Sunday, December 11, 2005

What ever possessed me to...

choose a book that is heavy on philosophy for one of two critiques/analyses? I so don't care for philosophy. I've been trying to finish the ###### paper for a week and a half. At this point I'd like to finish the paper by saying that the rest of the book is crap. And I'm procrastinating.

6 comments:

Harvey said...

Please say which book so I don't read it by accident :-)

Unknown said...

Trust me, you won't read this book by accident. But just in case - "The Quantum Self: Human Nature and Consciousness Defined by the New Physics" By Danah Zohar (1990, Quill)

A far more interesting book is "Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness" By Roger Penrose (1994, Oxford University Press)
Lots of math like Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.

Anonymous said...

So did you end up writing that the rest of the book is crap? I'd love to see the instructor's face if you did that... priceless!

Unknown said...

I was slightly more politic than that. Although knowing Gary, he would have laughed. Here's my final paragraph (see I never used the word "crap.")

Unlike Penrose’s book, Shadows of the Mind, this book does not really attempt to explain consciousness within the underlying science of biology of the human brain. As a philosophy of consciousness based on some aspects of quantum physics, it is an interesting idea. However, in the end, the idea did not work well for me. It felt as if the author was trying too hard to make the ideas of quantum duality and quantum states cover too many different concepts. As she introduced more philosophical concepts, I found the book more and more difficult to read. The difficulty was not because the ideas were complex, but because the constant application of one or two theoretical ideas to a range of philosophical questions became boring and a little silly.

Anonymous said...

LOL! Very diplomatic - the "it was crap" comes thru loud and clear. Love it!

Unknown said...

hehehe