Figments of Reality: The Evolution of the Curious Mind by Ian Stewart

Product Description

Peppered with wit and controversial topics, this is a refreshing new look at the co-evolution of mind and culture. Bestselling authors Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen (The Collapse of Chaos, 1994) eloquently argue that our minds evolved within an inextricable link with culture and language. They go beyond conventional views of the function and purpose of the mind to look at the ways that the mind is the response of an evolving brain that is constantly adjusting to a complex environment. Along the way they develop new and intriguing insights into the nature of evolution, science, and humanity that will challenge conventional views on consciousness. The esteemed authors tantalize the reader with these bold new outlooks while putting a revolutionary spin on such classic philosophical problems as the nature of free will and the essence of humanity. This clearly written and enjoyable book will inspire any educated reader to critically evaluate the existing notions of the nature of the human mind.
Product Details

* Amazon Sales Rank: #340646 in Books
* Published on: 1999-10-28
* Number of items: 1
* Binding: Paperback
* 340 pages

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
In Figments of Reality, mathematician Ian Stewart and biologist Jack Cohen's thesis (or schtick) is that human minds are produced by complicity between human brains and culture. In their earlier book The Collapse of Chaos, Stewart and Cohen used the power of Humpty Dumpty to redefine complicity to mean properties that emerge from the mutual interaction of complex systems. "Our minds, our societies, our cultures, and our global multiculture, are all evolving within a reality that we mould in images of our own creation. We are a figment of reality--but reality is increasingly a figment of us."

Reality is not the only figment in the book. Stewart and Cohen use a group of eight "weird alien beings from the planet Zarathustra, resembling fluffy yellow ostriches but with much stranger habits" as a sounding board, as comedy relief, and as a philosophical-experimental playpen. To quote:

"Ringmaster: What is this?
Liar-to-children [=teacher]: A continuing educational narrative of some kind, Ringmaster. Based upon a revered/reviled (delete whichever is inapplicable) ancient text. [Watches the screen and interprets the tale that unfolds--a long and dramatic story of an exploding universe, elements born in stars, complex carbon-based molecular machines, a doubly-helical genetic molecule, the origins of life, evolution, sense organs, brains, minds, and intelligence.]
R: What a fascinating narrative.
LtC: And such a convincing story.
Destroyer-of-facts [=scientist]: Such vigor and power! Such unified scientific insight!
R: Not a word out of place, no loose ends--amazing!
ALL: [In unison] Must be wrong, then."

Read it and think, read it and giggle, read it and come back for more. At long last, a worthy successor to Gödel, Escher, Bach, updated, twisted, and put through a Monty Python filter.

From Library Journal
Mathematics and geometry professor Stewart, who writes the "mathematical recreations" column in Scientific American, and biologist Cohen are witty, erudite, clever, at times funny, and generally clearheaded in this rationalist's view of the universe and human evolution. Their thesis is that the human mind evolved in response to the complexity of the world and that language?and, indeed, culture?are inextricable parts of this process: there could be no mind without evolution but no evolution without mind. As is apparently mandatory in books on this subject, the authors include examples, anecdotes, and samples from literally every field of human and animal endeavor to illustrate, illuminate, and elucidate their thesis, making their case by seemingly having on hand millions of bits of information. A delightful but heavy read that is excellent for academic collections and general collections with a highly literate readership.?Mark L. Shelton, Univ. of Massachusetts Medical Ctr., Worcester
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"One of the most heartening and innovative books of the year...This kind of book explodes the notion of the imminent and final theory of everything; by the same token, it shows that the death of science has been greatly exaggerated." The Sunday Times of London

"[The authors] are witty, erudite, clever, and generally clear-headed in this rationalist's view of the universe and human evolution...delightful..." Library Journal

"It analyzes the evolution of mankind's consciousness from a new and intriguing perspective. It argues that the mind evolved in the context of culture and language, aiding survival in a complex and competitive world." Biology Digest

"The most thought-provoking book I've read all year." Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series

"A stimulating theory of how mind, consciousness, and culture have coevolved to create our species by two masters of informed, scientific speculation. Try it...you'll learn a lot. Who could ask for more?" John L. Casti, Santa Fe Institute and Technical University of Vienna, author of Would-Be Worlds

"Figments of Reality is highly recommended for college-level collections and any non-specialist general reader." Bookwatch

"A delightful read that is excellent for academic collections and general collections with a highly literate readership." Mark L. Shelton, Library Journal

"Stewart and Cohen show how intelligence and extelligence interact by way of language and how the end product formulates culture...the authors are quick-witted and provide a lively exposition." Science News

"While the subject matter is rather heady, the authors are quickwitted and provide a lively exposition." Science News Books

"It analyzes the evolution of mankind's consciousness from a new and intriguing perspective. It argues that the mind evolved in the context of culture and language, aiding survival in a complex and competitive world." Biology Digest
Customer Reviews

