought. --Rob Lightner at Amazon.com

    How do we know?

    What do we think?

    How could a philosophical problem, say --- the "mind-body problem" --- induce a headache?

    What can evolutionary theory, molecular biology, the history of medicine and experimental psychology tell us about the features of human consciousness, and (once again) how do we know?

    Glynn, a physician and Cambridge University professor, meticulously attempts to answer these questions and more, setting forth the results of all sorts of research relevant to our brains--from 19th-century dissections to Oliver Sacks-like case studies, work with monkeys and supercomputers, and the enduring puzzles of philosophy, which he rightly saves for near the end. After explaining evolution by natural selection and "clear[ing] away much dross," Glynn lays out the experiments and theories that have shown "how nerve cells can carry information about the body, how they can interact" and how sense organs work; demonstrates the "mixture of parallel and hierarchical organization" in our brains and "the striking localization of function within it"; considers where neuroscience is likely to go; and admits that, among the many fields of exciting research just ahead, "we can be least confident of progress [toward a complete, scientific] explanation of our sensations and thoughts and feelings."

    Other recent books have sometimes advanced simplistic, or implausibly grand, claims about the nature and features of consciousness in general. Instead, Glynn offers a patient, informative, well-laid-out researcher's-eye view of what we have learned, how we figured it out and what we still don't know about neurons, senses, feelings, brains and minds. From Publishers Weekly, Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

PART 1 --- CLEARING THE GROUND (p1-80)

    1) What this book is about (p3-6)

    2) The failure of the common-sense view (p7-16)

    3) Evolution by "natural selection" (p17-39)

      [1] The evolution of evolution (p18-19)

      [2] The origin of the "Origin" (p19-23)

        The phrase "survival of the fittest" was first used by Herbert Spencer. (p19 footnote)

      [3] The success of the "Origin" (p23-30)

        (1) Evidence from geographical distribution (p24-26)

        (2) Evidence from comparative anatomy (p26-28)

        (3) Evidence from embryology (p28)

        (4) Evidence from fossils (p28-30)

      [4] Darwin's "cold shudder" (p30-31)

      [5] The survival of features that threaten survival (p31-33)

      [6] As unlike as two peas (p33-35)

      [7] Evolution at the molecular level (p35-39)

    4) "The Decent of Man" (p40-61)

    5) The origin of life (p62-80)

PART 2 --- NERVES AND NERVOUS SYSTEMS (p81-187)

    Introduction (p83-84)

    6) The nature of nerves (p85-105)

    7) The nerve impulse (p106-118)

    8) Encoding the message (p119-122)

    9) Interactions between nerve cells (p123-137)

    10) "The doors of perception" (p138-163)

    11) A cook's tour of the brain (p164-187)

PART 3 --- LOOKING AT SEEING (p189-255)

    Introduction (p191-192)

    12) Illusions (p193-200)

    13) Disordered seeing with normal eyes (p201-220)

      Noninvasive methods for scanning the brain (p221-222)

    14) Opening the "black box" (p223-241)

    15) Natural computers and artificial brains (p242-255)

PART 4 --- TALKING ABOUT TALKING (p257-310)

    Introduction (p259)

    16) In the steps of the "diagram-makers" (p261-287)

    17) Chomsky and after (p288-295)

    18) Monkey puzzles (p296-310)

PART 5 --- THINKING ABOUT THINKING (p311-364)

    Introduction (p313)

    19) Memory (p315-333)

      [1] How many kinds of memory (p318-320)

      [2] Topographical memory (p320-321)

      [3] The relation between short-term and long-term memory (p322-324)

      [4] So how does memory work? (p324-330)

      [5] Forgetting (p331-333)

    20) The emotions (p334-350)

    21) Planning and attention (p351-364)

PART 6 --- THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND --- OR MINDING THE PHILOSOPHERS (p365-399)

    Introduction (p367)

    22) The "mind-body problem" --- a variety of approaches (p369-390)

    20) The "mind-body problem" --- consciousness and "qualia" (p391-399)

    24) Free will and morality (p400-410)

EPILOGUE (p411-413)

NOTES (p415-448)

INDEX (p449-456)
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