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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Masterpiece on the development of the human mind,
By Robert J. Crawford (Balmette Talloires, France) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe (A Touchstone book) (Paperback)
This book takes the reader on an overview of the history of life (after a review of the formation of earth), culminating in the human mind and then onto speculations about the future of the mind (robotic minds to be sent into the cosmos as immortal explorers). I read this because I was curious about the proto-mammal(s) from which all sprung after the passing of the age of the dinosaurs.I was immediately linked into a graceful narrative chock full of ideas, from the development of an acute sense of smell - enlarging certain portions of the mammal brain beyond that of its reptilian competitors - for (warm-blooded) night stealth, to the evolution of the human thumb and, finally, the passage from tree to veldt of proto-humans (where they needed the brains to make tools). It is a breathtaking adventure that is also a quick read with ideas that stick. There are also beautiful illustrations that lighten the text and help to engrave it in memory. Interestingly, I found this book because of a critique by SJ Gould, in which Gould argued that Jastrow's interpretation made the human ascent look inevitable as well as placed man at the top of the animal hierarchy as inherently superior because of the human brain. Not so, argued Gould, who said that every species is the result of their own evolutionary pressures and hence were superior survivors in their original environmental niches; if you ran the history of life over again in slightly different circumstancs, he argues, the human brain almost certainly would not have evolved. This criticism aside, this is a masterpiece of science popularisation. Warmly recommended.
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE THIRD PART OF A POPULAR SCIENCE "TRILOGY" BY JASTROW,
By
This review is from: The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe (A Touchstone book) (Paperback)
Robert Jastrow (September 7, 1925 - February 8, 2008) was an American astronomer, physicist and cosmologist.He states in the Preface to this 1981 book, "This book is the third volume in a trilogy following Red Giants and White Dwarfs and Until the Sun Dies... The new book takes up where 'Until the Sun Dies' left off. It recaps the astronomical setting and the early history of life in the first chapter; then it focuses on intelligence and the brain: how the brain evolved, the way it works, how it balances instinct and reason, what it is evolving into." Here are some representative quotations from the book: "Many details of the scientific account differ from those in the Bible; in particular, the age of the Universe appears to be far greater than the 6000 years of the Biblical Genesis; but the essential feature is the same in both stories: There was a Beginning, and all things in the Universe can be traced back to it." (Pg. 16) "Where did these living organisms come from? ... Either it was placed here by the Creator, or it evolved out of nonliving molecules in accordance with the laws of chemistry and physics. There is no third way; it must have been one or the other." (Pg. 19) "My own views on this question remain agnostic, and close to those of Darwin. The theory of evolution seems complete; it seems to require no forces beyond the forces known to science. Yet, when you study the history of life ... you see a flow and a direction in it---from the simple to the complex, from lower forms to higher, and always toward greater intelligence---and you wonder: Can this history of events leading to man, with its clear direction, yet be undirected?" (Pg. 100) "Computers do not have DNA molecules; they are not biological organisms; and Darwin's theory of evolution does not apply to them. We are the reproductive organs of the computer. We create new generations of computers, one after another." (Pg. 164)
5.0 out of 5 stars
fascinating interp of the development of intelligence,
By Robert J. Crawford (Balmette Talloires, France) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: ENCHANTED LOOM (Touchstone Books) (Hardcover)
This book takes the reader on an overview of the history of life (after a review of the formation of earth), culminating in the human mind and then onto speculations about the future of the mind (robotic minds to be sent into the cosmos as immortal explorers). I read this because I was curious about the proto-mammal(s) from which all sprung after the passing of the age of the dinosaurs.I was immediately linked into a graceful narrative chock full of ideas, from the development of an acute sense of smell - enlarging certain portions of the mammal brain beyond that of its reptilian competitors - for (warm-blooded) night stealth, to the evolution of the human thumb and, finally, the passage from tree to veldt of proto-humans (where they needed the brains to make tools). It is a breathtaking adventure that is also a quick read with ideas that stick. There are also beautiful illustrations that lighten the text and help to engrave it in memory. Interestingly, I found this book because of a critique by SJ Gould, in which Gould argued that Jastrow's interpretation made the human ascent look inevitable as well as placed man at the top of the animal hierarchy as inherently superior because of the human brain. Not so, argued Gould, who said that every species is the result of their own evolutionary pressures and hence were superior survivors in their original environmental niches; if you ran the history of life over again in slightly different circumstancs, he argues, the human brain almost certainly would not have evolved. This criticism aside, this is a masterpiece of science popularisation. Warmly recommended.
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