The Undiscovered Mind: How the Brain Defies Replication, Medication and Explanation

With a gadfly's stinging sense of human limitations, Horgan, author of the controversial and bestselling The End of Science, turns a quizzical eye to the claims of contemporary scientists, psychologists, philosophers and medical researchers who, through mind and brain science, hope to explain rationally human consciousness and behavior. His extraordinarily provocative and wide-ranging treatise moves from an analysis of modern social science's belief in the subjectivity of all research to a near apologia for Freud's profound skepticism of the scientific method, to an exposure of the reductionist claims of evolutionists, genetic theorists, psychopharmacology and cybernetics. During his rollicking stroll though the varied creeds that compose the terrain of consciousness studies, Horgan both educates and entertains. He employs anecdotes drawn from quirky personal encounters with leaders of consciousness theory, including Frederick Crews, an anti-Freudian who arrives at one meeting ""dressed like an executioner""; Steven Hyman, the self-described ""equal opportunity sceptic"" who's the director of the National Institute of Medical Health; Peter Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac; and Harold Sackheim, a specialist in electroshock therapy. These anecdotes are complemented by Horgan's own erudition, which is considerable. Here is a writer equally at home with the canonical assertions of literary critic Harold Bloom and language philosopher Noam Chomsky's critique of Locke's epistemology and its subsequent behaviorist adherents. Horgan's light but never shallow journalistic style keeps his skepticism from descending into grim cynicism, and he concludes on an optimistic note: we are, he contends, capable of epiphanies that transcend the bonds of mere scientific method. How true, for readers of this contrarian, challenging book may themselves experience an epiphany as Horgan celebrates what he sees as the fundamental mystery of consciousness, of life, of the universe itself. Agent, John Brockman. (Sept.)