Book review, sort of.

From Phil Runkel on 2 Feb 98:

Somebody might urge you to look into

        How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then and Now.
        by Wm. H. Calvin, Basic Books, 1996.

The publishers say it is one of a series of "original science books
written by leading scientists." I have now read it in a cursory manner;
my interest got snagged nowhere. It has a friendly style, with lots of
analogies, no quantification, the usual misunderstanding of the speed of
neural signals necessary to feedback, no mention of negative feedback
_loops_ or circular causation, and the ideas about artificial intelligence
seem to me no help at all. The information I got about the anatomical
structure of the brain was no more useful than I had got from a 1978 book
I had on my shelf -- maybe less useful.