An attempt to explain the ``problem of consciousness'' scientifically, by the prolific popular science writer (A Scientist in the City, 1994, etc.) and NPR commentator. Consciousness is a problem because it is difficult to define scientifically and yet would seem to be the one entity rendering humankind distinct from animals—and from the imminent artificial- intelligence capabilities of computers. Trefil (Physics/George Mason Univ.) easily dispenses with arguments that the DNA of some animals hardly differs from our own, and with the supposedly intelligent behavior of, say, chimpanzees and octopi, since, in the end, the gap between animal and human intelligence is impressively large. Computers prove harder to deal with, however. First, in his most brilliant chapters, Trefil lays out everything science knows about the workings of the human brain: how synapses fire to cause actions such as the resolution of sight, and the tracking of where individual functions, such as muscle control or the perception of motion, are born. With his model established, Trefil then tries to demolish the notion of a computer as a mechanical brain. The brain is not an electrical apparatus, but a chemical one, he points out, and therefore the parallel commonly drawn between the firing of a synapse and the connections between semiconductors is false. And what to do about that sturdy yet poorly understood mechanism known as intuition? Could a machine, no matter how sophisticated, ever manage such a leap? Even so, Trefil acknowledges that science will shortly be able to map every function of the brain and that eventually enough semiconductors, mimicking those functions, might be strung together to equal the brain's huge capacity. Once he does so, only a mystical approach to consciousness can rescue him, but Trefil is at pains to avoid any but strictly empirical arguments. A gallant, moving, but in the end unconvincing argument.
Pub Date: March 26, 1997
ISBN: 0-471-15536-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1997
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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