At 03:25 AM 3/27/01 -0800, Robert wrote:
>the relation between Calvin's & Edelman's perspectives.
>Are they different to any significant degree or largely
>similar. Is Calvin building on Edelman, or is his perspective
>independently derived?
They tend to ignore each other, I think. Edelman's ideas were first
sketched in THE MINDFUL BRAIN (1978), by Edelman and Mountcastle. Bill
Calvin's thinking about selectionist rather than instructional `Darwin
machines' seems to have evolved (ahem) independently. It's spelled out most
fully in THE CEREBRAL CODE (1996), but was discussed in a volume of
SEMINARS OF THE NEUROSCIENCES in 1991, and probably earlier. Another source
with the same idea is Jean-Pierre Changeaux's fine book NEURONAL MAN (1985;
French original in 1983); I can recall getting terribly excited about it at
the time. Walter Freeman is definitely worth reading as well, and is cited
on Calvin's reading list, below.
Calvin's rich site is well worth a browsing visit:
BTW, I greatly enjoy John McCrone's somewhat simplified but fluent and
intelligent books and articles; he writes fairly frequently for NEW
SCIENTIST magazine.
Damien Broderick
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