5 stars from Sir Richard...a rare gem that must be savored. I must investigate this.

Stephen wrote: "5 stars from Sir Richard...a rare gem that must be savored. I must investigate this."

Kindle it up soon, it's one of those books that can, though not necessarily will, be a real life-changer.

This book has been popping up in ads on goodreads for a while and every time I see it I think to myself I needed to investigate further. Great review. My blade of curiosity has been sharpened.

Good good good, Jeffrey! I hope that, when you come to read it, you'll get as much out of it as I did.

My comment is the same as on LT.....thanks for the kick in the pants!. Now, maybe i'll actually read my copy
;-)

I hope you won't go against the book-mood to read it, though, Jude. It's not the kind of read to shoehorn in despite other responses. Too much substance can get lost that way.

Great review Richard. I read The Way Things Are: The De Rerum Natura last summer (the Rolfe Humphries translation, not the Latin). The poem can be frustrating when Lucretius wanders into scientific explanation (which is often), but I too thought that the philosophical underpinnings of the poem were powerful, particularly considering when it was written. The Swerve has been on my radar for a while now and this review has only heightened my enthusiasm!

If you haven't read it, it sounds like you'd really like the Essential Epicurus. This book contains every remaining letter and fragment from Epicurus himself in just 101 pages. I can't read ancient Greek, so I can't speak to the accuracy of the translation, but I enjoyed it. If you're interested in Epicureanism it's well worth the $6.65 it's going for on Amazon.

Thank you, Evan, I appreciate that. I'm not inclined to revisit Lucretius. My schoolboy Latin wasn't up to him (I'm more at the "Gallia in tres partes divisa est" level), but got my eyelashes sufficiently singed to make me disinclined to pursue more contact in any language.

I will immediately wishlist the Essential Epicurus, though, and with thanks!

You wrote ... "Books such as this one do nothing to enhance religion's role in human affairs. It is best avoided by those of religious bent."

Those are among my favorite kinds of books.

Great review. This sounds fascinating.

Like the review cos i like your writing style but continually saddened by your dismissal of people who believe in God as ignorant. The fact that a good many people of faith, myself included, might seek to read this book and others like it for the very reason that they seek to be balanced and open-minded seems beyond the scope of your own outlook. Of course there are those who will not but that holds true for every side of the debate

Lew wrote: "You wrote ... "Books such as this one do nothing to enhance religion's role in human affairs. It is best avoided by those of religious bent."

Those are among my favorite kinds of books."

Mine too. Being of irreligious bent, I suppose that makes sense.

Tracy wrote: "Great review. This sounds fascinating."

Thanks, Tracy! I hope you'll get to it one day soon, it's well worth your eyeblinks.

Mark wrote: "Like the review cos i like your writing style but continually saddened by your dismissal of people who believe in God as ignorant. The fact that a good many people of faith, myself included, might ..."

Thank you for the compliment! I can't agree that I characterize people of faith only as ignorant; frequently I call them foolish, and often misguided. That's about as nice as I get on the topic. The subject isn't open for debate: There can be no proof of the existence or non-existence of a Supreme Supernatural Being. There is no possibility, using today's science, that humanity can know all the laws of nature AND know that we know them. Therefore there is no proof that anything is supernatural, since we do not know all the laws of nature.

Playing the odds and pretending to "faith" is cynical at best, manipulative and evil at worst. Sincere belief in a sky-daddy who cares for you and loves you, therefore punishes you and insults you, closely resembles masochism.

What does this mean for you personally? Not much, in the end. Your faith is untouched by my lack of it. If perchance what I've written has sowed the seeds of doubt in you, then I am pleased. Like those of your faith, I believe strongly that the entire world would be a far, far, far better place if everyone followed my lead.

Consider it my anti-god mission.

Great review, Richard. I got the sample, and will definitely be kindling it up soon.

These four items from the list are bedrock for me. Of the four, the first and last are by far the most important in my view of things:

--Nature ceaselessly experiments. Evolution by natural selection, anyone?

--The universe was not created for or about humans.

--Human society began, not in a Golden Age of tranquility and plenty, but in a primitive battle for survival.

--Understanding the true nature of things generates deep wonder.

Nope sorry my friend, your writing style is good but not that good !! No doubts sown but I shall continue to read and reflect with open-minded interest. Happy reading

Jim wrote: "Great review, Richard. I got the sample, and will definitely be kindling it up soon.

These four items from the list are bedrock for me. Of the four, the first and last are by far the most importan..."

That short list certainly boils it down to the essentials, and happen I agree! I'm very glad that you liked the review.

