The brain...the thing that is translating these geometric shapes on a screen into words, ideas, thoughts...is weirdly pulled apart and put together again in our age of tecnological marvels, yet lacking a paradigmatic metaphor. The many paradigms that we've fitted around our brains since we figured out the ancient system of thinking that had the heart at the center of intellect worked fine...until they broke trying to explain new data on brain function.

Well, you might think, so what? They're metaphors, not facts.

That's true as far as it goes. The role of a paradigmatic metaphor, like the best we have today of a supercomputer, isn't just to provide useful handles to grasp the still-elusive overarching explanation of what, how, and why the brain is and does. Thomas Kuhn, philosopher of science, said (in essence) that paradigms work until they don't and until new paradigms emerge, progress stalls.

That is where we stand now, atop a mountain of recently acquired data that blows up the supercomputer metaphor, but without another paradigmatic metaphor to shift to. We need, in short, another great leap forward like Darwin's theory of evolution was for millennia of accumulated biological data, to help us see how this immense pile of information can be turned into a fuller and more useful understanding of the brain and its processes.

While this is not the most fluffy and amusing read of 2023, it was deeply informative and very much an eye-opener. I had thought the neurologists were much farther behind the other sciences than they, in fact, are...much has been learned with the existence of fMRI machines and the technological like. The downside of these sorts of advances come when the private sector steps in to monetize the discoveries. They have no interest in helping people with the tech advances unless there's profit in it. The story of a severely epileptic woman whose life was completely changed by a brain implant being developed by a start-up, which then went bust, and the device (patent-protected) was permanently turned off, was particularly illustrative of the issue's costs.

Readable, informative, trenchant. Not easy to digest, but repays the effort put in with a very expanded view of whre science has come after its explosive beginnigs. Made me eager to see what comes next.

If, that is, I live that long...look how long it was between Linnaeus inventing the idea of species and Darwin explaining how they came to be in the first place.

I loved this very much! The characters, the actions and even the plot itself! Very inspiring for my own book too!

I picked this up because I've always had a fascination with the brain - how can this person understand rocket science, while this person is better at literature, and how do people view (and/or value) these rather divergent types of development through their own lenses?

If you're after a very detailed, rather academic sort of book examining the ways people throughout history have viewed the brain, this is the book for you. It comes across as a bit dry, as many overviews of anything do, but it does not stray into the weeds to become completely unreadable. You do need to be ready and alert to read it in order to understand the transitions and shifts of thinking throughout history about the organ that allows us to think.

If you're a citation kind of person, this is also for you: as with other academic type books of this nature, there are loads of materials one could go find and read, if one were interested in continuing to delve into neurology and the general history of how we view the rather precious blob that sits inside our skulls.

Four stars.

Thanks to NetGalley and Perseus/Basic Books for the reading copy.

Compelling book full of facts and history!
If you're a neuroscience aficionado or just interested on knowing some new cool things, this book is for you.

One of the most descriptive, detailed, researched books on the history of neurology/neuroscience out there. This is very academic and detailed, so it reads a bit dry but is incredibly rich in both information and insight

Comprehensive Review of The Field. Cobb seems to do a spectacular job here of giving a general overview of neurotypical neuroscience, from the earliest ways man thought about his brain and cognition to the most current of state of the field in some situations - one citation in particular was from 2019! He doesn't really address neurological divergences at all, instead focusing on the brain as it is understood for most. But within what he decides to address, this book seemingly gives a very solid, very comprehensive overview of the actual science of the brain. Decently easy to follow as long as you're ready for an academic review, this book really does what it sets out to do, no more, no less. Very much recommended.

This book was written by an expert in the history of science so if you want to read a very detailed exposition on the development of neuroscience this is your book. Sadly, since roughly 1950 the science of the brain has made little or no real progress thus this book stalls out about seventy years ago. The only fun thing that I learned from this tome is that Karl Marx believed in phrenology.