If my initial foray into the territory of the biologists has taught me anything, its that theory in neuroscience is a very different game than that of theory in physics. Theoretical physicists are able to temporarily retreat into pure thought and calculation, minimizing communication with experimentalists, and yet still make significant scientific progress. Theoretical neuroscientists, [...]
The State of Theory in Neuroscience or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Data
July 25th, 2010 No Comments
Tags: brain · neuroscience · Research
Book Review: Neuroscience by Dale Purves
May 18th, 2010 No Comments
My Goodreads Rating: 2 of 5 stars
This book has a nasty habit of mistaking naming for explaining, but it served the purpose of introducing an egghead physicist/mathematician to the messy biological world of neuroscience. If nothing else, its convincing evidence that neuroscience needs theorists.
If (Amount of jargon) > (Space in a human brain),
then FindTheorists.
View [...]
Tags: brains · neuroscience · textbooks
Book Review: Tree of Knowledge by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela
February 7th, 2010 No Comments
My Goodreads Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Interested in cybernetics, theoretical biology, and philosophy but still find Dan Brown novels to require mental gymnastics? Put on your philosophical training wheels and give “Tree of Knowledge” a spin!
A mixture of dated scientific ideas, profound frameworks for thinking about living organisms, and unnecessarily complicated jargon, ToK is [...]
Tags: cognition · cons · cybernetics · neuroscience · psychology · theoretical biology