Enchanted Looms
Conscious Networks in Brains and Computers

This beautifully written 1998 book examining consciousness, and which received high praise in the reviews, is now available in paperback.

Rodney Cotterill (Author)

9780521624350, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 November 1998

524 pages, 121 b/w illus.
24.4 x 17 x 2.9 cm, 1.03 kg

'The book is well structured, moving easily between anatomical detail, functional theories, methodologies and the analyses of others, making it mandatory reading for those considering doing research on this topic.' The Times Higher Education Supplement

The title of this 1998 book was inspired by a passage in Charles Sherrington's Man on his Nature. When that famous physiologist died in 1952, the prospects for a scientific explanation of consciousness seemed remote. Enchanted Looms shows how the situation has changed dramatically, and provides what is probably the most wide-ranging account of the phenomenon ever written. Rodney Cotterill bridges the gap between the bottom-up approach to understanding consciousness, anchored in the brain's biochemistry, anatomy and physiology, and the top-down strategy, which concerns itself with behaviour and the nervous system's interaction with the environment. The author argues that an explanation of consciousness is now at hand, and extends the discussion to include intelligence and creativity. This beautifully written and illustrated book will be valued for its easy access to one of science's last great challenges. It will change forever our view of consciousness, and our concept of the human being.

1. Introduction
2. The ultimate black box
3. Under the lid
4. Games neurons play
5. Lasting impressions
6. From percept to concept
7. The grand design
8. The first half second
9. Midwives of reflection
10. The depth of reason
11. The message and the medium.

Subject Areas: Popular science [PDZ]