Synopses & Reviews
Soul Made Flesh is the remarkable untold story of a dramatic turning point in history -- the exciting discovery of how the human brain works. In an unprecedented examination of how the secrets of the brain were revealed in seventeenth-century England, award-winning author Carl Zimmer tells an extraordinary tale that unfurls against a deadly backdrop of civil war, plague, and the Great Fire of London. At the beginning of that turbulent century, no one knew how the brain worked or even what it looked like intact. By the century's close, the science of the brain had taken root, helping to overturn many of the most common misconceptions and dominant philosophies about man, God, and the universe. Presiding over the rise of this new scientific paradigm was the founder of modern neurology, Thomas Willis, a fascinating, sympathetic, even heroic figure who stands at the center of an extraordinary group of scientists and philosophers known as the Oxford circle. Chronicled here in vivid detail are their groundbreaking revelations and often gory experiments that first enshrined the brain as the chemical engine of reason, emotion, and madness -- indeed as the very seat of the human soul.
Called "as fine a science essayist as we have" by The New York Times, Zimmer tells the story of this scientific revolution through the lives of a colorful array of alchemists, mystics, utopians, spies, revolutionaries, and kings. He recreates the religious, ethical, and scientific struggles involved in the pioneering autopsies of the brain carried out by Thomas Willis; the discovery of the circulation of blood by William Harvey and his flight from London with his besieged king, Charles I; René Descartes's persecution by Catholics and Protestants alike for his views of the brain and soul; and the experiments and personal dramas of gifted men who forever changed the way science is practiced as they simultaneously upended our view of our human selves and our place in the world.
In this distant mirror to our own time of continuing scientific revolution and worldwide social upheaval, Zimmer brings to life the painstaking, innovative discoveries of Willis and his contemporaries -- the taproots of the amazing work of today's neuroscientists, who continue to explore the brain, revealing the hidden workings of emotions, memories, and consciousness. Graced with beautiful illustrations by Christopher Wren, Soul Made Flesh conveys a contagious appreciation for the wonder of the brain, its structure, its many marvelous functions, and the implications for human identity, mind, and morality. It is the definitive history of the dawn of a world-changing science and attitude -- the age of the brain and modern consciousness.
Review
Oliver SacksThomas Willis was the first man to come to grips with the human brain, to see how different parts of it had different functions and how the human soul could be embodied in it. In Soul Made Flesh, Carl Zimmer gives a remarkable, beautiful account of England's 'genius century,' and of the intertwined lives of Willis and his contemporaries Harvey, Boyle, and Hooke. Zimmer brings Willis and his intellectual journey to life -- his prose, as always, is clear, vivid, and arresting -- and reminds us how startling and revolutionary his discoveries were.
Review
Steven PinkerAuthor of How the Mind Works and The Blank SlateToday the idea that every aspect of human experience consists of activity in the brain is second nature to some people and an 'astonishing hypothesis' -- or even sacrilege -- to others. But few are aware of the ancestry of this idea. 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.
Review
Michael S. Gazzaniga, Ph.D.Author of Nature's MindFew writers can bring back the odor and the sense of time that is present during historic discoveries. Few can capture the extent of human ignorance that is present and is about to be illuminated. Carl Zimmer writes with a rare skill, a captivating skill that brings one back to that place. We all take the present so easily and naturally, and yet each stone along the road to our present modern life was hard to find and to put in place. This is a must read.
Review
Neal StephensonAuthor of QuicksilverCarl Zimmer clarifies and illuminates the story of a fascinating thinker who too often gets lost among the crowd of colorful geniuses who made up the early Royal Society. 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, and even older systems of thought, 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.
Review
Timothy FerrisAuthor of The Whole Shebang and Coming of Age in the Milky WayAn uncommonly literate look at a little-explored side of scientific history, and a thumping good read at that.
