Customer Reviews

Mechanism of Mind

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mechanism of Mind is one of my most treasured books. It gave me very practical insights into how humans process information. The book is easy enough to understand, and doesn't require any previous knowledge of psychology. It's a fairly serious, engrossing read, though, even with de Bono's nice little explanatory diagrams and simple examples. (I've read six of de Bono's books, and this was the most demanding, and the one I'd only recommend to my most intellectual friends).

It compares the brain to an array of a thousand lightbulbs. All the bulbs in the array have a simple device that makes them responsive to light (from an image projected onto the array. Each bulb also has a simple device that makes them "tire" (grow dim) without stimulus).

It's fascinating how the array behaves. De Bono explains how it "processes" patterns, easily mimicing brain functions such as attention and diversion, memory and forgetting, pattern recognition (generalization), creativity and insight.

This book certainly changed my life. I understand much more confidently how my mind works, and the minds of others.

This is one of the best books I have read. It does not describe the mind in neurochemical or psychological terms, but hits the spot by providing a simple model of how the mind works. From that model, De Bono provides insight on how memory, learning, attention, 'pig-headedness' and insight can occur. He shows how the brain stores information and experience efficiently, but also shows how those storage units can become rules unto themselves, thereby inhibiting further clear thinking. He then describes lateral thinking, as a means of disrupting the learnt rigid patterns that can make people blind to the simplest of ideas. It is curious that this work is not more extensively discussed in texts on psychology. Those texts often describe research on how certain neurons in the brain become selected through use, but do not take the simple step back to this original work by De Bono. Another interesting interpretation of the De Bono work is provided in Cookson's book 'Our wild niche', where he coins the word mindrules (similar to De Bono's d-lines). Mindrules are experience learnt instincts, and have wider connotations for human ecology and adjustment to various niches, both natural and artificial. I recommend you buy the Mechanism of Mind. Then you will almost see how the cogs in your own mind turn. awilliams73@hotmail.com

This book is a revolutionary examination of thinking and perception that should be a must read for anyone seeking to understand the why's and how's of human thinking. Elegant, and profound are the two terms that come to mind when describing DeBono's prose.

This is perhaps one of de Bono's most subtle and exquisitely crafted books. In it, he lays out his theory of how the mind works -mechanically, that is. His theory, interestingly has preceded the actual findings by, among others, biologists, other neurologists and medical scientists. And after the fact, has proven to be more or less correct.

What is most striking about de Bono's theories is that he does not (as many other scientists do) make lavish claims about the brain's computing powers and abilities, but in fact makes just the opposite claim: that the human brain is a rather crude, clumsy, passive and slow mechanical device as measured by normal computing standards. And further, that it is precisely because of this lack of precision, speed -- and its own passivity -- that makes the human brain good at what it does best: self organization. Once processing begins, the mind has a life of its own.

The key component of mind is of course memory. In fact, following de Bono's lead, it is not too strong to suggest that memory is all there is to mind and consciousness. Everything else in the brain is just mechanics: special and often fleeting arrangements, configurations, modules and sub-modules and functional components of memory formed mostly as byproducts of the mind's activity and processing.

But it is how memory actually is arranged to do its work that is novel and key to understanding the mechanics of the brain. Most often, memory operates "passively" rather than actively. As things happen to it, it reacts by taking on new forms and reorganizing itself into new functions. Taking on new shapes, forms and functions IS the brains way of reacting. "Taking on new shapes and forms" becomes "braining processing." For it is precisely in these forms and shapes that the weight of mind (as memory functions and activity) is carried; functions that when taken together become the sum toll of mind.

As usual, de Bono has his own heuristics for driving his mechanical points home. Pneumatics, filling and draining of bathtubs, pistons and valves all play a role and make up his repertoire of mechanical heuristics for explaining the minds way of reacting. Most of them do their jobs well.

One of his best examples is the heuristic of "passive reaction": of water rolling down a hill. As it does so, it can etch out grooves, gullies, ravines and even rivers and oceans: So too can thoughts that ripple through the mind, leaving their tracks and imprints on memory cells. It is these memory traces and tracks that come together as sub-modules, and that can undergo further processing and similar secondary changes, to become larger grooves and gullies that constitute additional and often larger and ever newer functional forms and sub-modules. And so it goes as the mind builds up in connections, complexity and in activity.

de Bono's key point of course is, that there is no deus ex machina, no magic in the brain: It is all rather subtle passive processing. Five Stars

The Mechsnism of Mind, by Edward de bono

I first read this book in the seventies, but it was only in the eighties as well as the nineties when I had reread it several times that I truly understood what the author was talking about.

This book actually gave me a really good working understanding about the intricacies & idiosyncracies of the human brain as:

- a selective recognition system;

- a pattern making system;

- a self organising system;

From the author's lucid exposition, I understood more clearly the critical issues of attention management, memory lapses, perceptual sensitivity, pattern interrupts, cognitive traps, & finally, first order thinking.

Although quite dated in today's context, much of the author's detailed exploration of the human mind in their many physical manifestations is worth reading about.

A fundamental appreciation of the foregoing highlighted issues will certainly give readers a good grounding about personal creativity in real terms.

As the author has often remarked that creativity starts at the perceptual phase of thinking, where concepts are built up in the first place & this is the only place where changes (or corrections) must take place first in order for one to be truly perceptive to the world.

I must admit that the book had been a deeply engrossing read. I am glad I had reread it several times.