Ebook The River of Consciousness eBook Oliver Sacks
Ebook The River of Consciousness eBook Oliver Sacks
Download As PDF : The River of Consciousness eBook Oliver Sacks
From the best-selling author of Gratitude, On the Move, and Musicophilia, a collection of essays that displays Oliver Sacks's passionate engagement with the most compelling and seminal ideas of human endeavor evolution, creativity, memory, time, consciousness, and experience.
Oliver Sacks, a scientist and a storyteller, is beloved by readers for the extraordinary neurological case histories (Awakenings, An Anthropologist on Mars) in which he introduced and explored many now familiar disorders--autism, Tourette's syndrome, face blindness, savant syndrome. He was also a memoirist who wrote with honesty and humor about the remarkable and strange encounters and experiences that shaped him (Uncle Tungsten, On the Move, Gratitude). Sacks, an Oxford-educated polymath, had a deep familiarity not only with literature and medicine but with botany, animal anatomy, chemistry, the history of science, philosophy, and psychology. The River of Consciousness is one of two books Sacks was working on up to his death, and it reveals his ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless project to understand what makes us human.
Ebook The River of Consciousness eBook Oliver Sacks
"One finds here just the urbane, even casual sophistication that one would expect from a masterful essayist. Sachs learned much from Darwin, Claude Bernard, William James and other 19th century thinkers that anticipates critical concerns of our own contemporary neurobiology. And he shares it with an enviable ease and always fresh curiosity. Whether he is addressing the neurological work of the early Freud, the relation of imitation to creativity, or the altered regulatory physiology in Tourette's syndrome, his passion for knowledge is flat-out contagious. I particularly appreciated how he high-lighted the neglect of past wisdom in an age when the lure of current idols (i.e. pharmaceutical magic bullets and the more pedestrian forms of cognitive neuroscience) are seductive for many. Finally, the autobiographical note on his situation during the last months of his life in "A General Feeling of Disorder" shows why anecdote can be so valuable. Make no mistake about it; his body may no longer be with us, but his passion is as alive as ever in us as we read and learn from him."
Product details
|
Tags : Buy The River of Consciousness Read 70 Books Reviews - ,ebook,Oliver Sacks,The River of Consciousness,Vintage,Essays,Life Sciences - Neuroscience,Time,Consciousness,Consciousness.,Creative ability,Creative ability.,Essays,General Adult,Life Sciences - Neuroscience,Medical/Neuroscience,NEUROSCIENCE,Neuropsychology,Neuropsychology.,Non-Fiction,On the Move; Awakenings; An Anthropologist on Mars; Gratitude; Uncle Tungsten; philosophy; memory; time; psychology; neuroscience; neurological; Freud; Darwin; death; anatomy; chemistry; essays; botany; neurology; human knowledge; creative evolution; medicine; Natural History; brain imaging; hallucinations; evolutionary theory; scientific research; consciousness; new york time best sellers; evolutionary psychology; non fiction best sellers; oliver sacks; nonfiction best sellers; neurology books; brain; science books,Readings/Anthologies/Collected Works,SCI/TECH,SCIENCE / Essays,SCIENCE / Life Sciences / Neuroscience,SCIENCE / Time,Science,Science/Essays,Science/Math,Science/Mathematics,Science/Time,Time,United States,nonfiction best sellers;oliver sacks;evolutionary psychology;non fiction best sellers;new york time best sellers;On the Move;Awakenings;An Anthropologist on Mars;Gratitude;Uncle Tungsten;philosophy;memory;time;psychology;neuroscience;neurological;Freud;Darwin;death;anatomy;chemistry;essays;botany;neurology;human knowledge;creative evolution;medicine;Natural History;brain imaging;hallucinations;evolutionary theory;consciousness;neurology books;janna levin;oliver sacks books;oliver sachs;brain,Medical/Neuroscience,SCIENCE / Essays,SCIENCE / Life Sciences / Neuroscience,SCIENCE / Time,Science/Essays,Science/Time,Science,Science/Mathematics
The River of Consciousness eBook Oliver Sacks Reviews :
The River of Consciousness eBook Oliver Sacks Reviews
- Two weeks before his death from cancer, Oliver Sacks outlined the contents of The River of Consciousness for the team that would oversee its publication. If you knew you were dying, what would you want to leave behind? It was this question as much as my appreciation of his other works that drew me to this book.
