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An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain, by Diane Ackerman
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Does the mind reflect or dictate what the body sees and feels? What is the language of emotion? Is memory a function of our imaginations? Are we all just out of our minds?
In this ambitious and enlightening work, Diane Ackerman combines an artist's eye with a scientist's erudition to illuminate the magic and mysteries of the human brain. With An Alchemy of Mind, she offers an unprecedented exploration of the mental fantasia in which we spend our days. In addition to explaining memory, thought, emotion, dreams, and language acquisition, Ackerman reports on the latest discoveries in neuroscience and addresses such controversial subjects as the effects of trauma, nature versus nurture, and male versus female brains. In prose that is not simply accessible but also beautiful and electric, Ackerman distills the hard, objective truths of science in order to yield vivid, anecdotal explanations about a range of existential questions regarding consciousness and the nature of identity.
- Sales Rank: #94248 in Books
- Model: 1667039
- Published on: 2005-10-04
- Released on: 2005-10-04
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.44" h x .80" w x 5.50" l, .66 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 300 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Ackerman's latest foray (after Cultivating Delight) is ostensibly about the "crowded chemistry lab" of the human brain, but fans of her writings on the natural world will find many familiar pleasures. All is not pastoral sweetness; every passage on genteel matters like tending her backyard roses has its rougher counterpart, for example, the recollection of a life-threatening accident during a Japanese bird-watching expedition. By grounding the scientific information firmly in her own experience of discovery, Ackerman invites readers to share in her learning and writing processes. The common thread she spies running through the tangible world of the evolving brain and the intangible world of emotion and memory is the "sleight of mind" that provides us with a self-identity through which we experience the world in a unified yet complexly fragmented way. It's no surprise that the section of the book dealing with language should concentrate so intently on metaphors; they cascade down every page like waterfalls. Ackerman's prose is equally sensuous on the literal plane, enabling her to turn an afternoon snack into a lesson on neurochemistry that swiftly dovetails with a discussion of the varying speeds of thought without ever risking distraction. Even brain buffs used to a more detached approach should be won over by her uniquely personal perspective.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Alchemy, Ackerman explains, seeks to turn metal into gold; so does the human mind, albeit more successfully than alchemy, create a “self.” Known as the modern-day poet of the natural world, Ackerman explores nature and human nature from her highly original and literary perspective. Some critics complain that she journeys through well-trodden neuroscience research. Yet there’s no doubt that she spins a highly imaginative and sensory book on the brain’s vast capabilities. That she writes more as a poet than a scientist is perhaps her greatest contribution; still, she often succumbs to pretty but weak metaphors that “give a reader precisely the wrong idea about how nature works” (Washington Post). Yet overall, Alchemy is a lucid, fascinating synthesis of the brain and all it creates.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* The human psyche fascinates revered naturalist and poet Ackerman as much as any other aspect of the grand carnival of life, hence this agile, involving, and uniquely far-ranging and insightful inquiry into "how the brain becomes the mind." As always, Ackerman is positively scintillating, thanks to the intensity of her observations, the imaginativeness of her interpretations of both natural phenomena and science, the splendor of her distinctive prose, and her flair for making her discoveries personal, relevant, and resonant. Erudite and playful, Ackerman explores the differences between the right and left brains and the brains of men and women, and cogently explains the chemistry of the "microscopic hubbub" generated inside our heads as neurons speak "an electrochemical lingo all their own." She explicates memory, ponders the jumble of genetics and circumstances that engender personalities, delineates the mechanics and impact of emotions, and reveals how profoundly malleable and adaptive the brain is. Most movingly, Ackerman marvels over our creativity, especially our facilities for language, story, and metaphor. She writes, "One of the most surprising facts about human beings is that we seem to require a poetic version of life," the very gift Ackerman bestows upon her rapt and illuminated readers. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
A Sensualist's Portrait of the Brain
By Rebecca of Amazon
"I'm picturing the brain as a lightning-filled jar, where neurons fire millions of electrical bursts each moment, a silent crackling, while potent chemicals flow into and out of each neuron...through that lightening storm, the body speaks to the brain." ~ pg. 66
Diane Ackerman is fascinated by life and her enthusiasm is contagious. In "An Alchemy of Mind" she explores memory, dreaming, the mind's eye, traumatic memories, personality, happiness, laughter and such diverse topics as zoopharmacognosy and magnetoencephalography. Through her own vivid experiences she makes complex concepts understandable. She has lived an exciting life and draws on her experience, weaving facts with reflection. As a sensualist she is naturally inclined to take the reader on journeys to scented rose gardens even though her tales of harrowing mountain climbing experiences vie for your attention.
