or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
Express Checkout with PayPhrase
What's this? | Create PayPhrase
More Buying Choices
42 used & new from $2.28
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World
 
 
See all product images
See 1 customer image
Share your own customer images
Search inside another edition of this book
Tell the Publisher!
I’d like to read this book on Kindle

Don’t have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here.
 
  

Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Thomas Willis was not the first person to take the brain out of its skull..." (more)
Key Phrases: marvelous network, rational soul, vital soul, Thomas Willis, Royal Society, Christopher Wren (more...)
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
List Price: $15.00
Price: $11.70 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save: $3.30 (22%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Want it delivered Monday, November 23? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details
17 new from $4.26 24 used from $2.28 1 collectible from $26.50

Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
  Hardcover, January 5, 2004 -- $5.23 $0.01
  Paperback, May 23, 2005 $11.70 $4.26 $2.28

Frequently Bought Together

Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World + Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea + At the Water's Edge : Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to Sea
Price For All Three: $34.88

Show availability and shipping details

  • This item: Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World by Carl Zimmer

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

  • Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea by Carl Zimmer

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

  • At the Water's Edge : Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to Sea by Carl Zimmer

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

At the Water's Edge : Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to Sea

At the Water's Edge : Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to Sea

by Carl Zimmer
4.6 out of 5 stars (16)  $11.70
Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea

Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea

by Carl Zimmer
4.5 out of 5 stars (71)  $11.48
Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life (Vintage)

Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life (Vintage)

by Carl Zimmer
4.8 out of 5 stars (20)  $10.20
Parasite Rex : Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures

Parasite Rex : Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures

by Carl Zimmer
4.7 out of 5 stars (61)  $11.48
Cerebrum 2008: Emerging Ideas in Brain Science

Cerebrum 2008: Emerging Ideas in Brain Science

by Carl Zimmer
5.0 out of 5 stars (3)  $10.17
› Explore similar items

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In Soul Made Flesh, Carl Zimmer reveals the strange and complicated history of the discovery of the human brain. Amid the turmoil of 17th century England, with religious leaders and monarchs battling for control of the country, an elite group of thinkers used every scientific means at their disposal to figure out that the unassuming putty in our heads was crucial to human health and wisdom. Primary among these Oxford scholars was Thomas Willis, whom the Royal Society affectionately called "our chymist." Soul Made Flesh is as much a biography of Willis and the men who shaped him as it is a medical history. Zimmer admirably sets the stage for what would become a metaphysical revolution and spark arguments that continue to this day about what the mind is and where, if anywhere, the human soul resides:
Thomas Willis... isolated the soul from stars and demons and made the chemical workings of the brain the key to sanity and happiness. Just as important, he helped make the brain a familiar thing.
Zimmer applies the same dedicated research and quietly sparkling style to this book as he did to Parasite Rex and At the Water's Edge, distilling reams of historical and scientific information into a concise yet comprehensive narrative. The book's chapters are accompanied by drawings by Willis' contemporary Christopher Wren, whose architectural sensibilities made the brain's structure beautiful to behold. --Therese Littleton --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.


From Publishers Weekly

The subtitle doesn't do justice to this illuminating book, which transcends the "history of X and how X changed the world" genre with a deep and contextualized exploration of two millennia's worth of human theories about consciousness and the soul. Zimmer, a columnist for Natural History and author of the highly praised Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, is interested in how philosophers and scientists moved from a view of the human soul as immaterial and residing in the heart to the common explanation of thought as having a material grounding in the brain and nervous system. His wide-ranging narrative reaches from the days of Aristotle to a 21st-century lab in the basement of a Princeton University building. The central figure in Zimmer's tale is the oft-overlooked 17th-century scientist Thomas Willis, a member of the British Royal Society and colleague of Boyle and Hooke. Willis, a figure of fascinating contradictions, was a conservative, religious royalist raised on a farm outside Oxford, who wound up working on the frontiers of science, as physician to the highest strata of London society and as an experimenter who helped found a new science of the brain. In the end, however, this book is less about Willis in particular than about the evolving metaphysics of the soul in general, and the reader is left with a better picture of the roots of the modern understanding of the self as well as a familiarity with one of the unsung heroes of the scientific revolution.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

