The study of the brain is one of the last frontiers of science. This book is a personal review of the current state of knowledge about the human brain: it is based on the text of the 1976 Keith Lectures, supplemented With a large number of illustrations, many of them in colour. The Lectures, Which were broadcast on BBC Radio, were well received and attracted a great deal of attention in the media. Dr Colin Blakemore describes the mechanisms of sensation, sleep, memory and thought. He also discusses the philosophical questions of human consciousness, the evolution of thinking about body and mind, the relationship between art and perception, and the origin and functions of language. Here is a biologist’s attempt to remove the element of magic from the consideration of ' human behaviour, Without belittling the complexity of the human mind. He argues that man’s special status is due to the emergence - under evolutionary forces of a ‘Collective Mind’ - a system of knowledge, expertise and ethical standards that has dominated and guided human society and Which qualifies as a. functional extension of the human brains that have contributed to it. In the final chapter Dr Blakemore examines the basis of social intolerance and reasons that a full understanding of society depends on a complete description of the human nervous system. The brain struggling to understand the brain is society trying to explain itself.

We should all ask how this knowledge could have been produced without violating the rights of either human or nonhuman persons. ( )