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Kingdom of Infinite Space: An Encounter with Your Head
In this pathbreaking book, one of Britain s most eloquent and original thinkers writes about the head, what happens in it, and how it is and is not connected to our sense of identity and consciousness. Blending science, philosophy, and humor, Raymond Tallis examines the extraordinarily complex relationship we have with our heads. His aim, as he says, is to turn readers into astonished tourists of the piece of the world that is closest to them, so they never again take for granted the head that looks at them from the mirror. Readers will delight that this is precisely what he accomplishes. The voyage begins with a meditation on the self-portrait of a mirror image, followed by a consideration of the head s various secretions. Tallis contemplates the air we exhale; the subtle meanings of nods, winks, and smiles; the mysteries of hearing, taste, and smell. He discusses the metaphysics of the gaze, the meaning of kissing, and the processes by which the head comes to understand the world. Along the way he offers intriguing digressions on such notions as having and using one s head, and enjoying and suffering it. Tallis concludes with his thoughts on the very thing the reader s head has been doing throughout the book: thinking.
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First published January 1, 2008
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About the author
Raymond Tallis
61 books81 followersProfessor Raymond Tallis is a philosopher, poet, novelist and cultural critic and was until recently a physician and clinical scientist. In the Economist's Intelligent Life Magazine (Autumn 2009) he was listed as one of the top living polymaths in the world.
Born in Liverpool in 1946, one of five children, he trained as a doctor at Oxford University and at St Thomas' in London before going on to become Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester and a consultant physician in Health Care of the Elderly in Salford. Professor Tallis retired from medicine in 2006 to become a full-time writer, though he remained Visiting Professor at St George's Hospital Medical School, University of London until 2008.
Prior to his retirement from medicine to devote himself to writing, Raymond Tallis had responsibility for acute and rehabilitation patients and took part in the on-call rota for acute medical emergencies. He also ran a unique specialist epilepsy service for older people. Amongst his 200 or so medical publications are two major textbooks - The Clinical Neurology of Old Age (Wiley, 1988) and the comprehensive Brocklehurst's Textbook of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology (Harcourt Brace, co-edited with Howard Fillitt, 6th edition, 2003). Most of his research publications were in the field of neurology of old age and neurological rehabilitation. He has published original articles in Nature Medicine, Lancet and other leading journals. Two of his papers were the subject of leading articles in Lancet. In 2000 Raymond Tallis was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in recognition of his contribution to medical research; in 2002 he was awarded the Dhole Eddlestone Prize for his contribution to the medical literature on elderly people; and in 2006 he received the Founders Medal of the British Geriatrics Society. In July 2007, he received the Lord Cohen Gold Medal for Research into Ageing, and in November 2011 he was honoured with the International League Against Epilepsy's Special Excellence in Epilepsy Award. He is a Patron of Dignity in Dying.
Over the last 20 years Raymond Tallis has published fiction, three volumes of poetry, and 23 books on the philosophy of mind, philosophical anthropology, literary theory, the nature of art and cultural criticism. Together with over two hundred articles in Prospect, Times Literary Supplement and many other outlets, these books offer a critique of current predominant intellectual trends and an alternative understanding of human consciousness, the nature of language and of what it is to be a human being. For this work, Professor Tallis has been awarded three honorary degrees: DLitt (Hon. Causa) from the University of Hull in 1997; LittD (Hon. Causa) at the University of Manchester 2002 and Doc (Med) SC, St George's Hospital 2015. He was Visiting Professor of English at the University of Liverpool until 2013.
Raymond Tallis makes regular appearances at Hay, Cheltenham, Edinburgh and other book festivals, and lectures widely.
Raymond Tallis's national roles have included: Consultant Advisor in Health Care of the Elderly to the Chief Medical Officer; a key part in developing National Service Framework for Older People, in particular the recommendations of developing services for people with strokes; membership of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence Appraisal Committee; Chairmanship of the Royal College of Physicians Committee on Ethics in Medicine; Chairman of the committee reviewing ethics support for front-line clinicians; and membership of the Working Party producing a seminal report Doctors in Society, Medical Professionalism in a Changing World (2005). From July 2011 to October 2014 he was the elected Chair, Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying (HPAD).
