The Missing Moment [Hardcover]

Robert Pollack (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0395709857 | ISBN-13: 978-0395709856

In THE MISSING MOMENT a distinguished molecular biologist explores the nature of time and argues for a radical rethinking of how time affects our sense of self, our mortality, and the future of science and medicine. Only in the past few years have we learned enough about the brain for this remarkable book to be written. We know now that our brains continually filter the present through memories and emotions of the past. In fact, strictly speaking, we live in the past: since it takes the brain a second to process perceptions, what we think is the present actually happened a second ago. We also know where and how the unconscious operates and how painful memories are repressed; repression is not a psychological defect but an evolutionary necessity for our species. All thought, even the most rational, is permeated with unconscious feelings, fears, and emotions. Scientists, like the rest of us, make choices for reasons they don't understand. Thus the direction of scientific research is driven by private demons, not public needs. We can see this in medical science, where doctors develop the tools to diagnose genetic diseases they cannot cure, bringing pain rather than comfort to patients. Today science can do more good than ever before, and it can also do more harm. The time has come for scientists and others to abandon the notion that there is any such thing as the disinterested pursuit of truth. Instead, they must strive for a therapeutic self-awareness of their unconscious agendas and work for larger goals than personal immortality.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a stimulating critique of modern science, Pollack (Signs of Life), a Columbia University biology professor, challenges conventional notions of consciousness by arguing that the past is an inextricable component of the mind's grasp of the present. He begins with a look at sensation: our five senses, he maintains, are products of ancient choices, fixed in the human genome millions of years ago through natural selection. With a nod to Freud, whom he calls an experimental psychologist, Pollack then points to strong evidence that repressed memories, hidden from consciousness in untapped neural networks, do exist, setting the stage for conflicts in adult life. He also reports that within the past few years scientists have discovered how a 40-cycle-per-second wave, arising from deep inside the thalamus, sweeps through the entire brain, constantly binding together sensory information and memories. Synthesizing these findings, Pollack contends that our minds function only via continual reference to the past. The whole scientific enterprise, he argues, is just as prone to unconscious fears and fantasies as is any person. The collective myth of science and of biomedicine, in Pollack's diagnosis, involves misplaced beliefs in the omnipotence of rational thought, absolute control over nature and triumph over death. With eloquence and wit, he contends that biomedicine's heroic goals of beating infectious microbes into total submission, of eradicating cancer and of dramatically extending life expectancy should give way to emphasis on disease prevention and methods to slow the aging process. Full of liberating insights, his provocative study calls on hard-core rationalists, establishment physicians, behaviorists, neurobiologists and life-extension researchers to rethink entrenched positions. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In the half-second between a physical stimulus and its conscious perception, Pollack (biology, Columbia Univ.) explains, the signal passes first through the unconscious. There, it filters through stored memories and primal experiences. This psychological process affects the substance of thought itself and, by extension, scientific research. According to Pollack, the bias of modern medicine toward aggressive and intrusive treatment over prevention and support is, at root, an unconscious denial of human mortality. Separately, both of these main points are compelling; Pollack's emphasis on the role of the unconscious in the workings of the mind and senses expounds upon an often overlooked field. Likewise, his manifesto for more humane medical sciences should be taken seriously. The putative connection between the two seems strained, however, and diminishes Pollack's other excellent discussions somewhat. For academic and larger public libraries.AGregg Sapp, Univ. of Miami Lib., Coral Gables, FL
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (September 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395709857
• ISBN-13: 978-0395709856
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,336,672 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A true thinker's delight!, October 23, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Missing Moment (Hardcover)

This book is truly a thinker's delight. It challenges traditional notions of science and examines our 'scientific' pursuits in relation to our own consciousness. This is a book that is instrumental in our evolution as we develop into more self-conscious beings in the future. Another delightful book that discusses this phenomenon so clearly and interestingly is 'The Ever-Transcending Spirit' by Toru Sato. It explains this material in relation to human relationships as well. I must say that both books are quite astounding if you are a true thinker.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Captivating, June 28, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Missing Moment (Hardcover)