In their obituary of Sacks, the New York Times said that he wrote about “the Brain’s Quirksâ€, and The River of Consciousness fits that description well. It is a collection of ten articles, some of which first appeared in The New York Review of Books, on subjects like the mental perception of time and speed, the mental lives of plants and worms, the fallibility of memory, and a mental feeling of disorder. The last article, “Scotoma Forgetting and Neglect in Scienceâ€, explores instances of significant scientific discoveries that were underappreciated or entirely ignored in their time. The first article, “Darwin and the Meaning of Flowersâ€, is somewhat different in subject but is quintessential Sacks “I rejoice in the knowledge of my biological uniqueness and my biological antiquity and my biological kinship with all other forms of life….I trace back this sense of biological meaning to Darwin’s epiphany on the meaning of flowers, and to my own intimations of this in a London garden, nearly a lifetime agoâ€. That quote sums up well the style of the articles, which mixes science, case history, and Sacks’ unique autobiographical memories of a life wondering why and pursuing knowledge, and is often philosophical in tone.
I have read several of Sacks’ books and consider them to be aimed at a fairly intelligent and well-educated general audience. Many of these articles seem more academic in tone. If you read a hard-copy edition of the book you might want to keep your phone handy to Google terms Sacks did not bother to define, like “paraphasia†or “proprioception†or to look up a picture of a Necker cube, since I doubt a reader would appreciate Sacks’ discussion of the phenomenon fully if they were not already familiar with it. I found myself struggling to understand assertions like “Charcot was convinced …that although no anatomical lesions could be demonstrated in patients with hysterical paralyses, there must nonetheless be a ‘physiological lesion’… located in the same part of the brain where, in an established neurological paralysis, an anatomical lesion…would be found.†Unless you have a truly impressive breadth of knowledge and vocabulary, prepare to be occasionally challenged.
The River of Consciousness, in sum, is a fitting representation of Oliver Sacks a brilliant mind rejoicing in life and eager to share his joy with the rest of us. - This essay collection gathers together essays on miscellaneous topics by the late Oliver Sacks. Anyone who has read other books by the neurologist would not be surprised by the range of writings here. There are illuminating chapters on Darwin’s late-age investigations on insectivorous and climbing plants, Freud’s pre-psychoanalysis career in demystifying some of the basic anatomical and neural characteristics of the brain (much of this solid accomplishment has been lost in the drive to debunk psychoanalysis), the neurological characteristics of thinking speed (in which he speculates whether the brains of lightning-fast thinkers like Robert Oppenheimer and Robin Williams are wired differently), especially in Parkinsonian patients, and William James’s thoughts on various “forms†of consciousness that can potentially be accessed by drugs or surgery. I especially liked the final chapter on contingency in scientific discovery in which Sacks discovers anecdotal accounts of important neurological disorders from the 19th century which were forgotten and rediscovered in the 20th. Sacks always emphasized the importance of storytelling and anecdotal evidence, and this attitude is especially valuable in our age of statistics and large-scale data collection. The essay collection here is not as eloquent as some of his other books, but his honesty and intense curiosity for disparate topics comes across as usual.
- One finds here just the urbane, even casual sophistication that one would expect from a masterful essayist. Sachs learned much from Darwin, Claude Bernard, William James and other 19th century thinkers that anticipates critical concerns of our own contemporary neurobiology. And he shares it with an enviable ease and always fresh curiosity. Whether he is addressing the neurological work of the early Freud, the relation of imitation to creativity, or the altered regulatory physiology in Tourette's syndrome, his passion for knowledge is flat-out contagious. I particularly appreciated how he high-lighted the neglect of past wisdom in an age when the lure of current idols (i.e. pharmaceutical magic bullets and the more pedestrian forms of cognitive neuroscience) are seductive for many. Finally, the autobiographical note on his situation during the last months of his life in "A General Feeling of Disorder" shows why anecdote can be so valuable. Make no mistake about it; his body may no longer be with us, but his passion is as alive as ever in us as we read and learn from him.
- OWS’s mind is wonderfully prepared for this, his final romp through the quirky histories of Evolution, Science, and Medicine. He adroitly connects the dots even where we didn’t by searching through ancient texts to find early truths that were either forgotten or rejected (some for a thousand years) because they were discovered before the common consciousness was ready them (he searched for three years before he came upon the writings of a physician working with amputees during the Civil War that described the phenomena of phantom limbs). Read this and watch the streams of consciousness become the River!
Comments
Post a Comment