Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos

4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars | 74 ratings

Price: 17.72

Last update: 02-25-2025


About this item

Two neuroscientists trace a sweeping new vision of consciousness across 18 increasingly intelligent minds, from microbes to humankind and beyond.

Why do minds exist? How did mud and stone develop into beings that can experience longing, regret, love, and compassion - beings that are aware of their own experience? Until recently, science offered few answers to these existential questions. Journey of the Mind is the first book to offer a unified account of the mind that explains how consciousness, language, the Self, and civilization emerged incrementally out of chaos.

The journey begins three billion years ago with the emergence of the simplest possible mind, a nanoscopic archeon, then ascends through amoebas, worms, frogs, birds, monkeys, and AI, examining successively smarter ways of thinking. The authors explain the mathematical principles generating conscious experience and show, through vivid illustrations and accessible prose, how these principles led cities and democratic nations to develop new forms of consciousness - the self-aware “superminds”. Journey of the Mind concludes by contemplating a higher stage of consciousness already emerging - and the ultimate fate of all minds in the universe.

Includes a downloadable PDF of illustrations from the book

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.


Top reviews from the United States

  • bharath
    5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, a neuroscience book that explains it all
    Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2022
    I've read and Oliver Sacks and David Eagleman and loved their books, but if you asked me what I remembered...it would be a grab-bag of facts. What's the big picture? And how do you go from saying this brain region lights up or dopamine squirts lead to joy or addictio to explaining consciousness and language. This book does it. And what I really loved (it was sort of unsettling at first) is they have a very different approach to explaining things. No brain regions, no neuroscientist biographies. Just how minds work. The brilliant illustrations alone are worth it. This might just be my Christmas gift for all my science-loving friends.
  • algo41
    4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliantly written until they get to humans
    Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2022
    This book is a brilliantly written, relatively easy to follow, account of the evolutionary development of mental capability - until it gets to humans and the use of the “when” module for more complex capabilities than birdsong. I do fault the authors for asserting so confidently that consciousness is a capability evolved for focusing attention rather than a correlate of neural activity– this is not a new idea and it may be true, but it is one of several hypothesis about consciousness, all currently untestable even in principle.

    I also fault the book for trying to make such sharp distinctions between humans and other animals. Other animals do learn by imitation, even as to what foods to eat and to avoid, and of course how to use tools. Parrots can employ language in creative ways, albeit they first need to be taught by humans (see books, journal articles by Irene Pepperberg). Currently, “a number of disciplines are being used to determine if sperm whales do, in fact, utilize something humans can classify as language." (story in Jerusalem Post, link provided to Project CETI which has representatives from many universities and other institutions).

    Following are a random bunch of facts I found particularly interesting. “Multipolar neurons (neurons with one outgoing axon and many incoming dendrites) are rare in invertebrates, but ubiquitous among vertebrates . . . and the flatworm.”. “This is the secret of insect intelligence: formidable perceptual sensitivity and discerning valuations guiding a very limited repertoire of behaviors.” Fish can be tricked by optical illusions “in the same manner as humans”. Infants utilize “motor babbling” to develop maps of their limbs. When coal was formed during the Carboniferous period from plants, “there was not yet an ecosystem of decomposers to break down dead wood.”
  • AimCole820
    5.0 out of 5 stars Love this book!!!
    Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2023
    I love the info this book has! My friend told me to read it a long time ago, and now I understand why!!
  • BR
    4.0 out of 5 stars Fact or fiction
    Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2022
    This book is easy to criticize, unless you read it like a novel – a work of fiction (aka speculation) – then you can suspend disbelief until you get to the end of the story.

    The protagonist is a mysterious entity called Mind – a fictional character with no definite physical existence. It begins roughly 3 billion years ago as a tiny collection of atoms that connects an input (a “sensor”) to an output ( a ”doer"). By the end, it’s evolved into a “supermind” (like Herbert Spencer’s “superorganism”) – a collection of human beings that can organize inputs and outputs on a scale no individual can, like sending men to the moon or enslaving millions of other people.

    Along the way, Mind evolves in complexity, metamorphosing from bacteria to amoeba to roundworm to fly to fish, etc. The authors give these animals goofy names, like Archie the archaea and Sally the samonella. So you can’t take them literally, as examples of a scientific theory, but only as characters in a story.

    Consciousness, according to the authors, citing the work of Steven Grossberg, occurs when (and ONLY when) “representations” of top-down expectations “resonate” with representations of bottom-up inputs.

    But they offer no evidence to support this notion (or any other notion in the book), nor do they make any attempt to explain what these representations consist of, or how they are created, or how they resonate with each other. Nor do the authors even indicate that Prof. Grossberg thinks this as an accurate representation of his own work, so it’s safe to assume it isn’t.

    Call it junk science – e.g. “a mental representation… looks like scribbles of ink. Writing…” [p. 290]

    Or read it as a thought-provoking metaphor. It’s up to you.
  • Annarella
    5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended
    Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2022
    It's not easy to review this book because it's complex and full of food for thought. it's more complex than the average informative science book and I was fascinated by what I read.
    Great style of writing, well researched.
    Highly recommended.
    Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
  • Jkubs22
    5.0 out of 5 stars Sheesh!! ❤️????
    Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2022
    I loved the book! The only thing that threw me was the leap from rats to birds and the missing prefrontal cortex. Other than that it confirmed a lot of what I had thought and taught me more then I could have imagined! Who knew love was and is what the world could use more of. Thank you for your hard work and ease of digestion of the content. I did Siri a couple words that I wasn’t familiar with! HA! All around amazing read I would recommend to anyone!
  • Paws&Hearts1122
    5.0 out of 5 stars A Journey Indeed
    Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2022
    *A copy of this book was received via giveaway, and this is my honest opinion*

    Well done. I would recommend this book to any curious mind. While at points a lot to take in-for me personally-, it’s an enthralling journey of consciousness. Thought provoking and well written, it was a journey that I didn’t know I needed and one I very much enjoyed.

    • Best Sellers in

     
     

    Isaac Asimov's Guide to Earth and Space

    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 241
    15.75
     
     

    The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming

    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 4,526
    15.75
     
     

    American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI

    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 1,126
    15.75
     
     

    The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think

    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 1,627
    17.72
     
     

    Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters

    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 1,951
    17.72
     
     

    Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 4,226
    17.72
     
     

    The Control of Nature

    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 666
    13.99
     
     

    Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's

    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 12
    10.47