The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God | 
 enlarge | Author: David J. Linden
Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
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Rating:  35 reviews
Sales Rank: 160354
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 7.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0674024788
Dewey Decimal Number: 612.82
EAN: 9780674024786
ASIN: 0674024788
Publication Date: March 31, 2007
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Product Description
You've probably seen it before: a human brain dramatically lit from the side, the camera circling it like a helicopter shot of Stonehenge, and a modulated baritone voice exalting the brain's elegant design in reverent tones. To which this book says: Pure nonsense. In a work at once deeply learned and wonderfully accessible, the neuroscientist David Linden counters the widespread assumption that the brain is a paragon of design--and in its place gives us a compelling explanation of how the brain's serendipitous evolution has resulted in nothing short of our humanity. A guide to the strange and often illogical world of neural function, The Accidental Mind shows how the brain is not an optimized, general-purpose problem-solving machine, but rather a weird agglomeration of ad-hoc solutions that have been piled on through millions of years of evolutionary history. Moreover, Linden tells us how the constraints of evolved brain design have ultimately led to almost every transcendent human foible: our long childhoods, our extensive memory capacity, our search for love and long-term relationships, our need to create compelling narrative, and, ultimately, the universal cultural impulse to create both religious and scientific explanations. With forays into evolutionary biology, this analysis of mental function answers some of our most common questions about how we've come to be who we are. (20070601)
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| Customer Reviews: Read 30 more reviews...
 More than a primer on neuro-physiology! June 28, 2009
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
You know, this is just a fun book to read! Dr. David Linden has taken a would-be terrifying subject (neuroscience) and made it a hands-on reading story that serves a general audience very well, particularly an audience with any background or curiosity about our "marvelous and miraculous" brain.
In fact, having (suffered?) through a medical school education that included detailed neuroanatomy and physiology, I wish we students had had access to this book. In addition to reading the huge, somewhat "dry" tomes required for the courses, I wish we had substituted this book for yet another lecturer whose personal research interest included the wonders of calcium channel regulation, nerve potential propagation, or other such micro-detail in the overall picture. Perhaps there might have been more students interested in research careers in brain science. To bring FUN into learning science is a marvelous and miraculous gift, which is what Dr. Linden is able to do well.
Other reviewers have done a fabulous job describing the content of the book, so I'll avoid repeat. What struck me personally during the reading (my "take home" lesson) was the impression that evolutionary biology does indeed suggest here that we do the best that we can with what nature generates over the eons, and that our brains are anything but "irreducibly complex." Additionally, Dr. Linden is very academically honest when he describes, several times throughout the narrative, what we simply "don't know." It may be fair to suggest that the essence of science should be all about self-confessional "I don't know, or don't know absolutely. But let's see if we can learn"--he touches upon this a few times in the reading.
I would recommend this book to anyone who seeks to understand the basics of brain anatomy and physiology, but particularly for those who want to add to an overall understanding of why we think or believe or behave as we do. Definitive Answers might not be particularly forthcoming in this book--there are many black-boxes, or "middle things" that remain unknown. But I think Dr. Linden does a great job in suggesting our future challenges, and describing the small victories where the processes are already particularly well understood.
In the half-century I've been lucky enough to experience (and remember), he confirms for me that our brains do indeed strive to create some meaningful narrative, to fill in the "gaps" of incompleteness. Despite the seeming mess that has "accidentally" evolved with all its inefficiencies, it may be a wonderfully unique fleshy mass that can appreciate itself and strive to know more. It was the spirit of making neuroscience fun and interesting that generates my praise for this book. I hope you enjoy it!
Fantastic look into the wonder and imperfections of your brain! June 21, 2009
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book was quite an eye opener looking into the evolution of the brain. I found it fascinating and highly enlightening. Some of the initial explanations of brain functions as far as neurons and synapses went into a little too much detail than what was needed to make a point, but it was otherwise a great read!
My one little disappointment was the brevity of the information about religion, god, supernatural beliefs. I was hoping for more.
Overall a great read!
A happy accident June 16, 2009
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
You know that elegantly designed computer inside your head, that marvelously efficient processor of information, sensory input and everything else? It doesn't exist. In its place, as David Linden reveals in this book, is a hodgepodge of evolved structures built up bit by bit over time. It isn't elegant. It isn't even especially efficient. In fact, Linden describes the human brain, which usually accounts for about two percent of body weight but burns up about 20 percent of the energy we use internally, as the "Hummer H2" of the human body.
In "The Accidental Mind," Linden, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University, shows how the brain is constructed and how its construction influences the way it works. The most important thing to know about the brain, he points out, is that it wasn't designed from scratch all at once, but that it evolved over time with new sections overlaying but not removing or drastically changing the older parts. In a sense, our brains are like an ice cream cone with one scoop piled on top of another.
This is an interesting and well-written book. Linden has a talent for demystifying the subject matter without patronizing the reader. Along the way he reveals lots of interesting tidbits, like the fact that Einstein's brain was actually a bit on the small side--as human brains go--and that as transmitters of electrical impulses, neurons are terribly inefficient. Although there is a bit of technical language involved in the descriptions of brain function, Linden's explanations and descriptions are clear enough that the jargon should not pose an obstacle to the average reader.
The accidental evolution of our human brains has given us accidental minds, and it is that accidental creation that makes us behave as we do. If you are at all interested in learning about your brain and everyone else's, this is a good place to start.
The Brain Demystified with no nonsense and only science! May 27, 2009
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Anyone who has an interest in how the brain works MUST READ THIS BOOK!
I initially picked this book up because I wanted a scientific and authoritative look at dreams. While I was waiting for the meat of the book--the dream section for me--the entire book contains invaluable loads of information about the brain and how it works. Whats more is that the basic principles Linden points out can be applied to almost any subject relating to the brain--any book, and brain phenomenon your friend describes, and anything relating to the supernatural. One of the great things about this book is that it gives an evolutionary perspective on the brain, supplemented by scientific explanations and amazing case studies.
In the beginning of the book, Linden lays out some basics about neuroscience. Granted, some parts can get a bit tedious to read, all of the information is relevant and necessary for understanding each of his following points. Linden makes sure that readers understand what he is talking about and has a handy index at the back if you want to review!
He also ends the book taking an extensive look at evolution and its level of acceptance today, taking on "creationists" and Intelligent design.
A must read for the scientific mind!
A physiological explanation for faith March 23, 2009
As preeminent science populizer Richard Dawkins has previously cogently explained, natural selection has ingrained in us a tendency to understand the events around us as the product of a conspiracy theory rather than random accident. You and your future offspring are more likely to survive if you always assume that the rustle in the grass next to you is a tiger, even if 99 times out of 100 it is just the wind. Linden takes this one step further and explains how the brain must impose its own explanations on events, because we are physiologically limited in how much information our senses can take in at one time, and so our left brains must fill in the gaps. Basically our entire experience is based on our brain fooling us into thinking that we are seeing and experiencing the real world in a smooth succession of events, when what we are actually seeing are snippets with our brains filling in the rest. Our tendency to believe that there is some supernatural explanation imposing causality on what would otherwise seem like random events (along with our tendency to believe any governmental conspiracy that is suggested) are products of our brain biology. Our job in life as 21st century rational human beings is to recognize where our brain is biasing us away from the unglamorous truth that in general there is no causality, and to compensate for those tendencies. One only wishes that more scientists would stand up to the second and eighth century fundamentalists who are prisoners of their biology and are seeking to impose their antediluvian views on the rest of us through force. Unfortunately, scientists are timid.
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