Böcker av Trevor Rollings

'We are our brains' has been the mantra of neuroscience. This materialist approach has helped to unlock the secrets of the brain. It has transformed psychology, revolutionised psychiatry, exposed the gremlins in our thinking, and given us a new language to talk about ourselves.But this is only half of our story. Just as our brain is made by genes and biology, so is our mind shaped by culture and experience. We are more than our brains. We are integrated mind-brains.Neuroscience has energised our traditional ways of thinking about who we are and how our mind works, but it has not replaced them. If we are to talk meaningfully about self, free will, consciousness, and the moral challenges we face, we need to rethink the old questions in the light of new knowledge and understanding.We need to tell the whole story of our mind and brain as an evolutionary partnership at the heart of our lived experience.

, Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? These questions form the title of an 1897 painting by the French artist Paul Gauguin. He knew he was pushing the limits of human knowledge by asking them. He also knew they are not new questions. Our ancestors began to ask them on the African savannah. The Roman poet Lucretius posed them in his long poem On the Nature of Things, written just before the Christian era. He sought natural explanations for the behaviour of matter, without recourse to gods. But he also knew that the world we see is largely a creation of our mind. Since then, science has answered most of his 'how' questions, almost to the point of offering us a 'Theory of Everything'. But Gauguin's 'why' questions remain largely unanswered. They require a personal response from us, without which, as Lucretius intuited, nothing can be joyous or lovely. In The Stupendous Story of Us, we consider the narrative from all angles: our mastery of the realm of things, our exploration of our inner world, and our connectedness to each other. The pace is frantic because life is short, knowledge is infinite, and the challenges ahead are pressing.,