This book looks back at the simpler versions of mental life in apes, Neanderthals, and our ancestors, back before our burst of creativity started 50,000 years ago. When you can't think about the future in much detail, you are trapped in a here-and-now existence with no "What if?" and "Why
me?" William H. Calvin takes stock of what we have now and then explains why we are nearing a crossroads, where mind shifts gears again.
The mind's big bang came long after our brain size stopped enlarging. Calvin suggests that the development of long sentences--what modern children do in their third year--was the most likely trigger. To keep a half-dozen concepts from blending together like a summer drink, you need some
mental structuring. In saying "I think I saw him leave to go home," you are nesting three sentences inside a fourth. We also structure plans, play games with rules, create structured music and chains of logic, and have a fascination with discovering how things hang together. Our long train of
connected thoughts is why our consciousness is so different from what came before.
Where does mind go from here, its powers extended by science-enhanced education but with its slowly evolving gut instincts still firmly anchored in the ice ages? We will likely shift gears again, juggling more concepts and making decisions even faster, imagining courses of action in greater
depth. Ethics are possible only because of a human level of ability to speculate, judge quality, and modify our possible actions accordingly. Though science increasingly serves as our headlights, we are out driving them, going faster than we can react effectively.

Every decade since 1950 has seen more floods and more wildfires on every continent. Deserts are expanding, coral reefs are dying, fisheries are declining, and hurricanes are strengthening. The debate about climate change is over: there's no question that global warming has made the Earth sick, and the outlook for the future calls for ever-warmer temperatures and deadlier results. Something must be done - but how quickly?With "Global Fever", William H. Calvin delivers both a clear-eyed diagnosis and a strongly worded prescription. In striking, straightforward language, he first sets out the current state of the Earth's warming climate and the disastrous possibilities ahead should we continue on our current path. Increasing temperatures will kill off vegetation and dry up water resources, and their loss will lead, in an increasingly destructive feedback loop, to even more warming. Resource depletion, drought, and disease will follow, leading to socioeconomic upheaval - and accompanying violence - on a scale barely conceivable.It is still possible, Calvin argues, to avoid such a dire fate. But we must act now, aggressively funneling resources into jump-starting what would amount to a third industrial revolution, this one of clean technologies - while simultaneously expanding our use of existing low-emission technologies, from nuclear power to plug-in hybrid vehicles, until we achieve the necessary scientific breakthroughs.Passionately written, yet thoroughly grounded in the latest climate science, "Global Fever" delivers both a stark warning and an ambitious blueprint for saving the future of our planet.

