The Mind's Sky: Human Intelligence in a Cosmic Context - Hardcover

Ferris, Timothy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593026446 ISBN 13: 9780593026441

Publisher: Bantam Books, 1992

Synopsis

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About this title

From AudioFile:

[Editor's Note: The following is a combined review with THE RED LIMIT.]--Scientifically oriented minds will rejoice at having more high-quality thinking available on audio. Since the author is speaking, he uses the opportunity to bring home his points with personal emphasis. Being a professor at UCLA, editor of ROLLING STONE, and a frequent contributor to THE NEW YORKER gives the author/reader eclectic credentials. He has done his research well and synthesized the stodgy facts into a palatable and digestible format. Synthesizer music occasionally fades in and out to separate chapters, possibly a pernicious Rolling Stones melody. The presentation is pleasantly academic without alienating listeners who are not scientists. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Kirkus Reviews:

Ferris, who usually pokes around in outer space (Coming of Age in the Milky Way, The Red Shift, etc.), probes the inner kind as well in these amusing if far-fetched essays on the human mind, the search for extraterrestrial (and thus nonhuman) intelligence (SETI), and their intersection. For Ferris, SETI is a ``campaign of exploration,'' not a science, and all the more appealing for that; lying on the edge of knowledge, it proves fertile soil for the most extravagant musings. Where might a SETI signal come from, Ferris wonders? In a sort of computer-jock's ultimate wet dream, he imagines an ``interstellar network'' of automated space stations (``the most knowledgeable entity in the galaxy'') transmitting signals to similar networks in other galaxies. This Boschian vision leads to an exciting discussion of ``virtual reality,'' wherein computers simulate a foreign environment (say, the landscape of Mars) for stay-at-home explorers. Perhaps, Ferris posits, aliens are at this very moment sending us virtual-reality reproductions of their home planets. Ferris's ponderings also veer between the provocative and the preposterous. One bright essay analyzes star football quarterback Joe Montana as an uncanny example of a ``pre-motor cortex virtuoso,'' but another piece clumsily reduces mystical experience to a fuzzy ``confrontation'' with a ``program'' in the ``inner architecture'' of the brain. Other chapters, which read for the most part as independent pieces, consider comet strikes as a source of species extinction, near-death experience, apocalyptic prophecies, information theory, and the origin of laughter. Ferris's style remains as playful as ever (``we who came down from out of the forest seek to grow a forest of knowing among the stars''); too bad the thoughts seem sometimes stretched beyond their capacity to hold or convey the truth. The mind's sky indeed--but with clouds. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam Books
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0593026446
• ISBN 13: 9780593026441
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304