Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery Of The Brain—and How It Changed The World

Praise for Soul Made Flesh “Carl Zimmer’s illuminating book charts a fascinating chapter in the soul’s journey. . . . Zimmer successfully communicates his enthusiasm for the energetic minds and busy pens of his heroes. His book is timely.” —The New York Times Book Review “Ravaged by religious wars and capricious monarchs, 17th-century England was a kingdom in chaos. Against this bloody backdrop, Zimmer recounts physician Thomas Willis’ momentous discovery that the brain—previously dismissed as ‘a bowl of curds’—is the seat of human consciousness and memory. This page-turner is a tribute to the heretical thinkers who decoded nature by relying on direct observation rather than received opinion.” —Wired magazine “An uncommonly literate look at a little-explored side of scientific history, and a thumping good read at that.” —Timothy Ferris, author of The Whole Shebang and Coming of Age in the Milky Way “We live in what Carl Zimmer, one of our most gifted science writers, calls a Neurocentric Age . . . Zimmer describes . . . a kind of second Copernican revolution—one inside the body. . . . Thrilling . . . Zimmer’s nimble survey of the intellectual landscape of the 17th century [is] a top-notch work of popular science, chock-full of fascinating lore and inspired quotations. . . . Hosts of knotty concepts are treated to lucid descriptions, and his fluent prose and vivid narration prove themselves as much at home among the complex historical and political crosscurrents of the 17th century as they are with finely tuned accounts of biochemistry or MRI scanners.” —Ross King, author of Brunelleschi’s Dome, in the Los Angeles Times “In Soul Made Flesh, Carl Zimmer gives a remarkable, beautiful account of England’s ‘genius century.’ Zimmer brings Willis to life—his prose, as always, is clear, vivid, and arresting—and reminds us how startling and revolutionary his discoveries were.” —Oliver Sacks “A deep and contextualized exploration of two millennia’s worth of human theories about consciousness and the soul. . . . [Zimmer’s] wide-ranging narrative reaches from the days of Aristotle to a 21st-century lab in the basement of a Princeton University building. The central figure in Zimmer’s tale is the oft-overlooked 17th-century scientist Thomas Willis, a figure of fascinating contradictions. . . . In the end, however, this book is less about Willis in particular than about the evolving metaphysics of the soul in general, and the reader is left with a better picture of the roots of the modern understanding of the self as well as a familiarity with one of the unsung heroes of the scientific revolution.” —Publishers Weekly “A gifted science writer, Zimmer recounts Willis’ singular achievement in a narrative that illuminates not only the scientific revolution in medicine but also the cross-grained personality of one of the chief revolutionaries. . . . A remarkable fusion of scientific history and cultural analysis.” —Booklist (starred review) “Soul Made Flesh tells the fascinating story of how people first became aware of one of the most radical thoughts the human mind has ever had to think. The writing is vivid and literate, the story compelling, and the modern implications drawn out with skill and verve.” —Steven Pinker, bestselling author of How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate “Carl Zimmer clarifies and illuminates the story of a fascinating thinker. By focusing on a single player in the vast spectacle that was the Scientific Revolution, and telling his story so well, Zimmer gives us insights into the age when Alchemy gave way to modern science. But this is not only a history book, for readers with an interest in consciousness and the brain will find much here that applies to research going on today.” —Neal Stephenson, author of S