Steven Berlin Johnson gets a bad review. It raises an interesting meta-point—are weblogs a way for authors to fire back at their critics? I wonder if authors are often frustrated by the fact that publishing replies to criticism isn't very marketable, and so they're generally forced to let critics have the last word.

I've read Mind Wide Open myself, and I've been meaning to say something about it here for a while. I think it's a very good book, one I intend to recommend to my neurobiology students and may even include in my course syllabus. The things that the reviewer found objectionable, the personal context and the enthusiasm for the new vistas on the brain opened up by contemporary research, are exactly what I consider just the thing to inspire students in the subject. But to be honest, at first when I read Johnson's complaint, I was thinking, "Gee, criticism is part of the territory, Mr Author. Suck it up and be tough, and quit complaining"...but then I read the review. Holy crap. Johnson was right—this is a guy with some weird metaphysical axe to grind.

First he complains that Johnson's view is that

Man's mind must be an epiphenomenon of matter, and therefore it is our duty, as Wallace Stevens put it, "To lay his brain upon the board/ And pick the acrid colors out".

Unfortunately, this is a project with certain implications. If modernity began with Galileo, then modernism began with Wordsworth's sonnet "The world is too much with us". Wordsworth understood that the vision of science disconnected us from the world, left us with "little . . . in Nature that is ours". He longed to be "a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn" so that he might once again see the world of myth and magic. The Darwinian reconnection to nature failed to answer this imaginative longing because it was predicated on a nature that seemed merely mechanical.

It's true that Johnson's philosophy on this issue is quite clearly laid out (and is compatible with mine, to be honest)...but what is this nonsense about Darwinian views being "merely mechanical?" The Darwin of "There is grandeur in this view of life..."? If anyone is imposing strange interpretations here, it's the reviewer, Bryan Appleyard. I'm sorry for him that science hasn't reduced the universe to leprechauns and unicorns, but that does not mean there is less to appeal to our imaginations. What we've learned so far greatly exceeds the paltry guesses of the mythmakers in beauty and complexity.

That business of "certain implications" also troubles poor Mr Appleyard. He argues against Johnson's book because the consequences of materialism disturb him.

Furthermore, in the form of evolutionary psychology, Darwinism raises the paradoxical problem that knowledge might actually make us less fit for survival. Religion, for example, is so pervasive throughout human history that it must provide some evolutionary advantage. If it is suppressed by our science, we are likely, therefore, to be worse off.

Uh-oh. There it is: the Panglossian paradigm. If it exists, it must be for the best. Science says religion is good for mankind (which is not what science says at all), therefore because science suppresses religion (again, not necessarily true), science is bad for us. False assumptions, mistaken ideas about what evolutionary biology implies, and utterly bogus logic; these are not a good foundation for a believable argument.

Appleyard isn't done with his argumentum ad consequentiam yet, though. This next bit made me laugh aloud.

Equally, our minds work on the basis of myriad assumptions. If these are exposed as the deterministic workings of mere chemistry, then we might not even be able to get through the day, never mind the next million years.

Well. I guess we'd better stop studying the brain then, shouldn't we? Who knows, we might actually learn things about how it works that don't involve angels or ghosts, and then people will get depressed.

Quite contrary to Appleyard's take on things, I find the idea that the brain is a beautifully intricate piece of organic machinery to be uplifting, and the idea that we are actually making progress in understanding it, and learning that it is strangely wrought and full of solveable puzzles, to be thoroughly enchanting. Appleyard says, "Don't read this book." I say, "Read it and many others." Who are you going to listen to, the guy who thinks we ought to close our eyes to the chemistry of the brain, or me, the guy who thinks we ought to learn more and more and more?