The River of Consciousness in Science and Inquiry

Feb 05, 2019 David Rubenstein rated it really liked it

Shelves: audiobook, psychology

Oliver Sacks was a neurologist and a great author. He wrote a number of memorable books about psychology, psychiatry and neurology. He is most famous for his books such as The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales and An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales. These books try to use very unusual minds and psychological conditions to understand better how the brain works. But it is not fair to focus on just these books; he was a Renaissance man, and he wrote a wide Oliver Sacks was a neurologist and a great author. He wrote a number of memorable books about psychology, psychiatry and neurology. He is most famous for his books such as The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales and An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales. These books try to use very unusual minds and psychological conditions to understand better how the brain works. But it is not fair to focus on just these books; he was a Renaissance man, and he wrote a wide range of books and could converse intelligently on many many subjects.

This book is not just about consciousness, per se. In fact, the book's title is a play on words; "Stream of Consciousness" may also be a good description, as each chapter is really an essay about a different topic. Each essay is wonderful and entertaining; a chapter about Darwin, Freud, Poincaré, Tourette's syndrome, color blindness, face blindness, and other interesting topics. Be warned though; some of this book is difficult; for me, the chapter about Freud was especially difficult.

The most interesting aspect of the book is his focus on periods of darkness, which he called "scotoma". This term is used in multiple ways. First, an individual can have a black-out period in which memory or vision disappears. Then, there is a societal scientific scotoma, where a whole body of knowledge seems to disappear--sometimes for centuries--before reappearing at a later time. Tourette's syndrome is one of these scotoma's, because it was known during the 19th century, but disappeared from the scientific literature before being revived late in the 20th. Another one is the astronomical concept of the sun being the center of the solar system--known to the ancient Greeks, but Aristotle and Ptolemy changed this view to a geocentric universe, until Copernicus brought the correct theory back to science.

This book is one of Sacks' last books--he may have still been writing it when he died in 2015. But, besides being short, the book feels like it was finished properly.

I didn't read this book; I listened to the audiobook. Dan Woren does an excellent reading of the book, and if you are able to listen to nonfiction attentively, then I heartily recommend it. ...more

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Jan 17, 2025 Cindy rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, brainzz, own_au

This was like a long visit with an old friend over a cup of tea. I have been a huge fan of Oliver Sacks since I was assigned "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" in college in the early 90's. I devoured not only the case studies, but then followed the bibliography reading most of the books as if it were a road map. I was lucky that I had access to the prodigious Regenstein Library on the campus of the University of Chicago.

In the early 2000's I got to meet Dr. Sacks when he gave a lecture a ...more

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Sep 10, 2020 David Cerruti rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science, memoir, history, essays, medicine

First published 2 years after his death, these essays touch on a wide variety of topics, some not covered in the 14 of his books that I’ve read. There is an excellent review of this book, by William2, at https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4...
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