Second Nature: Brain Science and Human Knowledge

by Gerald M. Edelman

Book Overview

A renowned neuroscientist explains how our brains and bodies give rise to knowledge, creativity, and mental experience Burgeoning advancements in brain science are opening up new perspectives on how... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300120397
• ISBN13: 9780300120394
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 203 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 7.2"

Customer Reviews

Ingenious, But Not the Whole Story

Gerald Edelman won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1972 for his groundbreaking work on immunity. Though most Nobel Laureates either choose - or are forced to - rest on their laurels, Edelman soon began to move his attention to the brain and his first book on his theories was published as The Mindful Brain almost thirty years ago. In recent years he has suggested that the ways in which the complex adaptive system by which the body decides which lymphocytes to stimulate and mobilize may be similar to the way in which the brain functions. His theory is known as "neuronal group selection" or "Neural Darwinism" and proposes that anatomical connections in the brain are selected during development. Secondly that there is a second selective process that occurs as a result of experiences after birth, and finally that there is a system of what is known as re-entrant signaling. It is a beautiful and complex theory and over the last twenty years he has explored these ideas in a series of books: In 1987 he published Neural Darwinism: The Theory Of Neuronal Group Selection Three years later came Remembered Present: A Biological Theory Of Consciousness, and then Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On The Matter Of The Mind in 1992. It was almost a decade before he returned to his theme in A Universe Of Consciousness How Matter Becomes Imagination. I have enjoyed all of them, though none is easy reading, and I kept coming away with the uneasy feeling that the work is ingenious, but does not explain quite as much as it seems. This latest book, Second Nature, is much the most accessible of his works, but left me with a similar feeling: ingenious but lacking. So what is it about? Edelman skims over the details of his theory of neuronal group selection but on this occasion he does not assume a lot of knowledge on the part of the reader. So he explains the basic ideas very clearly and sets the theory in context in thirteen chapters: 1. The Galilean Arc and Darwin's Program 2. Consciousness, Body, and Brain 3. Selectionism: A Prerequisite for Consciousness 4. From Brain Activity to Consciousness 5. Epistemology and Its Discontents 6. A Brain-Based Approach 7. Forms of Knowledge: The Divorce between Science and the Humanities 8. Repairing the Rift 9. Causation, Illusions, and Values 10. Creativity: The Play between Specificity and Range 11. Abnormal States 12. Brain-Based Devices: Toward a Conscious Artifact 13. Second Nature: The Transformation of Knowledge He takes the view that any effective theory of consciousness must take a global, whole brain approach and must be based on selection rather than instruction. In contrast to many books for the public, he emphasizes that "the brain is not a computer, and the world is not a piece of tape." This is important: complex systems are riddled with "noise" and computers have to get rid of it, while brains actively depend on it. The brain uses the enormous and ever-changing variability of sensory inputs - noise - to

A short introduction to brain-based epistemology

If you take the naturalized epistemology of the philosopher Willard Quine and extend it beyond the role of sense perception, you might arrive at what the author of this book calls "brain-based epistemology." His opinions in this book are very sensible, especially if viewed from the standpoint of what is known in contemporary neuroscience. His expertise in this field is of course well known, but to apply cognitive neuroscience to the understanding of consciousness has only recently been attempted, with some experimental support. Due to its length, the reader will not find a detailed overview of this research in this book, but it will give an introduction to some of the author's essential ideas, which he like to encapsulate in the expression `Neural Darwinism.' One interesting feature of the author's line of thinking, as in many systems of naturalized epistemology, is that it allows room for both scientific knowledge and knowledge derived from the "humanities". It would seem improbable that evolutionary pressures would not make poetry, art, and literature part of the human survival strategy, given the widespread occurrence of at least one of these areas in all human cultures throughout history. The author would view these areas as expressions of the "pattern recognition" capability of the brain, whereas science and mathematics are more in line with the ability of the brain to indulge itself in logical reasoning. But pattern recognition is the predominant mode for human thinking, with the immediate corollary that metaphors are the tool for which this is done. Scientific reasoning then is a highly specialized (and uncommon) mode of cognition, which is specific in scope and undetermined in justification. This would explain why scientific reasoning does not come as naturally to all as other modes of thought. However, the brain encompasses all of these modes, and so the sciences and the humanities could be viewed as facets of the same brain crystal. To separate them would be fallacious, and therefore the author spends an entire chapter "repairing the rift" between the natural sciences and the humanities. The author's view of consciousness is one of an unabashed anti-Cartesianism, for he rejects dualism and views consciousness as a purely natural consequence of brain processes, these processes having the nature that they do because of evolutionary pressures. The author also rejects the notion of "brain as computer" but he does believe that it is possible to construct a conscious artifact, and spends a fair amount of time discussing on-going research devoted to this. In addition, and most interestingly, he views language as an "invention" and thus rejects the notion of an innate language mechanism that everyone is born with. It remains to be seen whether the author's ideas on the origin and nature of consciousness will be justified in further research, but this book does have the virtue that it does not fall into the trap of pure philosophical specu

its all one

Second Nature, suitable for most any reader with a dictionary, is a mind expanding look at the science of the structures and functions of the human brain and how the mysterious activity we call mind arises from the complex interconnectedness between innumerable neurons and our external conditioning and experience. His hypothesis, which puts an end to Descartes' numbing splitting of mind from the physical body, not only gives a convincing explanation of how the wonderful consciousness humans have evolved and developed has arisen, but you can feel it in your head.

