The astonishing hypothesis: the scientific search for the soul. Just as many of you are interested in this book by the subject of the title, I as well was entranced by the mere title of this book. Could there really be an "astonishing" truth or source behind our desire, sorrow, imagination, sympathy, free will, or any terms that we often relate with our soul. There definitely may, but needless to say, you will not find any astonishing hypothesis or "scientific" search for the soul in this book.
As most of you may know, Francis Crick was the cofounder of structure of DNA. Later years though, his focus was on neuroscience and consciousness. He was strongly against any sort of religion and believed our understanding of our consciousness should not be hindered by religious perception, when scientific explanation and experiments were readily available. Francis Crick was a reductionist, where he believed nature of complex concepts could be understood by reducing its simpler or fundamental parts. Francis Crick's approach in understanding complex system of our consciousness was to approach it through our visual awareness, which most if not all this book is about.
Now, he was clearly aware of the limitation and deficiency existing within this book and concept of reductionism. The book begins with three explanations on why the astonishing hypothesis seems so "astonishing". First reasons in that people are usually reluctant in taking "reductionist approach". Using reductionist approach, the stopping point would be naturally, chemical atoms. One argument that goes along reductionist approach is category mistake, where reduction of lower system and whole system is not along same category. He supports reductionist approach by stating that the reductionism is not a rigid process of explaining a large concept in terms of fixed ideas at lower level, rather it is a dynamic process that modifies the concept of both level as the knowledge develops. Second astonishment behind the hypothesis is the nature of our brain and its consciousness. The problem that rises is the subject of qualia, for example, the level of redness or subjective amount of pain could not be communicated to another human being. If the communication could only be sent in ambiguous terms, it is highly likely that there will be difficulty in explaining properties in reductionist terms. For example, one could clearly state if a person has detected "red" but why the person detected sensation of color could not be explained. Lastly, third reason astonishing hypothesis seems astonishing is our undeniable feeling or perception that our will is free. Is there a neural correlate where we consider to show exercise of free will? Could it possibly be that our will only appears to be free?
So this book is heavily, dreadfully heavily focused on our visual system, to the point where I titled this review as it is. The part 1 contains introduction and basic information on reductionism and assumptions that are made, the next 200 pages of 250 pages cover our and primates visual system. Three general remarks are made in our ability to see, we are easily deceived by our visual system, the visual information provided by our eyes could be ambiguous, and seeing is a constructive process. As first general remarks states, what we see is not what is before us. For example, when you look at Kanizsa triangle, we perceived a white triangle that seems whiter than the background, when clearly it is just a 3 pacman shaped circles facing one another. For the second general remark, what we perceive could be indeed ambiguous. An example would be seeing through cube. By staring at the cube, two perception of cube could be formed. Lastly, seeing is a constructive process. There is a blind spot in our eyes where no rods or cones detect light; however, our brain is able to fill in the dark space. Part II of the brain is more focused on neural anatomy of humans and apes behind our visual system, while part III of the book contains visual awareness and possible circuit model for brain models.
Overall, part of me is still bitter in that despite my avid search for the topic of this book, I am left with mundane information of the visual system. I am not sure rather if it's because this book was written back in 1994, I hardly found any of the information presented about our visual system to be "astonishing". Don't get me wrong, the evolution steps that was taken in order for us to have the visual system we have and its ability to visualize, though not perfectly, our environment is simply amazing. It is just that ideas and information involving our visual cortex, neurons, and visual field seems rudimentary, especially so since the target of this book seems to be neuroscientist, considering the information it contains in persuading the readers of potential experiments or method of configuring our consciousness. Another problem seems to be that several of the topics are only vaguely described. Due to the reductionist approach, our visual system is separated into diverse category, rather than focusing on single topics, He outright states that he will no longer go into discussion on many of the topics. One disappointment I found in his writing or thought process is how Dr. Crick tends to selectively call like-minded people as "educated people", while not so much for those who does not. Main problem I believe existed in this book is in the reductionist approach he has taken regarding this matter. If the reductionist approach involves dynamic relationship between large and small concept of the overall system, he failed in properly integrating our visual awareness to our consciousness. Yes, we are aware of our visual surrounding. We are visually aware and able to perceive the world, but how does that relate to our overall consciousness. Of course visual awareness if very much part of our consciousness, but I fail to see its implications on desire, sorrow, imagination, sympathy, free will, or any terms that we often relate with our soul.
Surprisingly, Francis Crick on the last chapter of this book expected that readers will have these types of criticisms after reading. He states that visual systems are the method where experimental attack could most easily be made. He believed the better understanding of visual system may aid in new approaches and ideas in studying consciousness. In the end, it was a decent, non-topical book including considerate amount of diverse research it contains and basic knowledge on visual system and fundamental neuroscience.
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