Ben Waber reviewed The Idea of the Brain by Matthew Cobb
A Unique Combination of Scientific History and Scientific Introduction
5 stars
This book does double duty, analyzing the long history of how people have understood the brain and mind with a scientific history orientation and also explaining the scientific theories and experiments underpinning modern neuroscience. Cobb shows how people have always compared the brain to whatever was the new technological hotness - telegraphs, telephones, batteries, computers, and now AI - and of course I also immensely enjoyed the absolute savaging of those claiming that neural networks (essentially built off one understanding of neurons in the 40s) and fMRI data are good representations of the brain. For those familiar with neuroscience concepts part 2 will be mostly review, but with Cobb's connections with previous theories it is still insightful. Highly recommend
This book does double duty, analyzing the long history of how people have understood the brain and mind with a scientific history orientation and also explaining the scientific theories and experiments underpinning modern neuroscience. Cobb shows how people have always compared the brain to whatever was the new technological hotness - telegraphs, telephones, batteries, computers, and now AI - and of course I also immensely enjoyed the absolute savaging of those claiming that neural networks (essentially built off one understanding of neurons in the 40s) and fMRI data are good representations of the brain. For those familiar with neuroscience concepts part 2 will be mostly review, but with Cobb's connections with previous theories it is still insightful. Highly recommend