The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars: A Neuropsychologist's Odyssey Through ConsciousnessWhen celebrated neuropsychologist Paul Broks's wife died of cancer, it sparked a journey of grief and reflection that traced a lifelong attempt to understand how the brain gives rise to the soul. The result of that journey is a gorgeous, evocative meditation on fate, death, consciousness, and what it means to be human. The Darker the Night, The Brighter the Stars weaves a scientist’s understanding of the mind – its logic, its nuance, how we think about what makes a person – with a poet’s approach to humanity, that crucial and ever-elusive why. It’s a story that unfolds through the centuries, along the path of humankind’s constant quest to discover what makes us human, and the answers that consistently slip out of our grasp. It’s modern medicine and psychology and ancient tales; history and myth combined; fiction and the stranger truth. But, most importantly, it’s Broks’ story, grounded in his own most fascinating cases as a clinician—patients with brain injuries that revealed something fundamental about the link between the raw stuff of our bodies and brains and the ineffable selves we take for who we are. Tracing a loose arc of loss, acceptance, and renewal, he unfolds striking, imaginative stories of everything from Schopenhauer to the Greek philosophers to jazz guitarist Pat Martino in order to sketch a multifaceted view of humanness that is as heartbreaking at it is affirming. |
Contents
Boy Sleeps Man Wakes | |
Stardust | |
St Ives | |
On Having No Head | |
Hello Anybody There? | |
The Great God | |
A Grief Observed | |
Rotten to the Core | |
Living the Dream | |
The Myth of Sisyphus | |
Tyger Tyger | |
Immortality | |
A Shower of Gold | |
The Rape of the Moon | |
The View from the Bottom of the Well | |
The Messenger Bird | |
Egos and Bundles | |
The Consciousness Club | |
Magical Mush | |
The Brain in the Belly | |
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The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars: A Neuropsychologist's Odyssey Paul Broks No preview available - 2019 |
The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars: A Neuropsychologist's Odyssey ... Paul Broks No preview available - 2018 |
Common terms and phrases
Aegeus Athens autobiographical bench body brain activity brain function Bundle Theory C. S. Lewis can’t cognitive core Daniel Dennett death Descartes didn’t dolphins dreams drink Earth experience eyes face Faraldo feel Freud frontal lobes fucking Greek guitar hallucinations hand happened he’s head hemisphere human I’ve idea imagination intuitions jellyfish Kate Kate’s labyrinth Lewys live look magic Marcia memory mental mind Moon neurons neuropsychology neuroscience never night Pat Martino Pat’s patients patterns perhaps person Pheidippides philosopher Philosophical zombies physical picture play problem of consciousness psychological qualia quantum reality ring says seems selfhood sense Ship of Theseus sitting sleep paralysis smiles someone soul split-brain staring stars story stuff supernatural sure talk tell theory there’s Theseus thing thought told turned universe voice walking watch what’s wife woman wonder words Zeus zombies