In 2012 he was a member of the judges' panel for the Samuel Johnson Prize.
In 2015 he judged the Notting Hill Essay prize.
Born in Liverpool in 1946, one of five children, he trained as a doctor at Oxford University and at St Thomas' in London before going on to become Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester and a consultant physician in Health Care of the Elderly in Salford. Professor Tallis retired from medicine in 2006 to become a full-time writer, though he remained Visiting Professor at St George's Hospital Medical School, University of London until 2008.
Prior to his retirement from medicine to devote himself to writing, Raymond Tallis had responsibility for acute and rehabilitation patients and took part in the on-call rota for acute medical emergencies. He also ran a unique specialist epilepsy service for older people. Amongst his 200 or so medical publications are two major textbooks - The Clinical Neurology of Old Age (Wiley, 1988) and the comprehensive Brocklehurst's Textbook of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology (Harcourt Brace, co-edited with Howard Fillitt, 6th edition, 2003). Most of his research publications were in the field of neurology of old age and neurological rehabilitation. He has published original articles in Nature Medicine, Lancet and other leading journals. Two of his papers were the subject of leading articles in Lancet. In 2000 Raymond Tallis was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in recognition of his contribution to medical research; in 2002 he was awarded the Dhole Eddlestone Prize for his contribution to the medical literature on elderly people; and in 2006 he received the Founders Medal of the British Geriatrics Society. In July 2007, he received the Lord Cohen Gold Medal for Research into Ageing, and in November 2011 he was honoured with the International League Against Epilepsy's Special Excellence in Epilepsy Award. He is a Patron of Dignity in Dying.
Over the last 20 years Raymond Tallis has published fiction, three volumes of poetry, and 23 books on the philosophy of mind, philosophical anthropology, literary theory, the nature of art and cultural criticism. Together with over two hundred articles in Prospect, Times Literary Supplement and many other outlets, these books offer a critique of current predominant intellectual trends and an alternative understanding of human consciousness, the nature of language and of what it is to be a human being. For this work, Professor Tallis has been awarded three honorary degrees: DLitt (Hon. Causa) from the University of Hull in 1997; LittD (Hon. Causa) at the University of Manchester 2002 and Doc (Med) SC, St George's Hospital 2015. He was Visiting Professor of English at the University of Liverpool until 2013.
Raymond Tallis makes regular appearances at Hay, Cheltenham, Edinburgh and other book festivals, and lectures widely.
Raymond Tallis's national roles have included: Consultant Advisor in Health Care of the Elderly to the Chief Medical Officer; a key part in developing National Service Framework for Older People, in particular the recommendations of developing services for people with strokes; membership of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence Appraisal Committee; Chairmanship of the Royal College of Physicians Committee on Ethics in Medicine; Chairman of the committee reviewing ethics support for front-line clinicians; and membership of the Working Party producing a seminal report Doctors in Society, Medical Professionalism in a Changing World (2005). From July 2011 to October 2014 he was the elected Chair, Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying (HPAD).
In 2012 he was a member of the judges' panel for the Samuel Johnson Prize.
In 2015 he judged the Notting Hill Essay prize.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
April 10, 2016
This book is ABSURD.
Absurd topic; absurd approach; absurd depth and complexity. Under the command of an ABSURDLY nimble intellect. All 311 of these bizarre and almost pointless pages hold together because, above all, The Kingdom of Infinite Space is ABSURDLY WELL WRITTEN.
The book is just a description of your head. No really. Your *physical* head. Between philosophical interludes, it’s about secretions, language, kissing, blushing, coughing and other “head winds,” empty space, pain and the sense of self within the head. The subject is inherently “boring,” as the first philosophical chapter well admits, noting that the head itself usually resides outside our active awareness, except insofar as it houses the sense of self.