Mark wrote: "Nope sorry my friend, your writing style is good but not that good !! No doubts sown but I shall continue to read and reflect with open-minded interest. Happy reading"

Same back at'cha. I shall continue my quest to drive a wedge between you and folly and superstition. It's a mickvah. I mean, I mean, MITZVAH!

Richard wrote: "That short list certainly boils it down to the essentials, and happen I agree! I'm very glad that you liked the review."

Thanks Richard. You got me fired up about the book for sure!

You've certainly sold me on this one, Richard. Great review!

I used to say I was a secular humanist (or a secular animist if I wanted to mess with people), but now that you've explained what one is, maybe I'll call myself an Epicurean. Not every tenet fits, but when is that ever true for a natural non-dittohead?

Steve wrote: "You've certainly sold me on this one, Richard. Great review!"

He has an insidious way of doing that. My TBR pile overfloweth.

Stephen wrote: He has an insidious way of doing that. My TBR pile overfloweth."

Having just done the "Compare Books" with both you and Richard, I see what you mean about the TBR list. I guess Browning's words about reach vis a vis grasp apply well here, or what's Goodreads for?

Using advanced algorithms and quantum theory and applying it to my book reading rate vs. my book acquisition rate, it appears as though I will have read everything I own by the time I'm 172 years old, give or take.

Science, please don't fail me in my old age.

Steve wrote: "You've certainly sold me on this one, Richard. Great review!

I used to say I was a secular humanist (or a secular animist if I wanted to mess with people), but now that you've explained what one ..."

This book is the place I found out I was an *actual* Epicurean. For that alone, I treasure it! Glad you liked the review, Steve.

And pay no attention to Stephen. He's added many more to my TBR than I to his, as well as (the perfidious dog) convincing me to use up my remaining eyeblinks ***REREADING*** things I didn't like, just because he did!

Be very careful around his reviews. They'll latch on to your brain's vulnerable spots. Next thing you know, you'll be reading (and liking, oh the horror) fantasy novels!

Stephen wrote: "Using advanced algorithms and quantum theory and applying it to my book reading rate vs. my book acquisition rate, it appears as though I will have read everything I own by the time I'm 172 years o..."

O Death, where is thy sting? I plan not to utter that until the year 2101. Otherwise, the books I'll never read...!

And that's if you don't add any more to the list, Stephen.

It sure would be nice if science could keep a few choice organs operational into our twilight years, brain and eyes among them. Then again, past the age of 120 or so our heirs may begin reading us Go the F*ck into a Coma (After Signing a DNR).

Richard wrote: Be very careful around his reviews. They'll latch on to your brain's vulnerable spots. Next thing you know, you'll be reading (and liking, oh the horror) fantasy novels!

Thank you, Richard. I've been forewarned. You both seem a little scary to me at this point. I may prove weak, but fantasy novels?! Heaven forfend.

Scary? We're pussycats! Biblioholic pussycats, but still...

I'm getting a little off track here, but it seems to me that biblious ought to be a word if for no other reason than that it sounds like bibulous. Of course, biblioholic would be a fine addition to the languange, too.

Steve wrote: "I'm getting a little off track here, but it seems to me that biblious ought to be a word if for no other reason than that it sounds like bibulous. Of course, biblioholic would be a fine addition t..."

Clearly you are not aware of the diagnostic manual for our disease: Biblioholism, Revised Edition: The Literary Addiction by Tom Raabe. I felt so much less...alone...after reading that book.

You're right, Richard. I'd never heard of this reference. As holisms go, this has got to be one of the most enjoyable and least treatable.

Brilliant review, Richard.

Is there any explanation or description of what the "soul" is? Is it just the mind?

Thanks, Ian! No, there was no language to express any theory of a soul in material terms. It was an immaterial part of the person.

Then as now, the soul is described differently from the mind. Mensa wasn't equal to anima any more than soul is to mind. An emergent process of the brain's function? *shrug* A physiological process stemming from the microtubules in the neurons? *shrug*

Did someone say emergent process? Brain? Soul? Mind?

I would say this: 1) I don't really have a clue on what either the soul or the mind really are. Or even consciousness, for that matter. All are incredibly easy concepts to sense, and major components of 'presence' in the mindful-meditation sense. And all are unbelievably difficult to define as actual physiological mechanisms.

2) With those enormous caveats, I would put my money on what Richard said about emergent functions, and apply it to all three. Consciousness, mind and soul are all mental/physical states that emerge from the functions of the brain. They may be distinct, but they could overlap to varying degrees in different situations - if we can ever define them mechanistically well enough to say.

Crawling a little farther out on the limb, I think that the largest chunk of consciousness arises from the prefrontal cortex and frontal lobes generally. That is where working memory is held and processed and analytical thinking is done. Think short-term memory, e.g. a phone number, and making decisions about what book to read next.

