Customer Reviews

The 21st-Century Brain: Explaining, Mending and Manipulating the Mind

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As the brain is a complicated object - books on it tend to
be either completely engulfed in neuroscientific lingo and details or very popular, over-simplistic. Steven Rose strikes a nice balance between the two.

The book begins with a an evolutionary story starting from proto-cells in the pre-biotic soup to axons, dendrites, synapses and brain "modules" A brilliant tour I might add.
Lots of details and insights that I found a joy to read.
Throughout it is stressed that the brain's developmental history
is made in interaction with the environment to determine what it is going to be, how it works and why. Even though the subject matter is very complex Steven Rose manages to give the needed overview.

Sometimes Steven Rose pops up with strong views on subjects I would have thought to be widely accepted. E.g. Personally I don't agree that Richard Dawkins meme-theory is as bad as Steven Rose makes it out to be - one could argue that the evolutionary idea is for biological things, not for meme ideas, but I wouldn't be upset if someone would say that evolution works fine on memes as well. But nevermind, it won't distract you from the overall narrative.

The last chapters are devoted to a human future where neuroscience might become neurotechnology for mending and manipulating the mind. Even though much of it is speculative Steven Rose seems to be able to tell science from science fiction, and therefore be a valuable voice in the debate.

I haven't read "The Future of the Brain", also by Steven Rose, so I wouldn't be able to tell, if they are identical - but I can tell you that this book is a brilliant read!

-Simon

In response to the ill-informed reviewer who thinks that this "duplicate" publication indicates Steven Rose's academic dishonesty: this is simply the British publication. Isn't it common knowledge that publication rights differ between the U.S. and Britain?

This is a good handy book on brain science. The author had tried to explain the various insights of modern neuroscience. The author does not shy away from sharing his own thoughts about various issues. Sometimes the writing gets too complicated, but overall this is a nice book to update one's brain science. But if you are a first-timer reading on the brain, this book is not for you.

In the first chapter, Steven Rose positions his book as a critique of the transhumanist agenda from the perspective of a professional neuroscientist. From the outset Rose paints a picture of himself as a serious scientist - a wise elder - cautioning the world against the dangerous quackery that arises when scientists from other, "less-qualified" disciplines, such as psychology, computer science, or evolutionary biology, have the impudence to start speculating about the human condition. The patronising way he deals with the entire subject of memetics in a single-paragraph put-down -- ".. the notion of so-called memes ... now taken seriously by many who should know better" tipifies the tone of the entire book.

This is not a book that builds up a coherent rational thesis about the brain or transhumanism. Instead, Rose prefers to rant at sociobiology and transhumanism by picking easy, isolated, targets for ridicule. Whilst some of his points are good, and serve to expose some of the hype around short-term promises of pharmacalogical utopia, on the bigger issues of whether some form of transhumanism is desirable or possible in-principle, he essentialy indulges in straw-man rhetoric.

Overall, Rose makes it clear that he really doesn't like this silly transhumanist stuff very much, but fails to tackle the big issues in any profound way.

Steven Rose's "The 21st Century Brain: Explaining, Mending and Manipulating the MInd" starts strong, but fails to live up to its promise.

It is typical in publishing nowadays for authors to come up with a gimmicky pitch and write well the first 100 pages in order to secure a publisher's advance. Then the author is overwhelmed by stress or depression or just plain laziness, and fails to deliver the rest of the book. That seems to be the case with this book.

Consider the praise that the book chooses to put on its front and back covers. "A timely book on a timely subject," says the Observer. "An elegantly written and cogent guide to contemporary ideas and how and why the brain works," says the Independent. "An excellent account of neuroscience today," says the Financial Times.

From this praise alone we can discern two things. Steven Rose has nothing new or interesting to say about neuroscience, and the reviewers probably haven't read the book.

Indeed, it's difficult to read this book, which while written eloquently is very academic. Putting in perspective the billions of years of development of the brain is certainly useful, but it need not be couched in such technical, academic language; "The Accidental Mind" written by neuroscientist David Linden is a good example of how to explain the development of the brain in clear, simple terms.

And for whatever reason Steven Rose chooses to spend a great many pages attacking evolutionary psychology, which he claims correctly spends too much theorizing and not enough time researching. He's also quite upset by how evolutionary psychology fails to acknowledge "neuroplasticity," and instead harps on an "architecture of the mind." This is all true, but Steven Pinker, while outrageous most of the time, does pose interesting questions and provide interesting frameworks for thinking about the brain.

The final half of the book is just pointless, as Steven Rose ruminates pointlessly and endlessly on the ethics of a possible "Brave New World" situation where everyone is medicated into a dead, sullen happiness.

There are a lot better books about neuroscience out there, and this book got published because it was "a timely book on a timely subject."

Except for the cover and title page: This book is identical to Rose, "The Future of the Brain" -- chapter by chapter, page by page, line by line, word by word, even typo by typo. When I was at UCLA, such a double publication by a faculty member led to demotion, and serious thought about breaking the tenure rule in order to fire the miscreant. Bye-bye Steven Rose!