But for those in possession of a head, it’s a great read. Tallis takes the mundane and proceeds to “heighten, not allay, astonishment and a sense of mystery” (p xv). Which is what poets do. But a phenomenologist medical doctor with a penchant for smart mags and theatre? This one, yes. His prose channels awe.
The cover blurb says “proudly humanistic,” but actually his mind is better than that. He sails between the Scylla of scientific materialism and the Charybdis of poetic woo-woo subjectivity. He’s not a humanist but a damn fine phenomenologist, whose work is entirely grounded in the experience of experience. All that we have is what we experience. Philosophers and social researchers who claim to come from Husserl forget this every ten minutes, but Tallis is immaculate: there is not a single sentence in this book where he falls into philosophical abstraction, on the one hand, OR scientific dogma on the other.
The guy is comfortable with contradiction in the extreme, but even more excellent: he is comfortable not having much of a theory. Anyone who thinks they care about phenomenological PRACTICE – philosophers, ethnographers, anthropologists –would do well to dwell in his mindstream. His under-the-hood phenomenology is a beautiful, silent machine, drawing easily on the whole of the modern western tradition with – astonishingly – no showboating or pretention. He has an agenda-free, practical, working command of the ideas that matter in western philosophy that recalls Bertrand Russell and David Hume, but unlike his countrymen isn’t even biased by the analytical point of view and the sense of intellectual superiority it suffers.
The occasional chapters on metaphysics are some of the LEAST bullshit philosophy I have ever read. Tallis is comfortably at home in the western canon of meta-ideas, and can put it all in his own (sharp, funny, economical) terms. If you can slow down this easy read enough to absorb what he’s really doing in the philosophical chapters, you’ll get an education almost without noticing it.
All this clarity enables Tallis to see through basically all ideological nonsense. For example, here he is, years before anyone else could articulate a critique of the mind-to-brain reductionism of early neuroscience, hammering away at studies of the head that claim cognition comes only from the brain. Characteristically, he generates a cute term for the fallacy – “neuromyth.”
More on Tallis as a writer:
This book is so well written that I have to backtrack over certain clever sentences to see if he’s writing right. Of course he is: he’s writing SO right as to call attention to little absurdities in our language and in our minds. “All faces are to some degree poker.” (p. 105).
It is so well written my face HURT from my head’s natural expressive responses – that is, the internal generation of “head winds” in the form of guffaws and chortles –to the first few pages.
So well written that I had to read with a pencil, like I haven’t done since grad school, just to talk back to Tallis in the margins. Though I ended up filling that space not with my usual comparisons and counterpoints... but with emoticons.
Elsewhere the language is just too damn beautiful. Here he is on the voice: (p 96) "And those words are realized in a voice that is unique to ourselves: ‘the voice lies at the heart of what it is to be human.’ The tone and timbre, the music and dissonance, of the voice seem to give a hit of what it is like ‘in there’. The ‘grain of the voice’ market an intersection between the body, with its unique trajectory through the world, and the community of minds to which human beings also belong. The girl with the evening tones in her deep voice, the penetrating mosquito whine of the resentful cockney, the Archbishop in whose throat syrup trickles over very smooth, very round pebbles: these voices broadcast the ambience of the country of the self from which they hail."
Finally the book is so well written it’s actually annoying. The whole section on “normative panting” and “gelastic epidemics” - that is, laughter of the contagious sort, is so adorable I’d half-forget the subject matter itself is fascinating. Tallis is a (self-described) crusty old English doctor of geriatric medicine for godsakes – but there is no straight talk here, and no dry humor. The overt cleverness and artistry throughout CAN be a bit much.
At first I had difficulty discerning if I’m just newly fascinated by Tallis for the good looks of his prose, or if I’m actually responding to the substance of his character. I am a 19th century kind of reader in this sense - what I really care about in an author is whether I admire the mind that generates the perspectives. So the question is whether the pretty language here is a distraction.
