Breaking the Mind Barrier

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Artist and MIT research affiliate Siler offers a sketchy blueprint for ``neurocosmology,'' a new science that literally links microcosm to macrocosm. Figuring largely in his hypothesis are ``processmorphs,'' things that differ in outward form but are alike in process; as examples he cites humans, earthquakes, windstorms and stars as sharing similar patterns of energy phenomena. Juxtaposing a photograph of colliding galaxies with one of neural tissue, he attributes the visual likenesses to the possibility that the brain's individual neurons are like stars. While sometimes veering close to mysticism (``Gravitation is to galaxies what consciousness is to human beings''), this open-ended exploration, crammed with scores of intriguing illustrations, challenges and provokes as it cuts across many disciplines, from art and psychology to genetics, computer science, systems theory and cybernetics. (Dec.)

Library Journal

``In decoding the brain, we decode the universe,'' writes Siler, a research affiliate at MIT. This simple, yet fundamental premise is the basis of neurocosmology, a new discipline which combines neuroscience, cosmology, and art as it seeks to discover that which connects the brain to the universe. It does so most successfully by forming metaphors which compare processes common to both--the ways stars and nervous systems are formed, for example: their similar means of transporting energy, even their modes of communication. Siler's philosophical proposals are bold and original (some might suggest far-fetched), certainly worthy of attention by students of traditional disciplines. Readers will need a solid grounding in physics and neuroscience. For academic and special collections.-- Laurie Bartolini, Lincoln Lib., Springfield, Ill.