Book Review: An Alchemy Of Mind - The Marvel And Mystery Of The Brain by Diane Ackerman - Page 2

From such a summing-up most stopping points are made. But Ackerman not only goes the extra meditative mile to concisely yet incisively ponder such potential imponderables as the consequences of anatomical mistakes, evolutionary flukes and even “the zeitgeist of the era” - she gives free rein to her non-academic imagination.

She muses about the incidentals that usually fall through the scholarly cracks. Between beers, for example, did the self-styled keeper and curator of the great scientist’s brain “sometimes peer into the jars and turn them gently like snow globes, talk to the brain, commune with it?” Did Harvey “entertain dreams of glory, of solving its mysteries?”

As may be indicated here, Ackerman has the gift of stylistic gab and poetic resonance with which to better precision-toss the substance of her insights. With such a word-perfect emphasis and almost playful sense of language, it is no wonder that Alchemy’s epigraph consists of an e.e. cummings poem that evokes the book's mingling of cold hard fact with the gradation and shade of allusion-rich expression.

my mind is 
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and
taste and smell and hearing and sight keep hitting and
chipping with sharp fatal tools
in an agony of sensual chisels I perform squirms of
chrome and execute strides of cobalt…

Alchemy's seven sections hit such topics as the evolution of the brain, its physical structure, memory, the self, emotions, language, and consciousness. Meanwhile, some of the more intriguing discussions in the book's 34 chapters chip away at absentmindedness and multitasking, Alzheimer’s and the aging brain, the role of dreams in memory, artistic and mathematical minds, the spiritual brain, animal minds, and “How Shakespeare’s mind was different.”

So, like slings and arrows or, to quote cummings again, “sharp fatal tools” and “sensual chisels,” Ackerman — in the same way others use charts and graphs and tables — benefits from the gentle nudging of determined and determining words to unravel the marvel and mystery of the brain.

Article Author: Gordon Hauptfleisch

Gordon Hauptfleisch is a Blogcritics Books Editor, freelance writer, and book reviewer for San Diego Union Tribune Books (R.I.P.). For many years he worked in and managed bookstores and record stores, and most recently was purchasing manager for San Diego Technical Books. …

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