Soul Made Flesh Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Soul Made Flesh Book

In Soul Made Flesh, Carl Zimmer reveals the strange and complicated history of the discovery of the human brain. Amid the turmoil of 17th century England, with religious leaders and monarchs battling for control of the country, an elite group of thinkers used every scientific means at their disposal to figure out that the unassuming putty in our heads was crucial to human health and wisdom. Primary among these Oxford scholars was Thomas Willis, whom the Royal Society affectionately called "our chymist." Soul Made Flesh is as much a biography of Willis and the men who shaped him as it is a medical history. Zimmer admirably sets the stage for what would become a metaphysical revolution and spark arguments that continue to this day about what the mind is and where, if anywhere, the human soul resides: Thomas Willis... isolated the soul from stars and demons and made the chemical workings of the brain the key to sanity and happiness. Just as important, he helped make the brain a familiar thing. Zimmer applies the same dedicated research and quietly sparkling style to this book as he did to Parasite Rex and At the Water's Edge, distilling reams of historical and scientific information into a concise yet comprehensive narrative. The book's chapters are accompanied by drawings by Willis' contemporary Christopher Wren, whose architectural sensibilities made the brain's structure beautiful to behold. --Therese LittletonRead More

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  • Product Description

    We take it for granted that the brain is the seat of our minds, the part of the body that is most ourselves. 500 years ago, Europeans, if they thought about the brain at all, took it much less seriously - whether it was a refrigerator or a pump, it was seen as little more than a mechanism, its only products tears and snot. Among the revolutions of the seventeenth century was a revolution on the understanding of the brain and mind. It's central figure was a 17th century Englishman called Thomas Willis. To him, we owe our modern understanding of the miracle that is the human brain, the first dissections of the skull and the word 'psychology'. Zimmer's new book tells Willis' story, against the background of Civil War, regicide and Restoration. Set in London and Oxford, we see the context of Willis' researches and dissections, meet his famous friends, the founders of the Royal Society, Boyle, Hooke and Sir Christopher Wren, who attended Willis' dissections and sketched the results. Few stories in the history of science are as important and fascinating - and as little-known - as this one.

  • 0434010464
  • 9780434010462
  • Carl Zimmer
  • 1 April 2004
  • William Heinemann Ltd
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 320
  • First Edition First Impression
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