Diane Ackerman's writing style is intellectual and vivid all while invoking a sense of comfort, like you are talking to an intellectual friend. As she captures moments and then propels your mind into new territories she subtly teaches you more about the world and makes you curious for more. Fortunately she has written quite a few books and after reading one, you may feel compelled to duplicate the experience by reading them all.
~The Rebecca Review
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
An Alchemy of Telling
By Donald E. Skiff
An Alchemy of Telling
Diane Ackerman totally turns me on. And that's what she tells us about in most of her writing--getting turned on by experience, by living itself. Her writing inspires me to put more into my own, and her living, as she describes it in her books, inspires me to get more out of mine. Her 2004 book, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain, is the latest of her guided tours through human experience, and mostly it continues her delightful series of explanations about how we come to be the way we are and what that means in learning to live life fully.
As she did in her first best seller, A Natural History of the Senses and the natural sequel to it, A Natural History of Love, she grounds everything on extensive research into biology, phenomenology, psychology, anthropology, neurology and physics-all the relevant sciences, as well as the major spiritual traditions of East and West-and (most rewarding of all to us readers) embeds her facts in prose so rich and vibrant that we are carried enchanted through her images.
Alchemy begins with a description of evolution as it has created the human mind by means of "that shiny mound of being, that mouse-gray parliament of cells, that dream factory, that petit tyrant inside a ball of bone, that huddle of neurons calling all the plays, that little everywhere, that fickle pleasuredrome, that wrinkled wardrobe of selves stuffed into the skull like too many clothes into a gym bag." In other words, our brain. It's this kind of elaborate metaphoring that gives her writing its rich bouquet. Some may find it tiring, if they are simply looking for the facts. But like observing life itself, it's in the myriad of details, the subjective impressions that our minds take in (even if we choose to ignore them in our focus on "substance") that give us what it's really like out there. There's nothing dry in Diane Ackerman's writing. "Juicy" describes it as clearly as any other word this writer can come up with.
She goes on to describe the physical brain, and memory, and the fiction we call a self, and emotions, and language, and then ties it all together in a final section she calls "The Wilderness Within: The World We Share." A graduate-level course, sans final exam. If you want academic support, there are endnotes, bibliography and an index.
As Ken Wilber points out in his elaborate theoretical system on the structures of consciousness, everything in the Kosmos (which includes but is not limited to the Cosmos) has four aspects of manifestation: the individual interior, the individual exterior, the plural interior, and the plural exterior. He charts them into four quadrants: upper left, upper right, lower left and lower right. Our minds are in the upper left, the individual interior. Our brains are in the individual exterior. One cannot separate them, except in the abstract. We have developed the means to examine the activity of the mind-very roughly-by observing electrical activity in different parts of the brain, but we cannot observe a person's thoughts except as that person reports them. We know, from our own individual experiences that such reports are but a weak representation of what's really going on in one's mind. Couple that fact with the severe limitations of language itself, and we can perceive only the tiniest fraction of someone else's consciousness. It's a wonder we can understand each other at all. Diane Ackerman surely adds to our understanding through her use of language. Her three advanced degrees from Cornell and the list of her published books may impress the skeptical, but it's her way of looking at the world that made me fall in love with her.
Now, hungry as I am for understanding of myself and how I fit into the universe, I'd probably read her books along with all the other credentialed writers I hear about-Steven Pinker, Susan Blackmore, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, and others--but from her I get something more. I read her for mental nutrition and enjoyment. It's not just "a spoonful full of sugar helps the medicine go down," it's a spoonful of expensive amaretto blended with a hint of chocolate and a dozen other flavors that I can't always identify. But yum.
And the thing about it is that she doesn't just make taking in the medicine of knowledge easier, her medium (her use of language) is also her message (to resurrect poor old Marshall McLuhen's theme). She illustrates her secret formula, not only for writing in a way to communicate subtle nuance, but for observing the world around us. How much clearer is our mental image of the mind-as-object after reading, "Sometimes as the fog of sleep lifts, the mind becomes aware of the traffic, like commuters on an expressway, messages speed across the corpus callosum, a thick bridge of 200-250 million nerve fibers spanning the brain's two hemispheres. More will follow in a continuous stream of hubbub going in both directions. The brain is a duet of specialists which produces a single experience that's part enterprise, part communion, but all process, all motion."
Mental images translate the language of our outsides to the language of our insides. Metaphors and similes don't only add entertainment to messages; they increase the possibility of true understanding. Details can make the difference between "getting it" and simply not quite.
Which brings me to my other point: that if I intend to function as a writer who puts words together with the desire for other people to understand what I'm thinking and experiencing, then I need to take the examples provided by other writers who move me, and shape my own writing accordingly. Not to copy, but to make use of the inspiration, the message in the medium, of writers I admire.
At the top of my list, beyond a doubt, is Diane Ackerman. I can't think of a better role model.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Five Stars
By Robert Hyberger
Very stimulating concepts.
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