As it turns out, I’m pretty sure his mind is as good or better than his mettle. The man is grounded in facts, not just a nice conceptual apparatus, and he’s – again – a doctor of geriatric medicine for godsakes. He does the good work of making us think about things we’d rather ignore.
I wonder what other vacuous topics he has made fascinating lately? Oh, it seems that at least three of his recent books are ruminations on death. Everyone’s favorite subject, death. I can’t wait to read them.
As much as he loves language, Raymond Tallis loves to read, and finds knowledge everywhere. His references are to book reviews and random plays, his data are the most easy to ignore aspects of everyday experience. When it comes to experiencing experience, he’s an omnivore’s omnivore, and a phenomenologist’s phenomenologist. Who knew there existed such a creature.
Absurd topic; absurd approach; absurd depth and complexity. Under the command of an ABSURDLY nimble intellect. All 311 of these bizarre and almost pointless pages hold together because, above all, The Kingdom of Infinite Space is ABSURDLY WELL WRITTEN.
The book is just a description of your head. No really. Your *physical* head. Between philosophical interludes, it’s about secretions, language, kissing, blushing, coughing and other “head winds,” empty space, pain and the sense of self within the head. The subject is inherently “boring,” as the first philosophical chapter well admits, noting that the head itself usually resides outside our active awareness, except insofar as it houses the sense of self.
But for those in possession of a head, it’s a great read. Tallis takes the mundane and proceeds to “heighten, not allay, astonishment and a sense of mystery” (p xv). Which is what poets do. But a phenomenologist medical doctor with a penchant for smart mags and theatre? This one, yes. His prose channels awe.
The cover blurb says “proudly humanistic,” but actually his mind is better than that. He sails between the Scylla of scientific materialism and the Charybdis of poetic woo-woo subjectivity. He’s not a humanist but a damn fine phenomenologist, whose work is entirely grounded in the experience of experience. All that we have is what we experience. Philosophers and social researchers who claim to come from Husserl forget this every ten minutes, but Tallis is immaculate: there is not a single sentence in this book where he falls into philosophical abstraction, on the one hand, OR scientific dogma on the other.
The guy is comfortable with contradiction in the extreme, but even more excellent: he is comfortable not having much of a theory. Anyone who thinks they care about phenomenological PRACTICE – philosophers, ethnographers, anthropologists –would do well to dwell in his mindstream. His under-the-hood phenomenology is a beautiful, silent machine, drawing easily on the whole of the modern western tradition with – astonishingly – no showboating or pretention. He has an agenda-free, practical, working command of the ideas that matter in western philosophy that recalls Bertrand Russell and David Hume, but unlike his countrymen isn’t even biased by the analytical point of view and the sense of intellectual superiority it suffers.
The occasional chapters on metaphysics are some of the LEAST bullshit philosophy I have ever read. Tallis is comfortably at home in the western canon of meta-ideas, and can put it all in his own (sharp, funny, economical) terms. If you can slow down this easy read enough to absorb what he’s really doing in the philosophical chapters, you’ll get an education almost without noticing it.
All this clarity enables Tallis to see through basically all ideological nonsense. For example, here he is, years before anyone else could articulate a critique of the mind-to-brain reductionism of early neuroscience, hammering away at studies of the head that claim cognition comes only from the brain. Characteristically, he generates a cute term for the fallacy – “neuromyth.”
More on Tallis as a writer:
This book is so well written that I have to backtrack over certain clever sentences to see if he’s writing right. Of course he is: he’s writing SO right as to call attention to little absurdities in our language and in our minds. “All faces are to some degree poker.” (p. 105).
It is so well written my face HURT from my head’s natural expressive responses – that is, the internal generation of “head winds” in the form of guffaws and chortles –to the first few pages.
So well written that I had to read with a pencil, like I haven’t done since grad school, just to talk back to Tallis in the margins. Though I ended up filling that space not with my usual comparisons and counterpoints... but with emoticons.
