Evolving
the Mind: on the nature of matter and the origin of consciousness
by A.G. Cairns-Smith
No, this book has nothing to do with biological evolution, even though
the blurb on the jacket says it does. The blurb also says it is about how
ideas about the mind have evolved [in the memeosphere]. This book is mainly
proof of the otherwise unbelievable idea that someone in the 1990's would
try to describe the history of cognitive research without including coverage
of artificial intelligence research and neural network models. Cairns-Smith
has done a service for his fellow chemists, they can now stay at the bench
and spare us from any additional public displays of physicist envy (physicist
envy defined: "if physicists can write books about how physics can explain
consiousness, why can't chemists?").
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