  • Paperback: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Free Press (May 24, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0743272056
  • ISBN-13: 978-0743272056
  • Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #244,393 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

More About the Author

Carl Zimmer
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

› Visit Amazon's Carl Zimmer Page
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Search Inside This Book:
Inside This Book (learn more)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence:
Thomas Willis was not the first person to take the brain out of its skull. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
marvelous network, rational soul, vital soul, mechanical philosophy
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Thomas Willis, Royal Society, Christopher Wren, Church of England, Anthony Wood, Anne Conway, Beam Hall, Lady Conway, Richard Lower, William Harvey, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Christ Church, Ragley Hall, William Petty, Ralph Bathurst, Archbishop Laud, John Wilkins, Loyal Assembly, New Model Army, Anne Greene, King Charles, Thomas Hobbes, Archbishop Sheldon, Book of Common Prayer
New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats
Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Search Inside This Book:
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 37 books:
See all 37 books this book cites
 
1 book cites this book:

Books on Related Topics (learn more)
 
 

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World
72% buy the item featured on this page:
Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World 4.1 out of 5 stars (21)
$11.70
Parasite Rex : Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures
7% buy
Parasite Rex : Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures 4.7 out of 5 stars (61)
$11.48
Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life (Vintage)
7% buy
Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life (Vintage) 4.8 out of 5 stars (20)
$10.20
Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea
7% buy
Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea 4.5 out of 5 stars (71)
$11.48
Explore similar items

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 
(3)
(3)
(2)
(1)
(1)
Agree with these tags?

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more
 

Customer Reviews

21 Reviews
5 star:
 (9)
4 star:
 (9)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.1 out of 5 stars (21 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterful Blend, March 18, 2004
This review is from: Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World (Hardcover)
Soul Made Flesh is a masterful blend of science, history and philosophy. Carl Zimmer weaves a fascinating narrative around an overlooked historical moment - the discovery of the brain - by looping back and forth through the centuries from ancient Greece to the new millennium while keeping his gaze fixed on 17th century England. As someone schooled in the classics, whose college curriculum consisted wholly of the Great Books, I found Zimmer's new book particularly satisfying to read. Soul Made Flesh is far more than a gallop through history. It goes well beyond identifying who was influenced by who, what I call the "connecting the dots through time" approach often conveyed in reverential tones by writers who have read only secondary sources of Aristotle, Descartes or Locke. Zimmer's book breathes life into the classics by allowing the reader to "overhear" Willis and his Oxford Circle peers examining, questioning and arguing about these texts even as they toil to expand anatomical knowledge beyond all previous bounds.

As I neared the end of Soul Made Flesh, I happened to read a Boston Globe Magazine interview with Andrea Barrett, author of The Voyage of the Narwhal and, like Zimmer, a gifted science essayist. I was struck by a passage in which Barrett talks about "the unspoken disappointment of science" - research stolen or lost, specimens left in sunken ships, a life's worth of work made irrelevant by changing times. "I think about [loss] a lot. It's a very, very real part of science, but it's not the part that gets passed down," says Barrett. "We know the stories of famous scientists, but we don't hear the stories of people working hard and passionately half a tier down." Barrett could have been talking about Zimmer's book as much as her own. In Soul Made Flesh, a disillusioned old man hands over his research notes to a young passerby, scientific manuscripts are reworked to appease punitive church leaders, careers in medicine are interrupted by war, and cadavers eventually rot. Most everyone who reads Soul Made Flesh will feel a deep appreciation to Zimmer for persevering in his own research and writing to deliver a book that ensures Willis' founding contributions to neuroscience will be known, discussed and remembered.

Comment Comment (1) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent study of pioneer neurologist, August 25, 2004
By William Podmore (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World (Hardcover)
The American writer Carl Zimmer has written a brilliant book on Thomas Willis (1621-75), the founder of neurology. Willis discovered the human brain's role and importance, and was the first to examine how it worked.

Willis was part of the remarkable generation of Britons who founded the Royal Society, aiming to understand the physical world: William Harvey, who by discovering the circulation of the blood had, as Willis said, created `a new foundation of medicine', Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle and William Petty, whom Karl Marx called the father of political economy.