I think of consciousness and mind as similar - overlapping if not identical - but that depends on precise definitions, and those vary from one philosopher/scientist to another.

Now, with the limb cracking beneath me, I will guess that the soul is more of a hormonal presence/effect, brain-generated but mostly felt in the body. The concept of 'heart' (heart and soul) is probably very similar. Think peripheral nervous system, possibly involving both sympathetic (fight or flight) and parasympathetic (rest and digest). There are feedback effects from those systems on consciousness too.

Here is a simple and useful trick, familiar to those who meditate. Take a deep breath - a long, slow inhalation, letting your belly swell to fully inflate the longs. 3 or 4 seconds in duration. You just activated your sympathetic nervous system. You are alert and focused, and ready to run.

Now exhale, more slowly and very evenly. 5 to 7 seconds, something like that. You are activating your parasympathetic system, a completely different set of peripheral neurons and effectors in the body. Repeat this cycle several times, and you can feel the different effects - you gradually relax on the exhale part of the cycle.

If what I guessed is accurate, your consciousness is elevated when you inhale, and your soul is more evident when you exhale. Presence is all of those elements put together. Maybe.

But at least you should feel better with that exercise. I do it multiple times every day.

Now you guys know the literature/classics far better than I do. This picture may or may not jibe with what you find in those books.

Richard wrote: "Thanks, Ian! No, there was no language to express any theory of a soul in material terms. It was an immaterial part of the person."

Thanks, Richard, if you're ever interested in reading Lucretius together, let me know. I bought a copy last year and would enjoy a prompt.

Jim wrote: "Did someone say emergent process? Brain? Soul? Mind?

I would say this: 1) I don't really have a clue on what either the soul or the mind really are. Or even consciousness, for that matter. All are..."

I don't know if anything is an emergent process of the brain's functioning or not as a point of established fact, but it does make sense. The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind convinced me. But I'm not a scientist by training, or even a high-school graduate; like all autodidacts, I loves me some shiny, cool-shaped informationoidal like stuff, and I like arranging my bright little shards and bits in amusing-to-me patterns.

Some anesthesiologist guy in Arizona teamed up with a physicist to study the structures of neurons, and the TV tells me they think they're onto something re: external explanations of the origin of consciousness.

Heck, since nobody *knows*, why not? Seems pretty improbable to me, but then again, so does light being a particle and a wave.

Ian wrote: "Richard wrote: "Thanks, Ian! No, there was no language to express any theory of a soul in material terms. It was an immaterial part of the person."

Thanks, Richard, if you're ever interested in re..."

Back before the university I snuck into found out I had no diploma, I was in a philosophy class where I proposed writing a paper titled "Lucretius: Satanic Forefather of Poetical Obscurantism." The prof laughed, but said no.

I was not, unlike every other Westerner I've ever met who's read the damn thing, captivated by the beauty of the poetry, I was annoyed as HELL that he flowered up the stuff he wanted to say in a bunch of useless goddamned ruffles and furbelows. JUST SPIT IT OUT!

I'm not sure I want to return to smashing my mental fingers in the imaginary car door...should the mood strike, I will not hesitate to announce my retirement from the pursuit of happiness and pleasure to you.

Richard wrote: "I don't know if anything is an emergent process of the brain's functioning or not as a point of established fact, but it does make sense. The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind convinced me. But I'm not a scientist by training, or even a high-school graduate; like all autodidacts, I loves me some shiny, cool-shaped informationoidal like stuff, and I like arranging my bright little shards and bits in amusing-to-me patterns..."

I have my copy of The Origins of Consciousness sitting in a nearby pile of books. I hope to read it one day, and probably shall - so far I have just thumbed through it.

As a neuroscientist, I find all of the high-level, "big" questions extremely frustrating just to think about, let alone to actually research and write up the results. The new imaging technologies provide huge opportunities to get a much better grip on all of the big questions, and in time we will be able to say much more that is really substantive, and (key word) testable.

The general subject of emergent phenomena is of very great interest to me. For one thing, the brain system that I have worked on for 28 years is most definitely an emergent phenomenon, based on tons of evidence that is too arcane to get into here.

Simple version - much of your brain is in some way or another a 'body map' - a somatotopic representation of your sensory inputs from the body, or your retina or cochlea, or outflow to the muscles. All of those representations, almost certainly, form during development as emergent processes, by mechanisms that are somewhat analogous to ants finding and exploiting a food source. The individual ant (or ingrowing axon) just follows relatively simple cues. But the overall effect is a highly coordinated action that generates a complex outcome (food moved and stored; map of the body).

Those examples are a good way to think about emergent processes. If you imagine a lot of different brain systems working by their own relatively simple rules, but interacting with each other in very dynamic ways, you can begin to get a grip on the notion of consciousness, soul, etc.

