Overview

Popular science writer Philip Ball explores a range of sciences to map our answers to a huge, philosophically rich question: How do we even begin to think about minds that are not human? Sciences from zoology to astrobiology, computer science to neuroscience, are seeking to understand minds in their own distinct disciplinary realms. Taking a uniquely broad view of minds and where to find them--including in plants, aliens, and God--Philip Ball pulls the pieces together to explore what sorts of minds we might expect to find in the universe. In so doing, he offers for the first time a unified way of thinking about what minds are and what they can do, by locating them in what he calls the ""space of possible minds."" By identifying and mapping out properties of mind without prioritizing the human, Ball sheds new light on a host of fascinating questions: What moral rights should we afford animals, and can we understand their thoughts? Should we worry that AI is going to take over society? If there are intelligent aliens out there, how could we communicate with them? Should we? Understanding the space of possible minds also reveals ways of making advances in understanding some of the most challenging questions in contemporary science: What is thought? What is consciousness? And what (if anything) is free will? Informed by conversations with leading researchers, Ball's brilliant survey of current views about the nature and existence of minds is more mind-expanding than we could imagine. In this fascinating panorama of other minds, we come to better know our own.

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Reviews

A journey into the concept of the mind, mixing neurology, philosophy, technology, and other disciplines. Although everyone has a mind, few experts agree on its makeup. Ball delivers a fine investigation of the possibilities. . . . Many of his topics are among the hottest in neuroscience today, explored by scores of academics and popularizers such as Oliver Sacks, Antonio Damasio, and Daniel Dennett. Building on their theories and others, Ball makes a useful addition to the literature. A difficult subject lucidly illuminated, if not fully explained. -- Kirkus The award-winning science writer [Ball] explores the diversity of thinking minds, from our human ones to those of mammals, insects, computers, and plants. -- Bookseller The Book of Minds is an extremely thoughtful, well-written, and entertaining survey of current views about the nature--and existence--of minds. While fairly light in tone and often humorous, the book itself is quite serious, and Ball does an excellent job of explaining difficult or abstruse concepts (from quantum mechanics to evolution to neuroscience) in clear language. Omnivorous in its consideration of topics and resistant to dogmatism, Ball's book is a sustained, intelligent meditation on questions of deep scientific and human importance. --David Sepkoski, Thomas M. Siebel Chair in History of Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, author of Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity from Darwin to the Anthropocene Ball's synoptic overview of all the sorts of minds that may exist brings together a huge wealth of ideas and facts, presenting them in a digestible and engaging form. Beginning with a discussion of what we mean by mind and what seems notable about human minds, he considers, in turn, various sorts of animals, plants, animal colonies, AI, aliens, and God, before wrapping up with a chapter on the problem of free will. A valuable introduction to scientific and philosophical work on the varieties of mindedness. --Luke Roelofs, Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness, New York University, author of Combining Minds: How to Think about Composite Subjectivity

The Book of Minds is an extremely thoughtful, well-written, and entertaining survey of current views about the nature--and existence--of minds. While fairly light in tone and often humorous, the book itself is quite serious, and Ball does an excellent job of explaining difficult or abstruse concepts (from quantum mechanics to evolution to neuroscience) in clear language. Omnivorous in its consideration of topics and resistant to dogmatism, Ball's book is a sustained, intelligent meditation on questions of deep scientific and human importance. --David Sepkoski, Thomas M. Siebel Chair in History of Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, author of Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity from Darwin to the Anthropocene Ball's synoptic overview of all the sorts of minds that may exist brings together a huge wealth of ideas and facts, presenting them in a digestible and engaging form. Beginning with a discussion of what we mean by mind and what seems notable about human minds, he considers, in turn, various sorts of animals, plants, animal colonies, AI, aliens, and God, before wrapping up with a chapter on the problem of free will. A valuable introduction to scientific and philosophical work on the varieties of mindedness. --Luke Roelofs, Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness, New York University, author of Combining Minds: How to Think about Composite Subjectivity

Author Information

Philip Ball is a freelance writer and broadcaster whose many books on the interactions of the sciences, the arts, and the wider culture include Bright Earth, Curiosity, Patterns in Nature, How to Grow a Human, The Modern Myths, and, most recently, The Elements, all also published by the University of Chicago Press. His book Critical Mass won the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. Ball is also a presenter of Science Stories, the BBC Radio 4 series on the history of science. He trained as a chemist at the University of Oxford and as a physicist at the University of Bristol, and he was an editor at Nature for more than twenty years. He lives in London.

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