The Mind Made Flesh: Essays from the Frontiers of Psychology & Evolution

by Nicholas Humphrey

Nicholas Humphrey's writings about the evolution of the mind have done much to set the agenda for contemporary psychology. Here, in a series of riveting essays, he invites us to 'take another look' at a variety of the central and not-so-central the evolution of consciousness, the
nature of the self, multiple personality disorder, the placebo effect, cave art, religious miracles, medieval animal trials, the seductions of dictatorship, and much more.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction

376 pages, Paperback

First published February 13, 2003

About the author

Nicholas Keynes Humphrey is an English neuropsychologist based in Cambridge, known for his work on evolution of primate intelligence and consciousness. He studied mountain gorillas with Dian Fossey in Rwanda; he was the first to demonstrate the existence of "blindsight" after brain damage in monkeys; he proposed the theory of the "social function of intellect". He is the only scientist to have edited the literary journal Granta.
Humphrey played a significant role in the anti-nuclear movement in the late 1970s and delivered the BBC Bronowski memorial lecture titled "Four Minutes to Midnight" in 1981.
His 10 books include Consciousness Regained, The Inner Eye, A History of the Mind, Leaps of Faith, The Mind Made Flesh, Seeing Red, and Soul Dust. He has received several honours, including the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, the Pufendorf Medal and the British Psychological Society's book award.
He has been lecturer in psychology at Oxford, assistant director of the Subdepartment of Animal Behaviour at Cambridge, senior research fellow at Cambridge, professor of psychology at the New School for Social Research, New York, and school professor at the London School of Economics.

Reviews

[Alan Fuller · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nicholas Humphrey sees the world, ancient and modern, through the eyes of a modern atheist and neuropsychologist. He, like neuroscientist Sam Harris, is impressed with the way electrical activity in the brain lights up a monitor.  Mr. Humphrey is mainly preoccupied with evolutionary psychology but discusses a wide range of topics in this book. Everything from how consciousness is the brain, a biological computer, to whether Jesus was deluded, to the number of the beast in the book of Revelation. Another question is how much parents should be allowed to indoctrinate their children into whatever belief system they hold. 

"... a scientific conformist: one of those predictable people who believes that matter is made of atoms, that the universe arose with the Big Bang, that humans are descended from monkeys, that consciousness is a function of the brain, that there is no life after death, and so on ... But since you ask - I'll say I'd be only too pleased if a big brother or sister or school-teacher or you yourself, sir, should help her get to that enlightened state."

I don't agree with Mr. Humphrey on everything, but it makes for some pretty interesting reading.

[Dave Peticolas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some very fine essays on the evolution of the mind. I will definitely be reading more of Humphrey's work.