William H. Calvin

"Medical classic"? What's that?

This book brings home how rapidly science is changing, and how much the changes can leave in the dust. When this book was first published in 1980, it was entirely current. In 2000, when it was brought back into print, it was dated but still perhaps useful. Not knowing how old it was, I bought a copy in late 2014 -- and discovered it to be so utterly dated as to make me almost afraid of it. For example, it still mentions the now-disproved doctrine that brain show more cells do not reproduce. That fact alone has almost completely changed our understanding of the brain.

At the time this book was written, brain imaging didn't really exist. So the only way to discover what a brain region did was to actually physically interact with it -- either by injury or by surgery allowing us to touch it with electrodes. So some parts of the brain were mapped, especially the outer regions, but crucial regions of the brain such as the amygdala (responsible for many emotional reactions) aren't even mentioned. There is some mention of neurotransmitters -- but only a few, and in very limited contexts. The picture is so incomplete as to be rather deceptive.

Most of what is in here (other than the part about neurons not reproducing) is true. But as a description of what we know about the brain, it's a third of a century out of date. Which might as well be prehistoric. I'm amazed to find such a book still in print. It's truly not a medical text; it's a monument to a vanished past. The fact that many people alive then are still around -- still, in some cases, practicing surgery -- merely makes the change more poignant. show less

Interesting essay collection from 1983. (Small update in 1991). I happened upon it as I chased a rabbit down a hole while gathering references that debunk the left-/right-brain myths, which Calvin calls out in his chapter titled "Left Brain, Right Brain: Science or the New Phrenology?" Certainly not rigorous in his critics, Calvin posits educated opinions...which in the case of the split-brain hypothesis perpetrated by Roger Sperry and his followers seems to be mostly incorrect. Recent fMRI show more studies (unavailable to Sperry, or Calvin at the time of writing) reveal that while creativity seems to originate in the right brain, the left brain appears to be more involved in the results.

One rabbit hole checked. Three more uncovered. It never ends. show less

It took me an unreasonably long time to get into this book, mostly because of the format. Each chapter was topped with a header like that of an email, sent to "Human Evolution E-Seminar" and listing the latitude and longitude of the author's location on some worldwide tour of important sites in human evolution. There was nothing on the flaps or in the introduction about this being an e-seminar? Was it? Was the author really teaching a class? Really on a worldwide tour of paleontology and show more archaeology? Or was it all some conceit to structure the book? If so, why? Because it was dead annoying. It was already enough that the author assumed a familiarity with both the history of human evolution, its prevalent theories, and climate jargon. Adding the layer of this e-seminar just made me me vaguely anxious, like somehow I'd signed up for a class without having taken the prerequisites and that there was going to be trouble come midterm time.

Which is a shame because there was a lot of fascinating content once the rest was sifted through. I came away with three main ideas. One was that a main reason that human evolution occurred so quickly was thanks to many repeated boom-bust cycles caused by abrupt (and extreme!) climate change flip-flops, the second was an extended argument abou the nature of a widespread and long-used artifact from human tool-production history, and then the final third or so is devoted to discussing possible mechanisms for abrupt climate flip-flops and the evidence for those.

That last idea is why I bought the book, and it didn't disappoint. Though now I'm very curious about how this idea has aged (this book was published 2002) and what the current thinking on the topic is. I need to read more about climate. show less

Calvin outdid himself in writing about a raft voyage down the Colorado River into the Grand Canyon, in parallel with a trip into deep time to examine the fossil record. A good-humoured, engaging and relatively painless way to connect to a broad brushed portrait of geological time. I still remember many details from my first reading 20+ years ago, and have returned to it several times since.