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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
What to do next?, May 2, 2003
Calvin offers an evolutionary description of the development of human intelligence. He's very careful to avoid using "consciousness" since Dennett, Humphreys, Pinker and others have firmly employed that term. Calvin cites Piaget's "intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do next" as a foundation thesis. From this he compares human mental talents with those of other animals, mostly primates, to demonstrate evolutionary roots for our intelligence. Behaviour issues common to everyday life become visible evidence for what is going on in our brains. Calvin manages to take his analysis into the physical processes that occur as we decide on our actions. It's a well written and "down to earth" explanation of many questions we have on what intelligence is and how we use it. Piaget's comment reflects the growing knowledge of brain processes. Much of the brain's time is spent collecting, storing, retrieving and applying information. This means that both "unconscious" events and our expressions and actions only come about after numerous and complicated signal processing has already occurred. Calvin describes in both text and graphics how neurons are constructed, convey data, and interact within the brain. Clearly, nothing is instantaneous and many elements are competing for dominance during every moment awake. Clear, too, is the notion that while other primates have many talents to deal with their surroundings, none possess the powers evolution gave humans. What drives these powerful mental abilities? He rebuffs the idea of the "quantum brain". It's too deep in the brain's structure - "in the subbasement of physics". That's too far removed from areas of vision, speech, and memory. There are certainly quantum events going on with all that chemical and electrical activity inside your skull, but Calvin sees these forces as far to deep to have direct impact on mental processes. Calvin is more concerned with the human level of analysis. One proposal he adopts wholeheartedly, but without attribution, is Daniel Dennett's concept of the "multiple drafts model" of thinking and expression. Calvin, to his credit, outstrips even Dennett's abilities of description in depicting this process. He shows, for example, how the brain's memory storage facility considers many images before it resolves that the round thing flying past is a tennis ball. It's an exquisite example, and you perceive clearly how many other daily occurrences are resolved in a similar manner. The accumulation of evidence about our evolutionary roots, the environmental changes forced on us and the rise of language and use of syntax are all contained within a device Calvin labels the "Darwin Machine." The Machine has six "essentials" which cover topics like replication, mutation and success in adaptation. He demonstrates how the "essentials" provide a mechanism for complexity from simplicity. Where some creatures modified things like limbs, teeth or hair, it was our brain that evolved from simple to complex. While evolution of the human brain isn't a new topic, Calvin presents a better summary of its roots and operations than most cognitive scientists. This is a fine book to start any study of the brain, but must be enhanced by other, more complete, works. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
ALL THE BRAIN'S A STAGE, June 12, 2000
This review is from: How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then And Now (Science Masters Series) (Paperback)
Coming attractions on Calvin's marquee are AI blobs of super intelligence and since they need not move nor eat I guess one could pull one along like a little red wagon. Author sets some kind of mark for hubris and keeps plugging his next book, CEREBRAL CODES. Although he admits that improved brain imagery would be required to test his ideas, he sounds certain these little details don't matter much. What are his ideas? He imports them wholly from darwinism: there must be competition in the cortex to account for changes and new ideas; the winner must have a copying mechanism in the brain (similar to RNA and DNA) to sort out the chaos. He brings on stage a Greek chorus of neurons to throw out the losers. My biggest problem with the book was Calvin's idiosyncratic choice of terms. He seems to demand some potion of free will in the neuron's selection of input signals; he sees no value in random selection nor mutation. Intelligence he sees as "good guessing." Cerebral codes he sees as the winners of the intense competition over what will be copied in short term memory. He thinks Penrose's quantum field or"microtubles of neuron's cytoskeleton" is just another word for spirit -- the ghost in the machine, but his own stealth candidate is "dynamic patchwork quilt" of patterns. I enjoyed his metaphors but they need not conflict with Penrose's. What he has done with his cerebral codes is encrypt his own common reductionism of portraying man's mind as just a bag of neurons -- like his buddy Francis Crick (THE ASTONISHING HYPOTHESIS). There is nothing new in this book except new terminology of which we are already stuffed.
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20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
With Style, Grace, and Wit, January 11, 2000
This review is from: How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then And Now (Science Masters Series) (Paperback)
In Chapter 1 of How Brains Think, William H. Calvin recalls Piaget "who used to say that intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do." Throughout the balance of this immensely readable as well as informative book, Calvin attempts to explain what is so difficult to understand: the interaction between the brain and the mind, and, the interaction of the mind with the physical world in which it exists. "The big issue for understanding intelligence isn't who has more but what intelligence is, when it's needed, and how it operates. Some of what intelligence encompasses are cleverness, foresight,, speed, creativity, and how many things you can juggle at once." Although Calvin is an eminent theoretical neurophysiologist, How Brains Think is not a textbook in which he explains in mind-numbing detail the brain, the mind, and their interaction. Calvin has written How Brains Think for the reasonably intelligent non-scientist. As Calvin concludes How Brains Think, he observes: It behooves us to be a considerate creator [of superintelligent machines], wise to the world and its fragile nature, sensitive to the need for stable footings that will prevent backsliding -- and keep the house of cards we call civilization from collapsing. Near the end of his book, Calvin quotes from Lewis Thomas' masterpiece The Medusa and the Snail: "We need science, more and better science, not for its technology, not for its leisure, not even for health and longevity, but for the hope of wisdom which our kind of culture must acquire for its survival." Albert Borgmann, Eric Drexler, Thomas Friedman, and Joel Mokyr (among others) rise to their feet to join William Calvin in applauding Thomas' comments. If intelligence is "what you use when you don't know what to do", then "more and better science" must help to provide the "wisdom" of knowing precisely what to do...and what not to do. That's how brains should think. And will, Calvin believes, but if only we have courage and determination sufficient to the task. Calvin helps an interested layman (at least this one) to understand a rather complicated body of phenomena...doing so with style, grace, and wit. This is a book I re-read at least twice a year. Are Calvin's ideas that stimulating? Yes.
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