Book Review
How Brains Think
By WILLIAM H.CALVIN
William Calvin is a theoretical neurophysiologist who has published 14 books. It seems presumptuous to read such a book as How Brains Think, let along "review" it! However, Calvin is a skillful writer as well as a scientist with a sense of humor. He might be considered a "popularizer." Also, we all want to know more about what makes us "tick," even if there is not much we can do to improve the ticking.

Calvin begins by definingintelligence, not just as a score on the dreaded IQ test. He likes Piaget's emphasis that intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do. "Intelligence is about the process of improvising and polishing on the timescale of thought and action." He includes creative cleverness, foresight, and deductive logic in his definition.

Social intelligence is another aspect of intelligence. Social life is full of interpersonal problems to be solved. Calvin describes typical problems that animals have needed to solve, like winter's withdrawal of resources and climate changes. In distinguishing human development versus so-called lower animals, he focuses on language.

"Without syntax we would be little cleverer than chimpanzees." Arguments continue on how language knowledge develops in children. Some researchers believe that the human has an innate language ability, but that it must be developed by practice in early childhood. "It appears that the window of opportunity is closing during the school years." He believes that our plan-ahead ability stems from the mental structures that allow us to form language.

Next he asks what it is about the human brain that enables us to be good at guessing complicated relationships. He looks at the processes he calls chunking (collapsing several items into one chunk so as to make more room) and sequencing (e.g., how we manage rhythmic movements.) He helpfully lists the six clues which relate to the brain mechanisms for guessing intelligently before discussing convergent and divergent thinking.

To illustrate Calvin's humor, he tells the reader that it is possible to skip Chapter 7, though he hopes that we will stick with his detailed tracing of a thought through the brain's structure. (Don't ask.) He closes by examining the prospects for a superhuman intelligence.

How Brains Think is available at the Mary Willis Library.

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