William H. Calvin

"I talk a lot about ape-to-human evolution and all those abrupt climate changes along the way. But mostly I try to extend Darwin's intellectual revolution to brain mechanisms. What sort of darwinian brain wiring allows us, in just a split second, to shape up a better thought?"

WILLIAM H. CALVIN, Ph.D., is a neurobiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is the author of a dozen books, mostly for general readers, about brains and evolution including The Throwing Madonna, The Cerebral Symphony, The River That Runs Uphill, The Cerebral Code, Conversations with Neil's Brain (with George Ojemann), and How Brains Think. His book with Derek Bickerton, Lingua ex Machina: Reconciling Darwin and Chomsky with the Human Brainwith, is about syntax. The latest, A Brain for All Seasons:  Human Evolution and Abrupt Climate Change, about paleoanthropology, paleoclimate, and considerations from neurobiology and evolutionary biology. It won the 2002 Phi Beta Kappa book award for science. The latest is A Brief History of the Mind: From Apes to Intellect and Beyond about the mind’s big bang.

Further reading on Edge: "COMPETING FOR CONSCIOUSNESS": A Talk by William H. Calvin

Beyond Edge: William Calvin's Home Page; William Calvin: Books, Articles, Talks

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