Elsewhere the language is just too damn beautiful. Here he is on the voice: (p 96) "And those words are realized in a voice that is unique to ourselves: ‘the voice lies at the heart of what it is to be human.’ The tone and timbre, the music and dissonance, of the voice seem to give a hit of what it is like ‘in there’. The ‘grain of the voice’ market an intersection between the body, with its unique trajectory through the world, and the community of minds to which human beings also belong. The girl with the evening tones in her deep voice, the penetrating mosquito whine of the resentful cockney, the Archbishop in whose throat syrup trickles over very smooth, very round pebbles: these voices broadcast the ambience of the country of the self from which they hail."
Finally the book is so well written it’s actually annoying. The whole section on “normative panting” and “gelastic epidemics” - that is, laughter of the contagious sort, is so adorable I’d half-forget the subject matter itself is fascinating. Tallis is a (self-described) crusty old English doctor of geriatric medicine for godsakes – but there is no straight talk here, and no dry humor. The overt cleverness and artistry throughout CAN be a bit much.
At first I had difficulty discerning if I’m just newly fascinated by Tallis for the good looks of his prose, or if I’m actually responding to the substance of his character. I am a 19th century kind of reader in this sense - what I really care about in an author is whether I admire the mind that generates the perspectives. So the question is whether the pretty language here is a distraction.
As it turns out, I’m pretty sure his mind is as good or better than his mettle. The man is grounded in facts, not just a nice conceptual apparatus, and he’s – again – a doctor of geriatric medicine for godsakes. He does the good work of making us think about things we’d rather ignore.
I wonder what other vacuous topics he has made fascinating lately? Oh, it seems that at least three of his recent books are ruminations on death. Everyone’s favorite subject, death. I can’t wait to read them.
As much as he loves language, Raymond Tallis loves to read, and finds knowledge everywhere. His references are to book reviews and random plays, his data are the most easy to ignore aspects of everyday experience. When it comes to experiencing experience, he’s an omnivore’s omnivore, and a phenomenologist’s phenomenologist. Who knew there existed such a creature.
June 2, 2015
In an article on the author ("Raymond Tallis Takes Out the 'Neurotrash'") in The Chronicle of Higher Education, neurophilosopher Daniel Dennett describes Tallis as "a sort of outraged defender of an obsolete worldview that's losing ground fast." I didn't detect much outrage or defensiveness in this book; to the contrary, Tallis' writing conveys quite a sense of generosity, one rooted in his appreciation of our improbable, if cosmically insignificant, place in the universe. His worldview, though, an atheist humanism that refuses to reduce to neurology those aspects of human experience that have properly been the domain of the humanities, is one worthy of further exploration, if not defense. In this book, though, he only touches on his criticisms of what he calls "neuromythology" (although the enormous fact that he omits anything about the brain from a book about the human head, like a guidebook about NYC that omits Manhattan, says a lot). The majority of the book focuses on all of the non-cerebral aspects of the head, and I was surprised by how many heady matters Tallis was able to conjure up and philosophize about. Much of what he has to say is about how amazingly awesome and profoundly painful it is to have been born human; being deeply philosophical without being in the least bit religious. His prose is intelligent, literate, and lucid, but his voice grew a little tedious by 2/3 of the way into the book. Worth a read, not a keeper.
