Download or read book The Voyages of Consciousness written by Ghassan Dib and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2010-01-30 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Equating life to a dream, Jason infers that the universe is his creation—and that he alone is its recipient. Enjoy the unscientific and humorous use of DNA in this entertaining read.
Download or read book Phi written by Giulio Tononi and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2012-08-07 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title is printed in full color throughout. From one of the most original and influential neuroscientists at work today, here is an exploration of consciousness unlike any other—as told by Galileo, who opened the way for the objectivity of science and is now intent on making subjective experience a part of science as well. Galileo’s journey has three parts, each with a different guide. In the first, accompanied by a scientist who resembles Francis Crick, he learns why certain parts of the brain are important and not others, and why consciousness fades with sleep. In the second part, when his companion seems to be named Alturi (Galileo is hard of hearing; his companion’s name is actually Alan Turing), he sees how the facts assembled in the first part can be unified and understood through a scientific theory—a theory that links consciousness to the notion of integrated information (also known as phi). In the third part, accompanied by a bearded man who can only be Charles Darwin, he meditates on how consciousness is an evolving, developing, ever-deepening awareness of ourselves in history and culture—that it is everything we have and everything we are. Not since Gödel, Escher, Bach has there been a book that interweaves science, art, and the imagination with such originality. This beautiful and arresting narrative will transform the way we think of ourselves and the world.
Download or read book The River of Consciousness written by Oliver Sacks and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, a collection of essays that displays Oliver Sacks's passionate engagement with the most compelling ideas of human endeavor: evolution, creativity, memory, time, consciousness, and experience. "Curious, avid and thrillingly fluent." —The New York Times Book Review In the pieces that comprise The River of Consciousness, Dr. Sacks takes on evolution, botany, chemistry, medicine, neuroscience, and the arts, and calls upon his great scientific and creative heroes--above all, Darwin, Freud, and William James. For Sacks, these thinkers were constant companions from an early age. The questions they explored--the meaning of evolution, the roots of creativity, and the nature of consciousness--lie at the heart of science and of this book. The River of Consciousness demonstrates Sacks's unparalleled ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless endeavor to understand what makes us human.
Download or read book Swell written by LIZ. CLARK and published by Patagonia. This book was released on 2024-05-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sizing Up Consciousness written by Marcello Massimini and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how we can measure consciousness. It clarifies what consciousness is, how it can be generated from a physical system, and how it can be measured. It also shows how conscious states can be expressed mathematically and how precise predictions can be made using data from neurophysiological studies.
Download or read book Consciousness written by Christof Koch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-03-09 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating exploration of the human brain that combines “the leading edge of consciousness science with surprisingly personal and philosophical reflection . . . shedding light on how scientists really think”—this is “science writing at its best” (Times Higher Education). In which a scientist searches for an empirical explanation for phenomenal experience, spurred by his instinctual belief that life is meaningful. What links conscious experience of pain, joy, color, and smell to bioelectrical activity in the brain? How can anything physical give rise to nonphysical, subjective, conscious states? Christof Koch has devoted much of his career to bridging the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the physics of the brain and phenomenal experience. This engaging book—part scientific overview, part memoir, part futurist speculation—describes Koch’s search for an empirical explanation for consciousness. Koch recounts not only the birth of the modern science of consciousness but also the subterranean motivation for his quest—his instinctual (if “romantic”) belief that life is meaningful. Koch describes his own groundbreaking work with Francis Crick in the 1990s and 2000s and the gradual emergence of consciousness (once considered a “fringy” subject) as a legitimate topic for scientific investigation. Present at this paradigm shift were Koch and a handful of colleagues, including Ned Block, David Chalmers, Stanislas Dehaene, Giulio Tononi, Wolf Singer, and others. Aiding and abetting it were new techniques to listen in on the activity of individual nerve cells, clinical studies, and brain-imaging technologies that allowed safe and noninvasive study of the human brain in action. Koch gives us stories from the front lines of modern research into the neurobiology of consciousness as well as his own reflections on a variety of topics, including the distinction between attention and awareness, the unconscious, how neurons respond to Homer Simpson, the physics and biology of free will, dogs, Der Ring des Nibelungen, sentient machines, the loss of his belief in a personal God, and sadness. All of them are signposts in the pursuit of his life's work—to uncover the roots of consciousness.