The Missing Moment is a fascinating book. It sweeps through different areas of biology and psychology with all the excitement a professor giddy about his field can muster. The book begins by laying a theme of the human condition's impact on where science is going and where it's been. He goes into a an interesting description of the senses and the roles they play in our interaction with the world, while also touching on the "magical" half-second delay (better explained in books like Tor Norretranders' The User Illusion). After this, he delves into a little more psychology and tries to show explicitly why science is handicapped (or bolstered, he lets the user decide for himself) by the brain's unique perspective of the world.

One complaint: he doesn't seem to follow the initial goal he sets for himself in the book's first few sections. The several latter chapters, while extremely interesting and pointed, laced delicately throughout by fascinating personal anecdotes, miss the book's central point by a noticeable amount. But, this by no means detracts from its overall message, just cuts into it a bit. The book is still marvelously fascinating and really gives the reader an illuminating perspective on the three pound universe lurking between his ear drums.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars On-target entreaty tainted by Freudian psychobabble, August 10, 2002

By 

D. Cloyce Smith (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Missing Moment (Hardcover)

Pollack's fascinatingly presented--and infuriatingly argued--book makes two contentions: that medical science spends most of its efforts on defying the inevitability of death (rather than preventing disease and alleviating suffering), and that the reason for this lopsided strategy is a collective unconscious fear of death by most health professionals. "The Missing Moment" of the title refers both metaphorically to the gap between knowledge and wisdom and literally to the half second during which unconscious machinations affect and transform the thoughts and actions of everyone--including scientists.

Pollack's first argument is expertly and cogently presented in, strangely enough, the second half of the book. The author discusses infectious diseases, cancer, and aging; he convincingly (and rightly) shows that the medical establishment has come to rely too heavily on antibiotics to cure infection (rather than vaccines to achieve deterrence), risky and painful procedures to treat cancer (rather than behavioral and environmental changes to prevent it), and attempts to delay death (rather than efforts to improve the quality of one's remaining life). The informative notes are not to be skipped, and a must-read appendix outlines Pollack's views for a more humane medical agenda.

In the first half of the book, however, Pollack dilutes the force of his appeal by waving a Freudian wand and suggesting that health professionals are blinded by a collective unconscious desire: their own fear of death. Although Pollack discusses some fascinating aspects of how the mind works and how it affects human behavior, he is not a psychotherapist and--more to the point--he did not examine the scientists he is analyzing in anything resembling a clinical setting (other than, I gather, to read their publications and mingle with them at conferences).

Completing lacking from his analysis is either proof that the research conducted by most scientists is motivated primarily by an unconscious fear of death (rather than any of a dozen other intentions) or--more important--a causal connection between that fear and their research. There are dozens of possible, obvious reasons the medical establishment pursues its death-defying agenda--and Pollack simply ignores all of them. For example, a cynic would cite the profit motive: after all, the amount of money made on preventing or curing smallpox last year was exactly $0.00, while trillions were made by corporations on medicines that treat or cure (rather than prevent or eradicate) most other diseases. Or, alternatively, an idealist might point out that devoting the resources of the last two decades to finding an AIDS vaccine would barbarically have required doctors to abandon the hundreds of thousands of people whose immune systems were already compromised. As Pollack himself points out in his appendix, "the purpose of medicine [is] to alleviate or cure the suffering of a person already here among us"--by concentrating first on the development of protease inhibitors and other treatments, isn`t that exactly what scientists did (however myopic it might seem to us now)?

What's baffling about Pollack's attempt at collective psychotherapy is that it is not essential to his basic agenda--changing the priorities of the world's health systems. The net effect is that his intriguing and humane entreaty is undermined by the alienation most of his colleagues must experience when reading his blanket condemnation of their motives.