Books in Brief: Windows on the Mind: Reflections on the Physical Basis of Consciousness

Windows on the Mind: Reflections on the Physical Basis of Consciousness, by Erich Harth (Morrow, 285 pp., $15). This book might have been subtitled “the brain viewed in bits and pieces.” Harth, a physicist, summarizes the research of the past ten or twenty years by people who believe thought and feeling are best studied by examining neurons, ganglions, and the like. The microscopic approach impresses Harth, but not unduly. With a light touch, he qualifies scientists’ proclamations of great leaps forward. The discovery that electrical energy wells in the brain prior to the dispatch of a nerve signal to a muscle, for example, brought torrents of praise from research laboratories. Harth makes the point, appropriately, that it seems to have little to do with the composition of Beethoven’s Ninth; there is an intangible force, he insists, behind the purely physical building blocks of the nervous system. For a moment here he gives the impression of throwing his lot in with the science mystics who, around 1960, began infiltrating the ranks of brain researchers. Quantum theory is their particular inspiration. The theory restored subjectivity in the estimation of scientists by postulating that the presence of an observer can affect the course of an apparently independent event. The science mystics took the theory as license to solve by unorthodox means sticky questions like the mind-body problem. Is there an entity beyond the biological stuff of the brain, a mind that exists independently? Yes, and it behaves rather like a ghost, say the quantum aficionados. Harth wants no truck with them. Although he acknowledges that the mysteries of brain research tempt one to startling conclusions, he prefers to take things step by step: “The scientist is more a laborer than a magician. His task is the careful cultivation and gathering of knowledge gained through the observation of the world around him and of himself.” Thus the book’s concentration on technical details. Harth believes that if scientists examine enough pieces they eventually will see the whole. It is a formula based on monumental patience, and those who champion it loudest are themselves prone to doubt. As if to emphasize the point, Harth ends the book by recollecting the time he spent with a wealthy family on an island off the Brazilian coast. The people, of whom Harth speaks admiringly, were mystics.

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Paul T. Hornak

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Windows on the Mind: Reflections on the Physical Basis of Consciousness, by Erich Harth (Morrow, 285 pp., $15). This book might have been subtitled “the brain viewed in bits and pieces.” Harth, a physicist, summarizes the research of the past ten or twenty years by people who believe thought and feeling are best studied by examining neurons, ganglions, and the like. The microscopic approach impresses Harth, but not unduly. With a light touch, he qualifies scientists’ proclamations of great leaps forward. The discovery that electrical energy wells in the brain prior to the dispatch of a nerve signal to a muscle, for example, brought torrents of praise from research laboratories. Harth makes the point, appropriately, that it seems to have little to do with the composition of Beethoven’s Ninth; there is an intangible force, he insists, behind the purely physical building blocks of the nervous system. For a moment here he gives the impression of throwing his lot in with the science mystics who, around 1960, began infiltrating the ranks of brain researchers. Quantum theory is their particular inspiration. The theory restored subjectivity in the estimation of scientists by postulating that the presence of an observer can affect the course of an apparently independent event. The science mystics took the theory as license to solve by unorthodox means sticky questions like the mind-body problem. Is there an entity beyond the biological stuff of the brain, a mind that exists independently? Yes, and it behaves rather like a ghost, say the quantum aficionados. Harth wants no truck with them. Although he acknowledges that the mysteries of brain research tempt one to startling conclusions, he prefers to take things step by step: “The scientist is more a laborer than a magician. His task is the careful cultivation and gathering of knowledge gained through the observation of the world around him and of himself.” Thus the book’s concentration on technical details. Harth believes that if scientists examine enough pieces they eventually will see the whole. It is a formula based on monumental patience, and those who champion it loudest are themselves prone to doubt. As if to emphasize the point, Harth ends the book by recollecting the time he spent with a wealthy family on an island off the Brazilian coast. The people, of whom Harth speaks admiringly, were mystics.