Download or read book Exploring the Edge Realms of Consciousness written by Daniel Pinchbeck and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2012-09-18 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A diverse group of authors journey into the fringes of human consciousness, tackling psychic and paranormal phenomena, lucid dreaming, synchronistic encounters, and more. Collected from the online magazine Reality Sandwich, these essays explore regions of the mind often traversed by shamans, mystics, and visionary artists; adjacent and contiguous to our normal waking state, these realms may be encountered in dreams or out-of-body experiences, accessed through meditation or plant medicines, and marked by psychic phenomena and uncanny synchronicities. From demons encountered in sleep paralysis visions to psychic research conducted by the CIA, the seemingly disparate topics covered here congeal to form a larger picture of what these extraordinary states of consciousness might have to tell us about the nature of reality itself.
Download or read book Bon Voyage written by Gestalten and published by Gestalten. This book was released on 2019-02-12 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These exciting and alluring design hotels are changing the world of accommodation. Bon Voyage invites you to explore places fusing world-class hospitality with a sustainable approach.
Download or read book A Voyage in Consciousness written by A. J. McGettigan and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2001 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Voyage in Consciousness is an adventure in self-exploration, revealing a path to peace that emerges from the simple act of attending to one's own ordinary experience. All human beings are adventurers. We are all exploring what it is to be and know, to live and die, to sleep and awaken. Each of us has his or her own path to follow. Every one of us is destined to realize a peculiar enlightenment and make his or her unique contribution to the brilliance of creation. Within the spectrum of human experience great treasures wait to be discovered. The work of only a few explorers is not enough to unearth them. These treasures are vast, but undiscoverable without the deepest appreciation of our joy. As more of us become involved in this exploration, the greater our discoveries shall be. The greater the peace of humankind, the greater the ecstasy of all living beings. A Voyage in Consciousness is both an invitation and a unique set of tools that facilitate experiential exploration. The information presented comes from the author's own discoveries gleaned from more than 20 years of experiential research. A Voyage in Consciousness doesn't just tell stories about experiential exploration, it is an adventure which each reader navigates in his or her own way. The book includes detailed, guided exercises specifically designed to facilitate the reader's own journey. (An audiobook version and related lectures are available on audio cassette through the author's website: http://www.ncrising.com/.)
Download or read book America in European Consciousness 1493 1750 written by Karen Ordahl Kupperman and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 1995 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For review see: Stephen J. Homick, in The Hispanic Historical Review (HAHR), vol. 77, no. 1 (February 1997); p. 78-80.
Download or read book Consciousness and the Brain written by Stanislas Dehaene and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-01-30 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE 2014 BRAIN PRIZE From the acclaimed author of Reading in the Brain and How We Learn, a breathtaking look at the new science that can track consciousness deep in the brain How does our brain generate a conscious thought? And why does so much of our knowledge remain unconscious? Thanks to clever psychological and brain-imaging experiments, scientists are closer to cracking this mystery than ever before. In this lively book, Stanislas Dehaene describes the pioneering work his lab and the labs of other cognitive neuroscientists worldwide have accomplished in defining, testing, and explaining the brain events behind a conscious state. We can now pin down the neurons that fire when a person reports becoming aware of a piece of information and understand the crucial role unconscious computations play in how we make decisions. The emerging theory enables a test of consciousness in animals, babies, and those with severe brain injuries. A joyous exploration of the mind and its thrilling complexities, Consciousness and the Brain will excite anyone interested in cutting-edge science and technology and the vast philosophical, personal, and ethical implications of finally quantifying consciousness.
