Evolving the Mind
On the Nature of Matter and the Origin of Consciousness

A lively account of consciousness and the mind.

A. Graham Cairns-Smith (Author)

9780521637558, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 2 April 1998

340 pages, 66 b/w illus.
22.8 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.54 kg

'Cairns-Smith offers a very intelligent human's guide to physics, molecular biology and neuroscience; on these he is both contemporary and more accurate than a cohort of Ph-doctored science newswriters. He deserves a new Nobel for Honest Communication.' Hilton Stowell, Journal of Consciousness Studies

Evolving the Mind has two main themes: how ideas about the mind evolved in science; and how the mind itself evolved in nature. The mind came into physical science when it was realised, first, that it is the activity of a physical object, a brain, which makes a mind; and secondly, that our theories of nature are largely mental constructions, artificial extensions of an inner model of the world which we inherited from our distant ancestors. From both of these perspectives, consciousness is the great enigma. If consciousness evolved, however, it is in some sense a material thing whatever else may be said of it. Physics, chemistry, molecular biology, brain function and evolutionary biology - almost the whole of science - is involved, and there can be no expert in all these fields. So the style of the book is simple, almost conversational. The excitement is that we seem to be close to a scientific theory of consciousness.

1. Material things
2. Life
3. Forms of intelligence
4. Places in the brain
5. Correlates of consciousness
6. Dreaming aware
7. Space time and substance
8. Making theories
9. Quantum theories of consciousness
10. Conversation and coda
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Animal behaviour [PSVP], Popular science [PDZ], Cognition & cognitive psychology [JMR]