What Makes You Tick?: A New Paradigm for Neuroscience - Softcover

Verschuuren, G M N; Verschuuren, Dr Gerard M

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1893426041 ISBN 13: 9781893426047

Publisher: Solas Press, 2012

Synopsis

THE BRAIN IS A MYSTERIOUS, EXCITING FRONTIER IN SCIENCE. Eminent neuroscientists have ended their careers to examine the mind-brain problem because their practice showed the speculative approach is flawed. Answers in this field will create a new weltanschauung. Long ago, Francis Bacon ushered in a revision of Aristotelian science and a new empiricist worldview. Now, the renowned Wilder Penfield's dictum "There is a switchboard operator as well as a switchboard." demands a radical rethinking in neuroscience and in our general worldview. Verschuuren's exciting interdisciplinary scrutiny is for scientists and the general reader. He does not shy from complexities such as intentionality, self-reference, and free will; and he succeeds in putting it all in ordinary language.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Like Sherrington, Penfield, Eccles, and other eminent scientists before him, Dr. Verschuuren has immersed himself and the reader with him in the search for an answer to the mind-brain problem. Using examples from modern neuroscience research, he takes us on a coherent journey from the molecular level of DNA and genes, through synaptic transmission and neuronal function to the physical substance of the brain in search of the mind. Far from dismissing science and physics, he demonstrates how any cogent theory of mind must also include metaphysical constructs. The author makes understandable the sometimes complex theories on the mind-brain conundrum.  He gently reminds those of us who have the opportunity to work with the brain on a daily basis, that we are not mind surgeons. . ."
Paul J. Camarata, M.D., FACS, Chairman, Department of Neurosurgery,
University of Kansas School of Medicine.

"What Makes You Tick? is a helpful guide on the self and its brain.  It brings together a number of related themes, making complicated concepts understandable and exposing the faulty thinking found in scientific reductionism. Verschuuren's book serves as an important reminder about what is at stake in the mind-brain discussion."
Paul Copan, Professor and Pledger Family Chair of Philosophy and Ethics,
Palm Beach Atlantic University.

"The book is an engaging and fascinating read that will compel any scientist or philosopher who is capable of reflection to question some of his or her most fundamental assumptions. In the course of doing so he strikes a delicate balance between answering challenging questions as well as challenging the reader to ask new questions about the dominant scientific paradigms used to explore the nature of being human. This important book will compel psychiatrists, psychologists and others who work with patients within the neuroscience paradigm to reconsider some of the assumptions that drive their work while simultaneously encouraging clergy and pastoral counselors who do not traditionally work within that paradigm to engage with it."
John Siberski, M.D., S.J., Associate Professor of Psychiatry,
Georgetown University Medical School.

"Dr. Verschuuren is a refreshing voice in this misguided, half-truthed neuro world we live in today. There is as much, if not more, to learn about what the brain is not than what it is, and getting these illusions straight will help us all be able to live in truth. Kudos to Dr. Verschuuren to have such a courageous voice..."
Dr. Kevin J. Fleming, Founder of Grey Matters International, Inc.,
a neuroscience-based consultancy firm.

"Complex realities demand complex explanations, at least for human rationality. And there are few earthly realities as complex--or as fascinating, or as sure to crisscross boundaries and transcend themselves--as the human brain. Recognizing this complexity, Dr. Verschuuren brings together ideas from philosophy, physics, genetics, and neuroscience to suggest a new paradigm for neuroscience. While the intra-disciplinary ideas will be subject to the criticism from each of these fields, Verschuuren has succeeded indirectly in raising anew the perennial question of how a university should be constructed to allow for interdisciplinarity. The brainy dialogue of disciplines undertaken in this book provokes the further question of what makes our universities tick."
Dr. Richard Schenk OP, President of the Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt.

"This welcome book brings neuroscience and metaphysics together in a way that does not seek so much to 'solve' the mind-brain problem as to manifest the mystery of the human person as both physical and spiritual. From that perspective it is able to unmask the pseudo-dilemmas of scientism and the false 'solutions' of materialism and dualism. Maintaining the unity of the human person by a judicious use of the philosophy of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, it provides a way, in Verschuuren's astute phrase, for 'telling the mental and physical apart without setting them apart.'"
Michael J. Dodds, O.P., Professor of Philosophy and Theology
Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA.

About the Author:

Dr. Gerard M. Verschuuren is a human geneticist who also earned a doctorate in the philosophy of science. He studied and worked at universities in Europe and the United States. Currently he is semi-retired and spends most of his time as a writer, speaker, and consultant on the interface of science and religion, creation and evolution, faith and reason.

About this edition

• Publisher: Solas Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1893426041
• ISBN 13: 9781893426047
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 154