Download or read book The Head Trip written by Jeff Warren and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2009-03-18 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A world at once familiar and unimaginably strange exists all around us, and within us – it is the vast realm of consciousness. In The Head Trip, science journalist Jeff Warren explores twelve distinct, natural states of consciousness available to us in a twenty-four-hour day, each state offering its own kind of knowledge and insight – its own adventure. The hypnagogic state, when our minds hover between waking and sleeping, can be a rich source of creativity and even compassion. Then there’s the Watch, an almost magical waking experience in the middle of the night that has been all but lost to electric light and modern sleep patterns. Daydreaming and trance, lucid dreaming, the Zone, and the Pure Conscious Event – from sleep laboratory to remote northern cabin, neurofeedback clinic to Buddhist retreat, Warren visits them all. Along the way, he talks to neuroscientists, chronobiologists, anthropologists, monks, and many others who illuminate his stories with cutting-edge science and age-old wisdom. On this trip, all are welcome and no drugs are required: all you need to pack are a functioning cerebrum and an open mind. Replete with stylish graphics and brightened by comic panels conceived and drawn by the author, The Head Trip is an instant classic, a brilliant and original description of the shifting experience of consciousness that’s also a practical guide to enhancing creativity and mental health. This book does not just inform and entertain – it shows how every one of us can expand upon the ways we experience being alive.
Download or read book The Hidden Spring A Journey to the Source of Consciousness written by Mark Solms and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelatory new theory of consciousness that returns emotions to the center of mental life. For Mark Solms, one of the boldest thinkers in contemporary neuroscience, discovering how consciousness comes about has been a lifetime’s quest. Scientists consider it the "hard problem" because it seems an impossible task to understand why we feel a subjective sense of self and how it arises in the brain. Venturing into the elementary physics of life, Solms has now arrived at an astonishing answer. In The Hidden Spring, he brings forward his discovery in accessible language and graspable analogies. Solms is a frank and fearless guide on an extraordinary voyage from the dawn of neuropsychology and psychoanalysis to the cutting edge of contemporary neuroscience, adhering to the medically provable. But he goes beyond other neuroscientists by paying close attention to the subjective experiences of hundreds of neurological patients, many of whom he treated, whose uncanny conversations expose much about the brain’s obscure reaches. Most importantly, you will be able to recognize the workings of your own mind for what they really are, including every stray thought, pulse of emotion, and shift of attention. The Hidden Spring will profoundly alter your understanding of your own subjective experience.
Download or read book Eternal Consciousness written by John S. Dunne and published by University of Notre Dame Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his new book, John S. Dunne asks: "So what is eternal consciousness? It is, I take it, consciousness of the eternal in us. If time is 'a changing image of eternity, ' as Plato says, the changing image of the human being is like "The Voyage of Life," four paintings by Thomas Cole, showing childhood, youth, adulthood, and age. The eternal in us is the person going through these phases. It is the vertical dimension of the life, as in the title scene of "War and Peace" where Prince Andre lay on the battlefield looking up into the peaceful sky, perceiving peace in the midst of war. If the horizontal dimension is time and the vertical dimension is eternity, then eternal consciousness is awareness of the vertical dimension. What is more, the vertical dimension carries through the horizontal, as the person walks through life upright instead of being dragged through in 'quiet desperation.' Willingness and hope, accordingly, is willingness to walk through upright with hope in the face of death and darkness." --"from the book" What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? Dunne explores these questions in his characteristic hermeneutic method, finding the answer in "the words of eternal life" (John 6:68). It is the life of the spirit that is the eternal in us, the inner life of knowing and loving, the life of hope and peace and friendship and intelligence. "If there were no eternal consciousness in a man," Kierkegaard says, "what then would life be but despair?" John Dunne adds, if there" is" eternal consciousness in us, on the other hand, there is hope. To readers of John Dunne's books, "Eternal Consciousness" will be the latest installment chronicling his spiritual journey; to readers new to Dunne's oeuvre, it will be a lively introduction to the distinctive voice and thought of an inspiring author. "As action grows more frantic and voices more shrill in this age of terror, John Dunne's wisdom, born of Eternal Consciousness, shows us and leads us into our true selves--never unloved, never abandoned, willing to walk on with God through life into the very gateway of death itself." --Jon Nilson, Loyola University Chicago
