The Brain and Its Self: A Neurochemical Concept of the Innate and Acquired Drives [Hardcover]

Joseph Knoll (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 22, 2005

The main message of this monograph is that the appearance of the mammalian brain with the ability to acquire drives ensured the development of social life, and eventually led to the evolution of the human society. This most sophisticated form of organized life on earth is still in the trial and error phase of its development. It seeks to outgrow the myth-directed era of its history and come to its final state, the ration-directed human society.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 190 pages
• Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (June 22, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3540239693
• ISBN-13: 978-3540239697
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,967,452 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2.0 out of 5 stars Needs Writing Enhancer, February 14, 2012

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NomDavePlume - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Brain and Its Self: A Neurochemical Concept of the Innate and Acquired Drives (Hardcover)

Although Knoll's book is detailed and erudite, it severely lacks organizational structure and could have benefited from "writing enhancer regulation," an analog to the enhancer regulation Knoll spends much of his time describing. The first noticeable lack of writing ability in this book is the preponderant devotion to scientific terminology and minutiae for at least 100 pages that ostensibly is there to bolster his claims about the origin of innate and acquired drives. Yet with the stated goal of describing how the self is a mere functionalist product of brain processes, Knoll veers far off course in dwelling on the neurochemical underpinnings, which could have been better summarized. This leaves the paltry last 50 or so pages, which should have been meatier, to deal with the rather abstruse matter of defining how the brain creates its self.

Knoll tries his best to relate this thesis in the eleventh hour and the science-minded reader will find sympathy in Knoll's defense of Enlightenment values against myth-making, if not his out-of-nowhere defense of the rationality of the Jewish state and Jewish people or his relegating acquired drives only to the scientist and artist and not the billions of other working people of the world. But the bread and butter of the book is scant and renders Knoll's "monograph" unworthy of its high asking price.