I gather that Julian Jaynes' book delves into those ideas and many more. The bicameral mind is a whole 'nother subject - later on that one.

How can the sense of self be anything BUT an emergent process? "Who am I? What's that thing? Why do I feel TWO sets of inputs?" Anyone who's had a baby knows that one.

I've always wondered about the testability of the sense of identity. Brain dysfunctions like the one that prevents a person from recognizing faces don't interrupt a sense of one's self, at least not that I recall reading about. Not being able to recognize one's own face doesn't mean not knowing that one is a separate entity with a name, credit cards, and some kind of life. So how is the development of a sense of identity tested?

Richard wrote: "How can the sense of self be anything BUT an emergent process? "Who am I? What's that thing? Why do I feel TWO sets of inputs?" Anyone who's had a baby knows that one..."

All true, and I certainly agree. But the concept of emergence is very threatening to certain closely-held beliefs, and a lot of people just don't understand what it entails.

A simple example. Add 2 and 2, and a 4 emerges as the answer. But the 4 is also predictable from an understanding of 2 taken twice. In a sense, the result is linear. You could also call it a 'weak form' of emergence.

A lot of what happens in the brain (and the universe) is not at all linear, and cannot (in any practicable sense) be predicted from the starting materials. This is the 'strong form' of emergence. All you can do is sit back and see what emerges when the pieces come together.

But now you have an ideology-threatening fact. The strong form of emergence is based on intrinsic properties of the ingredients and their physical reactions. It takes a major stretch to say that anything was Created in such cases. You see the 'problem'.

It gets even worse, from certain perspectives. A lot of emergent outcomes are heavily dependent on 'random' factors, meaning those that may have causes, but the causes are so impossibly complex that we have no way to predict them, and it is unlikely that we ever will. A good example is forecasting the weather 2 weeks from today. So, the fact that X is extremely wealthy today may be because X is a genius and did everything right, and deserves his wealth. Or, it may be because random factors fell his way, and he is simply extremely lucky. You see the 'problem'.

Testability of the sense of identity is another "big" question, but in some cases it can be tackled with a knowledge of brain circuitry and with data from functional imaging. Face recognition, for example, is done in large part by an area called the fusiform gyrus, at the transition between occipital and temporal lobes. I could point to the area on a brain model, but roughly speaking you can point inward from just above your ear canals. About an inch or so from your fingertips is in the vicinity.

Oliver Sacks and others have talked about this 'face blindness' (he is afflicted with it). Small lesions there would probably leave many other details of one's identity (and friends) intact, as you say.

But testing the actual sense of identity is more of a neuropsychology paradigm. And development of that is a tougher knot, because the testing would need a cooperative subject and involve a lot of questions, naming pictures, etc. (I don't know the details). And kids may not cooperate, so it takes a really clever protocol to get at those issues. But there are really clever people out there doing such things.

A couple of books that might interest you:

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives - read it with the Science and Inquiry group - a lot of probability math, but tons of entertaining anecdotes and it lays bare the prevalence of randomness in much of what we think is causal.

What's Going on in There? : How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life - I have read sections of this and liked what I read. A neuroscientist surveys studies of concept development in kids - very well written, and it gets at some of what you are asking, especially the issues of testability and how those are approached.

Thanks, Jim! My liberry has both, so I can start them this year. That's a plus.

There you go! You are either lucky, or just good!

Richard wrote: "Back before the university I snuck into found out I had no diploma, I was in a philosophy class where I proposed writing a paper titled "Lucretius: Satanic Forefather of Poetical Obscurantism." The prof laughed, but said no."

I have a prose translation, but do you mind if I borrow the proposed title of your paper?

Use freely...there's a prose translation? By whom? Under what title? Spill!

Richard wrote: "Use freely...there's a prose translation? By whom? Under what title? Spill!"

This is the version I have (at least the cover and the ISBN):

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17...

It doesn't appear to be in verse (contrary to the description), unless you count long paragraphs of blank verse (running along in sequential sentences). It is quite lyrically written, but comes across as prose.

OoooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOooooooh. I shall investigate. Tnx for lead!

I have never seen in print or heard with my ears a clearer, more concise, or more complete statement of my own personal worldview than this. It rang me like a bell.

Ah, resonance. I love it when that happens.

I'm going to print those eight points on a t-shirt and wear it every day.

Bennet wrote: "I have never seen in print or heard with my ears a clearer, more concise, or more complete statement of my own personal worldview than this. It rang me like a bell.

Ah, resonance. I love it when ..."

Truly a beautiful thing!

Ian wrote: "I'm going to print those eight points on a t-shirt and wear it every day."

A great idea!