"What is mind, no matter! What is matter, never mind!" But in the post-Darwinian world, this dismissive dichotomy is unsatisfying. How are we to understand the mind's place in Nature and account for the existence of subjectivity in a world of things? The huge onrush of natural science as the 20th-century draws to its close both tends to obscure this deep problem and also to provide fresh insights, fresh questions, fresh recognitions. Christopher Smith examines this profound crux from historical, philosophical and neuroscientific perspectives. The early chapters set the scene by examining the way in which thinkers from Descartes to Darwin constructed the foundations of our present-day thought. Later chapters build on these foundations and show how philosophy and neuroscience develop together in close dialectical interaction. Through this interdisciplinary synthesized approach, the science, philosophy and history woven closely together, the book shows the striking complementarity of mind and brain, of conscious subjectivity and objective neuroscience, and points the way towards developing a "natural history" of mind.
This book should be of value to biologists, neuroscientists, philosophers and all those concerned with understanding the mind. Among Smith's other publications are "The Problem of Life: An Essay in the Origins of Biological Thought" (1976) and "Elements of Molecular Neurobiology" (1989).
- ISBN10 0485114135
- ISBN13 9780485114133
- Publish Date April 1994
- Publish Status Cancelled
- Out of Print 4 July 2008
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Imprint Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 320
- Language English