Denken, Intelligenz, Sprache, Bewusstsein -- sind sie alle das Ergebnis von neuronalen Selektionsprozessen? Werden Gedankeninhalte, WArter, Handlungsmuster vorsortiert, ehe sie uns A1/4berhaupt bewusst werden? Ist unser Gehirn eine Darwin-Maschine? William Calvin vermittelt in diesem originellen und spannenden Buch eine neue Sicht auf die Arbeitsweise des menschlichen Gehirns und die Entstehung von Intelligenz. >>["Wie das Gehirn denkt"] ... bietet ein ausgezeichnetes Konzentrat von [Calvins] SchlA1/4sselkonzepten. Er gehArt zu jener raren Sorte von Wissenschaftlern, welche die komplexen Inhalte ihres Fachgebiets in die Sprache von Laien A1/4bersetzen kAnnen, und er ist dabei einer der besten ... Calvin zieht den Leser mit seiner lyrischen und phantasievollen Darstellung unweigerlich in seine Welt des neuronalen Darwinismus und weckt den Appetit auf mehr.>Eine wertvolle EinfA1/4hrung in die BewuAtseinsdebatte -- ein kluges, mitreiAendes Buch. Es verlangt keine Vorkenntnisse und kennt keine ZurA1/4ckhaltung.>Calvin sprudelt A1/4ber vor Ideen, und dies ist ein provozierendes und anregendes Buch. Wie ist im Laufe der Evolution des Menschen die Intelligenz entstanden? Worin besteht A1/4berhaupt Intelligenz? Eine entscheidende Voraussetzung dA1/4rfte die FAhigkeit zu angemessenen EinschAtzungen von Situationen, zu kreativen Reaktionen auf unbekannte Geschehnisse und zu vorausschauender Planung sein. Nach Ansicht von William H. Calvin kann dieselbe Kraft, die Arten entstehen lAsst oder im Immunsystem die Auswahl optimaler AntikArpermolekA1/4le steuert, auch in unserem Gehirn fA1/4r das "Aoeberleben des Tauglichsten" sorgen. Nur stehen hier einfache, flA1/4chtige ZusammenschlA1/4sse vonNervenzellen miteinander in Konkurrenz, um letztlich komplexe, wohlausgefeilte Gedanken und Handlungsmuster zu formen. Und natA1/4rlich ist die Zeitskala sehr viel kA1/4rzer. Der Darwinsche Wettstreit im Gehirn findet zunAchst im Un- oder Unterbewussten statt, und erst wenn eines der "eingereichten" Ideenfragmente sich der internen QualitAtsprA1/4fung und Optimierung erfolgreich unterzogen hat, "kommt uns der Gedanke." Calvins Modell der Verschaltung und Funktionsweise des Gehirns geht von einer Art "neuronalem SAngertreffen" aus, in dem rivalisierende ChAre sich gegenseitig zu A1/4bertreffen und den anderen ihre Melodie aufzuzwingen versuchen. Die SAnger sind die Nervenzellen, die jeweils zu mehreren zu einem "Chor" zusammentreten, und die Melodien, die schlieAlich die Oberhand gewinnen, sind die Gedanken, die wir denken, oder die Dinge, die wir sagen. Wie in der Evolution des Lebens kAnnen also auch in unserem Gehirn aus einfachen UrsprA1/4ngen hochkomplexe Ordnungsmuster entstehen. Wird das RAtsel des Bewusstseins so letztlich aufzuklAren sein? Nach Calvins fester Aoeberzeugung ist es ein Irrglauben zu denken -- so wie es die "Bewusstseinsphysiker" tun --, man kAnne vom Kellergeschoss der Quantenmechanik mit einem Sprung zum Penthouse des Bewusstseins gelangen. Die Stockwerke dazwischen -- chemische Bindungen, Biochemie, Membranen, Synapsen, Nervenzellen -- mA1/4ssen in eine vollstAndige ErklArung hAherer geistiger Leistungen einbezogen werden. Calvins ungewAhnliche und unterhaltsame FA1/4hrung durch die Erkenntnisse der modernen Hirnforschung endet mit einem Blick in die Zukunft. Die Evolution der Intelligenz ist nAmlich nicht beendet. Aber sie scheint nun eine nichtbiologischeRichtung zu nehmen: An die Seite der natA1/4rlichen Intelligenz tritt die kA1/4nstliche, und der Bau wirklich intelligenter Maschinen ist fA1/4r Calvin nur eine Frage der Zeit. Treten wir in eine neue Phase des WettrA1/4stens ein, diesmal von menschlicher gegen maschinelle Intelligenz?

After you spot a dozen of your relatives among these candid portraits, you'll see why the great apes are called our close cousins. The portraits on the back cover show a frowning gorilla looking at a smiling one, an inquiring chimpanzee, a smiling orangutan gazing skyward, and a fashion portrait of a wet bonobo.

"The Cerebral Code" is a new understanding of how Darwinian processes could operate in the brain to shape mental images in only seconds, starting with shuffled memories no better than the jumble of our nighttime dreams, but evolving into something of quality, such as a sentence to speak aloud. Jung said that dreaming goes on continuously but you can't see it when you are awake, just as you can't see the stars in the daylight because it is too bright. Calvin's is a theory for what goes on, hidden from view by the glare of waking mental operations, that produces our peculiarly human type of consciousness with its versatile intelligence.

As Piaget emphasized in 1929, intelligence is what we use when we don't know what to do, when we have to grope rather than using a standard response. Calvin tackles a mechanism for doing this exploration and improvement offline, as we think before we act or practice the art of good guessing.

Surprisingly, the subtitle's mosaics of the mind is not a literary metaphor. For the first time, it is a description of a mechanism of what appears to be an appropriate level of explanation for many mental phenomena, that of hexagonal mosaics of electrical activity that compete for territory in the association cortex of the brain. This two-dimensional mosaic is predicted to grow and dissolve much as the sugar crystals do in the bottom of a supersaturated glass of iced tea.

"A Bradford Book"

If you're good at finding the one right answer to life's multiple-choice questions, you're "smart." But "intelligence" is what you need when contemplating the leftovers in the refrigerator, trying to figure out what might go with them or if you're trying to speak a sentence that you've never spoken before. As Jean Piaget said, intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do, when all the standard answers are inadequate. This book tries to fathom how our inner life evolves from one topic to another, as we create and reject alternatives. Ever since Darwin, we've known that elegant things can emerge (indeed, self-organize) from "simpler" beginnings. And, says theoretical neurophysiologist William H. Calvin, the bootstrapping of new ideas works much like the immune response or the evolution of a new animal species,except that the brain can turn the Darwinian crank a lot faster, on the time scale of thought and action. Drawing on anthropology, evolutionary biology, linguistics, and the neurosciences, Calvin also considers how a more intelligent brain developed using slow biological improvements over the last few million years. Long ago, evolving jack-of-all trades versatility was encouraged by abrupt climate changes. Now, evolving intelligence uses a nonbiological track: augmenting human intelligence and building intelligent machines.