To keep the Restoration Stuart state on side, they excluded from the Society the materialist Thomas Hobbes, who had said that the mind was `matter in motion'. As the Platonist Henry More realised, `No spirit, no God'.

Willis' book `The Anatomy of the Brain and Nerves' mapped the brain, and was the first unified treatment of the brain and the nerves. The new science combined anatomical study of the human brain with comparisons to animal brains, experiments and medical observations. He identified the loop of arteries that supplies the brain, which became known as the Circle of Willis. The 20th century neurologist Lord Brain described Willis as `the Harvey of the nervous system'.

Willis "created a material explanation of the soul and its disorders. ... He had transformed the traditional three-part soul, which had existed since Plato, into the corpuscular chemistry of the nervous system. The soul was not just moved to the brain but limited to it, and only through the nerves could it experience the world."

But the idealist philosopher John Locke attacked Willis' materialist approach, holding back neurology's development. Zimmer explains, "Locke also influenced the way philosophers pondered the mind itself. He dismissed details of neurology and concerned himself with ideas and how they fit together, and generations of philosophers followed his lead. It would take neurologists 150 years to show that Willis was right, that studying the anatomy and chemistry of the brain can indeed reveal the workings of the mind, that they can map the geography of passion, reason, and memory."


Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars a must-read, February 18, 2004
By Howard Bloom (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World (Hardcover)
Carl Zimmer is one of the finest science writers of our generation. This is an amazing peek into the origins of modern science. It helps us see the shape of the lens through which we view reality today. It's also an astonishing story.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars An Interesting History of the Geniuses of the Oxford Circle and Their Contribution to the Enlightenment
Carl Zimmer has written an engaging book that is an interesting history of the life and times of Thomas Willis and how his work eventually presaged the modern science of... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Joshua Rosenblum

4.0 out of 5 stars How much truth is here?
This was a wonderful book centered around the life of Thomas Willis, but also concerned with other great men of 17th century England--Christopher Wrenn, William Harvey, Mr. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Morris T. Reagan

2.0 out of 5 stars Full of tangential, irrelevant history
I bought this book in the hope that it would elucidate an historic moment in the evolution of science: when we learned that thought, emotion and perception were not activities of... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Michael Strassberg

4.0 out of 5 stars Great, though a little on the heavier side for the novice studier.
This one is a little bit heavier of a read, but it's really fascinating. I think it's a little easier for me to read because it really relates to the history and philosophy... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Samantha Tracy

4.0 out of 5 stars How we came to know the brain as the seat of thought
This is the story of how we came to understand that life and thought are not beyond a naturalistic, material explanation. Read more
Published on November 6, 2006 by Vincent Poirier

4.0 out of 5 stars Reasonably Good; 3.5
This is a fairly good popular account of the scientific revolution in 17th century England with an emphasis on the pioneering neuroanatomical research and speculation of the... Read more
Published on April 29, 2006 by R. Albin

5.0 out of 5 stars What Willis was talking about
For about a thousand years, the smartest people of every European generation tried to understand the world around them by reading texts based on scriptures and the works of... Read more
Published on October 22, 2005 by Dr. Eigenvalue

4.0 out of 5 stars Did the firing of my neurons make me do it?
As a Christian who upholds the truth of Scripture and Science, I find that Carl Zimmer has written a wonderfully engaging, yet disturbing, introduction to the 17th century... Read more
Published on March 1, 2005 by Clarke H. Morledge

4.0 out of 5 stars The search for consciousness
Ths book is an excellent historical background to man's attempts to understand his own mind. It's also a great primer for some of the theories man has held about his own anatomy... Read more
Published on December 12, 2004 by Craig Scott

4.0 out of 5 stars Paradigm Shifts
Not only does Zimmer trace the history of medicine down from Hippocrates and Galen, but provides a personalized account of 1600s England's politics. Read more
Published on August 12, 2004 by Paul Carleton

Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   

Product Information from the Amapedia Community

Beta (What's this?)

Look for Similar Items by Category

Look for Similar Items by Subject

Search Books by subject:













i.e., each book must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...
 

Feedback

If you need help or have a question for Customer Service, contact us.
 Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
Is there any other feedback you would like to provide?

Your comments can help make our site better for everyone.


Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.