About the Author
Carl Zimmer's work appears regularly in The New York Times, National Geographic, Newsweek, Discover, Natural History, and Science. A John S. Guggenheim Fellow, he has also received the Pan-American Health Organization Award for Excellence in International Health Reporting and the American Institute of Biological Sciences Media Award. His previous books include Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea; Parasite Rex; and At the Water's Edge. He lives in Guilford, Connecticut.
Table of Contents
Table of ContentsIntroduction: A Bowl of Curds
Chapter One: Hearts and Minds, Livers and Stomachs
Greeks explore the soul, puzzle over the brain, and embrace the heart Christians build a soul from ancient parts
Natural philosophy is born and anatomy becomes a sacred art
Vesalius discovers monkeys where men once stood
The Greeks are transformed, the soul questioned
Chapter Two: World Without Soul
Anatomy of the cosmos Galileo's new sky
Marin Mersenne makes the world a machine
Pierre Gassendi sanctifies the atom
Descartes's anatomy of clear ideas
The human body as earthen machine
The soul climbs into its cockpit
An arrest
The perfect argument
The ice queen makes Descartes an offer
The captive leaves its prison
Chapter Three: Make Motion Cease
Thomas Willis with the beasts of the field Protestants and Puritans
The divine right of kings and the complaints of Parliament
God and Aristotle at Oxford
Servant and alchemist
Mystical medicine comes to England
Chapter Four: The Broken Heart of the Republic
Charles I stumbles toward war Fever swings its scythe
Portrait of a physician as a young man
Willis fights for his king
Oxford dark and nasty
William Harvey under siege
Harvey at the school of Aristotle
Harvey finds the soul in the blood and says little about the brain
Harvey discovers the circle of blood
Oliver Cromwell tightens the noose
Surrender to madness
Chapter Five: Pisse-Prophets Among the Puritans
Thomas Willis returns Medicine in the marketplace
Ferments dissolve the four humors
The Puritans demand an oath
The Oxford Experimental Philosophy Club
William Petty: From Thomas Hobbes's mouth to Thomas Willis's ear
Charles becomes a martyr to the people
England the republic
The madness of defeat
The Miraculous Case of Anne Greene, or A Clock Reset William Petty measures the soul of a nation
Willis hosts an illegal church
Chapter Six: The Circle of Willis
William Harvey comes out of retirement Thomas Willis searches for the agents of fever
The Experimental Philosophy Club fights for its life and for respectability
Hobbes as politician and neurologist
Robert Boyle gives shape to the New Science
Chapter Seven: Spirits of Blood, Spirits of Air
Willis stirs up a ferment of atoms A crude dream of the brain
Cromwell uprooted
Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke pump away the soul
Christopher Wren, surgeon and injector
The return of the king
Chapter Eight: A Curious Quilted Ball
The Church of England meets its less than divine leader Thomas Willis becomes hero of a nation
"I addicted myself to the opening of heads"
Willis discovers a doctrine of the nerves
The Royal Society
Chapter Nine: Convulsions
The lady with a migraine Convulsions in the year of plague and fire
Chapter Ten: The Science of Brutes
From Oxford to London
Richard Lower transfuses blood into a madman
Lower and Hooke discover Willis's mistake in the lungs of dogs
Willis constructs a doctrine of the soul
Madness explained
Thomas Willis avoids Hobbes's fate
Chapter Eleven: The Neurologist Vanishes
A final book by Thomas Willis and a ridiculously sumptuous funeral How John Locke buried his teacher
Robert Boyle sees the future before he dies and is not consoled
Chapter Twelve: The Soul's Microscope
A long journey forward The soul as information
Lightning in a nerve
The wisdom of the reflex
Neurologists read the brain
MRI and the module
The networked mind
The able animal soul
Emotion with reason, not versus
Steel syrup and Prozac
The self anatomized
The social brain
Morals and neurons
Lady Conway and Dr. Willis meet again
Dramatis Personae
Notes
References
Acknowledgments
Index