Evolution of mind and human culture4
While there is relatively little about the brain itself in this book, the authors do consider the importance of symmetries in neural processing. Thus, a discussion of the recognition of male and female faces takes advantage of an eigenvector (or eigenface) that embodies the difference between an average him and her. (Enthusiasts of the quantum mind approach to consciousness studies should note that such ideas are the coin of modern nonlinear science, and not at all dependent upon the extrapolation of quantum theory to the macroscopic world: a point that was clearly made by Niels Bohr back in 1933.)
Unfortunatly, there is no mention of recent research by Hermann Haken and his colleagues in connection with this work, although this sort of eigenvector analysis is closely related to ideas presented in his book Principles of Brain
Functioning (1996).

A short chapter on free will is interesting but ultimately somewhat disappointing because the authors seem to be sitting on both sides of the philosophical fence. Recognizing that the assumption of free will is necessary for the orderly functioning of any culture and scornful of the inflated claims of genetic determinists, they note that theoretical reasons can be imagined for anything that occurs. To me, at least, this is as true as it is unconvincing. It is always possible to cobble together some sort of explanation of whatever transpires after the fact. Does this imply that the future is determined by the present? What might such an assertion mean? This chapter ends with the statement: ``Therefore free will is not just an illusion: it is a figment rendered real by the evolutionary complicity of mind and culture'' (p.241). Maybe I am dense, but this doesn't mean much to me. Perhaps the authors would have been wiser to omit this chapter, admitting that they do not know what free will is.
Two final chapters deal with some of the details of our many interactions with the surrounding culture, noting that a very large amount of knowledge is presently available to us all through libraries, schools, theater, television, and more recently the World Wide Web. The first of these chapters, entitled Extelligence, considers in some detail the ever increasing pool of information in which we are embedded in by our technological culture. The authors consider their notion of extelligence to be somewhat different from (say) Karl Popper's World 3, because it involves complicit interactions with individuals in a culture. This is, in my view, such an extremely important aspect of the overall subject of consciousness studies, that it deserves a book of its own. Perhaps the authors will team up with an informed and imaginative ethnologist in the not too distant future and work on such a project. The last chapter - entitled ``Simplex, Complex, Multiplex'' - describes the relationships between the organization of biological cells and human social systems. From this perspective, the village is analogous to a bacterium, whereas a town is compared to an eukaryote, and a city to a multi-celled organism. The chapter title alludes to increasingly sophisticated ways that individuals have of perceiving the intricacy of their social environments in a human culture.

Alwyn Scott
http://personal.riverusers.com/~rover/

Life, consciousness, mind, and reality explained5
How does life arise from inanimate matter? How does consciousness arise from life? Is consciousness of the universe an illusion? Or is mind itself an illusion?

The British authors of this book are a mathematician and biologist pair who boldly tackle these classic questions in philosophy with some original approaches. Maintaining that life, consciousness, and culture cannot understood by reducing them to the material elements from which they arise, the authors deftly develop a set of interesting concepts. Some of these are not especially original, but they are presented in an unusual light particularly as the authors ably illustrate them with very accessible descriptions of complex biochemical pathways of living matter.

A key concept is that of emergence - well established in philosophy and roughly equated to the popular idea of the whole being more than the sum of its parts. The authors couple this concept with one of their own - complicity, or the interaction of different things which lead them to become entirely new things. A third, among several others, is that of extelligence which arises from the interaction of the intellegences of individuals and is rooted in human culture. Using these and other concepts, the book, which is at the nexus of science and philosophy, seeks to explain how life, consciousness, culture, and reality arise and the relationship between them.

Be prepared to wade through these pages slowly to enjoy the masterful exposition of this book. Or, if you find this tedious, enjoy the elegant prose which uses the lens of science and philosophy to describe events which we might normally frame in different language. In the four-page prologue, a graphic sequence of events unfolds which chart the creation of the universe to the emergence of the symbolic literary creatures which constitute the human species: QUOTE Fifteen thousand million years ago the universe was no bigger than the dot at the end of this sentence......today, the two descendants of those tiny creatures are busy delineating their own limited version of the entire story in strange, angular geometric symbols impressed in contrasting pigment upon sheets of impressed white vegetable matter. UNQUOTE

Having long forgotten more than half the courses I took in college, this book allowed me to relive and reinforce the pleasures of two wonderful philosophy seminars - on theories of mind and philosophy of science. Expect, if you get through the book cover to cover, to see the world a little differently from when you start at the prologue.

Gets one thinking along new channels.5
Okay, okay, I admit it; I should never argue with Steven Haines about a book. I had first discovered the title Figments of Reality while reading another author. When I finally got the book, though, I discovered that I really couldn't get into it, but Steven Haines' review was so enthusiastic