Reconciling brain science and human concern: a timely addition to one of the most distinguished bodi

Will knowing how the brain works--in particular, what consciousness is--transform our view of human knowledge itself? This is the question that looms large in Second Nature, Gerald Edelman's latest book. Though compact at 157 pages (excluding preface, footnotes, and index), this work represents Edelman's ambitious consideration of the implications of his view (likely the correct view) of the brain and mind for the broader world of human concern. Edelman seeks to understand the nature of knowledge as it is generated within a biological entity--the brain--that is shaped both by individual history and evolutionary forces. Astonishingly, in this little book, he succeeds in this quest marvelously. The result is no less than a new type of epistemology--what Edelman refers to as "brain-based epistemology." Gerald Edelman is no mere dilettante or interloper in neuroscience. Since the publication of The Mindful Brain (a volume he co-edited and co-authored with Vernon Mountcastle) nearly thirty years ago, Edelman has diligently toiled in the theoretical vineyards to construct a comprehensive theory of higher brain function that is consistent with the latest available neuroanatomical, neurophysiological, and behavioral data. Perhaps the most significant fruit of these labors, the Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, or Neural Darwinism, proposes that, during neurogenesis, a vast "primary repertoire" of physically connected populations of neurons arises. Later, in a process akin to Darwinian selection, a "secondary repertoire" of functionally defined neuronal groups emerges as the animal experiences its world, and that world in turn selects patterns of connectivity (the so-called neuronal groups) that provide a good enough fit in a given moment to engender some kind of positive outcome. Underlying this selection is a neural "value system," established over the course of evolution and believed to comprise small populations of neurons within deep brain structures, that assigns salience to particular stimuli encountered by the animal. When the response to a given stimulus leads to a positive outcome (i.e., eating satisfies hunger), the value system will reinforce, or strengthen, those synaptic connections between neurons that happened to be firing at that particular moment. There is now a greater likelihood that, when the animal encounters similar stimuli in the future, many of the same neurons that fired the first time will fire together again. When a stimulus is noxious, the value system will similarly strengthen the connections between neurons that happened to be firing at the time the stimulus was encountered, thus increasing the salience of that stimulus. When a stimulus has no salience, synaptic connections between neurons that fired upon first exposure to that stimulus will become weaker with successive exposures. Simply stated, neurons that fire together wire together. Keep in mind that the mapping of the world to neural substrate is

Marriage counsellor

Gerald Edelman grieves the "divorce" science and the humanities have experienced. Since there is no final decree in the proceedings, he wants to heal the breach. He has a mechanism to further the reconciliation - something he calls "Second Nature". That "Second" is the human's brain's extensive capabilities - capabilities that exceed what we see in the rest of Nature. With his long career in brain science and as a scholar well versed in the evolutionary background that makes us human, he may have an appropriate answer. In this book, he makes an excellent case for why the divorce need not be permanent. It's offered as a conciliatory gesture under the banner of his theory of "Neural Darwinism". The label implies the obvious - our brains - hence, our minds - hence our "conscicousness" is the product of natural selection. It's not something separate from the real world in any way. Edelman, like all philosophers today, must face the still unfinished task of eliminating Descartes' "dualism" from consideration. "Dualism" effectively denies our evolutionary heritage. What is that heritage? Edelman enquires, and offers us his view of it. Humans are distinct from the rest of the animal kingdom in one important way - our version of consciousness. As our brain developed, it created a unique form of neural pathways. Not only is the neural net highly complex - in a single human brain, the potential connectivity "far exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe" - the methods of connecting are unique. Our brain, which spends far more effort viewing itself and the rest of the body than it does dealing with incoming or outgoing signals, uses a host of internal feedback loops ["reentrant" processing] to do its job. These reentrant signals are reinforced by areas Edelman calls "degenerate". Degeneracy doesn't imply deterioration, but instead is a kind of redundancy - many areas in the brain handle the same or similar tasks. With this brain structure emerging in early humans, selection could favour certain brains and pass their patterns down the generations. Habits once erratic and highly individual, ultimately became the social norm - many individuals shared the trait. Language, of course, with syntax and vocabulary, enhanced those inherited abilities. However, Edelman is dismissive of the concept of a "language module". Instead, he feels that communication reinforced traits already present, enhancing social interactions and forging bonds. Those bonds further contributed to behaviour factors literature describes and philosophy analyses. Much of Edelman's presentation is reminiscent of Edward O. Wilson's call for "Consilience" in the book of that name published a few years ago. Edelman, however, in a bizarre designation, calls Wilson's proposal "reductionist". One can only tremble at the thought of Wilson's reaction. Richard Dawkins' "memes" are also dismissed as almost unworthy of notice. The author's grand, comprehe