Download or read book A Cosmic Book written by Itzhak Bentov and published by Inner Traditions. This book was released on 1988 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at the structure and origins of the universe and discusses the role of the Kabalistic principles of number and sound
Download or read book Active Consciousness written by Amy L. Lansky and published by R.L.Ranch Press. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can you create the future of your dreams? Are paranormal abilities like seeing into the future or affecting objects with your mind really possible? And how do energetic systems of healing actually work? In this exciting and far-ranging book, former NASA computer scientist Amy Lansky, the author of Impossible Cure (www.impossiblecure.com), takes you on a voyage of discovery that weaves all of these strands together. Get ready for an exploration of the esoteric, grounded in an intriguing model of reality based on higher dimensions in space. Comprehensive, yet at the same time accessible and personal, this book invites you to not only learn about these mysterious subjects, but to develop the power of active consciousness for yourself. By including a series of exercises and experiments in meditation and self-inquiry, this book provides an experience that will transform your life and help you evolve to a new level of awareness. (For more information, see www.activeconsciousness.com.) Endorsements for Active Consciousness: Awakening the Power Within - "Amy Lansky leads us on an inspiring and thought-provoking romp through a panoply of portals to our higher dimensional selves. She's an entertaining travel guide to the minds of great scientists, mystics, and philosophers as she argues convincingly that we really can bring the improbable futures we want for ourselves into reality. Let her alter your consciousness and take you higher!" -Jane Katra, author of The Heart of the Mind and Miracles of Mind (www.janekatra.org) "This is a delightful book. Well written and intensely packed with interesting information. It made my head spin-in a good way!" -Dean Radin, author of The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds (www.deanradin.com) "Amy Lansky's new book is an inspiring and far-ranging investigation of contemporary consciousness research. In her program to spare us from the madness around us, she draws on Rudolf Steiner, Gurdjieff, Rupert Sheldrake, Dean Radin, and many others. She is also encouraging us to explore the transformation of our consciousness as a way to increase our peace of mind, happiness, and what the Buddhists call liberation from the wheel of suffering. Who would not want that?" -Russell Targ, author of Limitless Mind: A Guide to Remote Viewing and Transformation of Consciousness (www.espresearch.com)
Download or read book Visual Voyages written by Daniela Bleichmar and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unprecedented visual exploration of the intertwined histories of art and science, of the old world and the new From the voyages of Christopher Columbus to those of Alexander von Humboldt and Charles Darwin, the depiction of the natural world played a central role in shaping how people on both sides of the Atlantic understood and imaged the region we now know as Latin America. Nature provided incentives for exploration, commodities for trade, specimens for scientific investigation, and manifestations of divine forces. It also yielded a rich trove of representations, created both by natives to the region and visitors, which are the subject of this lushly illustrated book. Author Daniela Bleichmar shows that these images were not only works of art but also instruments for the production of knowledge, with scientific, social, and political repercussions. Early depictions of Latin American nature introduced European audiences to native medicines and religious practices. By the 17th century, revelatory accounts of tobacco, chocolate, and cochineal reshaped science, trade, and empire around the globe. In the 18th and 19th centuries, collections and scientific expeditions produced both patriotic and imperial visions of Latin America. Through an interdisciplinary examination of more than 150 maps, illustrated manuscripts, still lifes, and landscape paintings spanning four hundred years, Visual Voyages establishes Latin America as a critical site for scientific and artistic exploration, affirming that region's transformation and the transformation of Europe as vitally connected histories.
