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Overview
Written in an extraordinarily lucid style, Elemental Mind is a brilliant and audacious attempt to arrive at a solution to the "mind/body problem." Until now the debate has been dominated by two major conjectures. One holds that the mind is the result of certain complex biological interactions; the other asserts that the mind is the "software" that controls the brain's computer-like "hardware." This book presents a third hypothesis -- one that boldly casts aside traditional explanations about inner mental states. And it does so by drawing on sources as diverse as Vonnegut and Heisenberg, not to mention imagined encounters with an entrancing, highly intelligent robot named Claire.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Building on the insights in his Quantum Reality , Herbert proposes that mind, instead of being localized in our brains, is a phenomenon as deeply imbedded in nature as light or electricity. Three basic features of the universe predicted by quantum mechanics--randomness, the interconnectedness of all phenomena, and thinglessness (quantum objects do not possess attributes of their own)--were rejected by Albert Einstein, but to Herbert, a Stanford-trained physicist, each of these features of matter is a manifestation of a corresponding basic trait of mind: free will, deep psychic connectedness, and ambiguity. A skillful popularizer, Herbert scrutinizes recent brain research, reviews highly conjectural quantum models of mind, and outlines his own theory of ``quantum animism'' in which mind permeates the world and interacts with matter at the quantum level, which, if true, might help explain paranormal phenomena. (Nov.)Book Details
Published
November 1, 1993
Publisher
New York, N.Y. : Dutton, c1993.
Pages
320
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780525935063