David Eagleman's Incognito sets itself as a book which attempts to illuminate the unconscious workings of the inner mind, how perceptions form the world around us and the underpinnings of perception itself. Given Eagleman's background and current scientific status as an active researcher in the science of vision and perception I had expected a book much like Jospeh LeDoux's Synaptic Self; that is a book which gives not only a thorough historical perspective of the subject but a strong explanation of the scientific understanding of this area at current. The book I anticipated would present various interesting quirks of human perception and then give the scientific underpinnings for various perceptual oddities adding in to this Egleman's own personal insight and thoughts (much the same as Joseph LeDoux). Though, what is presented instead is a very unstructured approach to discussing various unconscious aspects of perception, vision and processing.
Eagleman follows a very repetitive pattern of introducing the obvious key historic persons in the space of a paragraph (often with incorrect/half-truth information), the key importance's of historical figures is not elaborated thereby depriving the reader of each scientists true importance. Next is the introduction of the perceptual oddity, for example, when we look at the second had of a clock for the first time the second had of the clock appears more stationary than the movements of the second hand afterwards. Rather than addressing the underlying neurological reasons for this Eagleman only seems to remark how odd this perception is before he then moves on to the next topic. This pattern is constantly repeated each time a new topic is introduced and each topic only lasts for about a page.
The book lacks a thorough scientific critique and anytime Eagleman introduces scientific principles they are so dumbed down that they can only be viewed as patronising. Unlike Joseph LeDoux he gives his audience no credence for understanding scientific concepts.
For me the final annoyance I had with this book relates to the many quotations from columnists and celebrities which recommend this book, one of which was from Stephen Fry, I often found myself reading passages and wandering how a man such as Stephen Fry could enjoy this tripe. Only after some more careful examination of the quotes do you come to realise that the recommendations are not for this book but for another of Eagleman's works. This in itself does not alter the material of the book but it does show an underlying misdirection (that was highly infuriating) that when coupled with the content of the book produces a work that would have just been better left on the shelves.