NON FICTION

BRIGHT AIR, BRILLIANT FIRE: On the Matter of the Mind by Gerald M. Edelman (Basic: $25; 280 pp.). Neurobiology chairman at La Jolla’s Scripps Institute, Gerald Edelman is one of those lucky researchers who may be on the verge of answering some of the most profound questions in science today: “Which animals possess higher-order consciousness?” for instance, and “Where is our soul?” Since he is a practicing scientist, his prose may not always be as accessible as that of a science journalist, but it is certainly more contemporary. While science writers lately have been heralding a new age of “machines that think like man,” for instance, Edelman presents persuasive new research here that shows that the brain is not hard-wired like any computer we will be able to create. Neuronal connections vary too widely among individuals, and there are more connections than we can ever hope to fathom.

Most scientists up against this degree of complexity simplify their lives by retreating into a narrow sub-specialty. Edelman refuses to confine his curiosity to a single discipline, however, for he realizes, so to speak, that you cannot realistically critique a movie if you allow yourself to see only a pinhole-sized section of the screen. He thus studies thought processes not only at the molecular level but also at cellular levels, organismic levels and “transorganismic” levels (the kind of thought found in newspapers and in other forms of mass communication). Edelman’s broad-ranging inquiry has helped him see the oversimplifications in commonly accepted theories, such as the notion that behavior is influenced either by “nature” or by “nurture”--by genetics or environment.