The world enclosing you is but the minutest portion of the world without you. And yet this world without you, this 15,000 million-year-old universe, 100,000 trillion light years wide, populated by 6,000 million heads like yours, exists together, as a place for you to be or feel lost in, only in your head. It is your head that brings together things that exist, but do not coexist, to torment you with your own nullity. (64)
Ultimately we are no safer than speechless animals: the huge, many-layered bubble of "that" in which we live, will pop. For the present, we can keep it aloft; and so much knowledge and ignorance, so much sorrow and joy, is borne on the air our heads trap for purposes quite unknown to the organic processes that led up to the creation of our bodies. Our lungs would be nonplussed if they knew what was happening to the stale air they were expelling. (97–8)
Whatsoever the legislation under which you live, however blameless or blameworthy your life, you will sooner or later suffer beheading, disarming, distrunking, debodying; and your body will be de-selved. Such thoughts about your head's thoughtless future are meant to awaken you out of your usual wakefulness—which is what philosophy is or should be. The philosophical view endeavours to liberate us from our daily (usually described as "petty" though they rarely feel like that) concerns. Imagining our empty skull, as a focus for our absence in the world, giving our future nothingness a local habitation, should open dormers in our consciousness, so that we take the long view and see how small and unimportant we are. (249–50)
By putting our heads together, we have been able to achieve what Munchausen only boasted of: lifting himself up by his hair. Our heads have lifted themselves above the organic material of which they themselves are made. Humans have made themselves at home in organic bodies that could not have conceived of the things that fill the lives those bodies now permit. Humankind has increasingly made the world its own thing. Far from bowing our heads in shame, we should hold our heads up high. (290–1)
April 5, 2019
Möcüzəvi orqanlara aid kitabların 90%-i oxumuşam. (şükür bunu müəllif haqqları barədə qadağanın çıxıb, litres`i başımıza bəla etməsindən əvvəl çatdırmışam). Danışdığımız kitab həmin seriyaya aid deyil, sadəcə bu tip başqa heç nə oxumadığımdan onlarla paralel aparmalı olacam. Kitab beyin barədə deyil, məhz baş haqqındadır. Kəlləmiz barədə. Bu mövzunun nə qədər maraqlı olacağı şübhəli idi. Amma gözlədiyimin əksinə həddən artıq maraqlı oldu. Ən sevdiyim xüsusiyyət olan müəllifin yumor hissi, alluziyaları və müqayisələri gözəl idi, rahat idi, intellektual (bu sözü sevmirəm) idi. Dili insanı yormurdu, sonlara yaxın biraz sıxıldım, müəllif həyatından nümunələr çəkirdi. Oxuyarkən arada fasilələr etdim, daim nəsə oxumaq imkanım yox idi. Amma kitab da "bunu da oxuyum ancaq sonra yerə qoyacam"lardan deyildi. Bu da sırf kitabın janrı ilə əlaqəli bir şeydir. Ona görə #birnəfəsə olmayacaq.
March 15, 2009
I just realized that the subtitle on my copy is different; it's "A Portrait of Your Head." Regardless, this is a pretty engaging book, more about what it is to be human than it is about the head. Tallis just uses the workings of the head, the ins and outs of the head, as a jumping-off place to go on philosophical musings about personhood.
Overall I guess I enjoyed the book, but there were two recurring elements that bothered me:
1) Tallis makes a very big point right up front about how this book is about the "head" and not the "brain." He derides the "neuromythologists" who push the crazy notion that the self, and thoughts, are located in the brain, and are the product of neurons; and yet he never really supplies much of an theory of his own. He seems to be more or less of a secular type, so there's no indication that he's arguing for the existence of a soul, he just seems to think that the every day workings of being a self-conscious, thinking human are just way too complex for it be just the product of a bunch of neurons. And yet . . . what's the alternative? He goes so far as to say that thoughts are not in the brain, but if not, where are they? Right up front he says that one reason his book is about the head and not the brain is that there are already so many books out there about the brain and self, so he had to take a different angle. He seems to have been cornered by not wanting to have his book be about the brain into making some rather bizarre assertions without backing them up beyond "it's just all so complex!" Isn't that the argument evolution deniers use?
2) Throughout the book, he keeps coming back to the idea that humans are incredibly exceptional, completely unprecedented not just in the history of the world, but in the history of the universe. He is really in love with the idea that the way we see and observe and interact with the world and are conscious of ourselves as selves is so special as to make us way more than "just animals." I would agree to a certain extent, but I wouldn't necessarily agree that this is entirely a good thing (ever seen the film Baraka?). And again, he doesn't really back it up. He brings up the fact that chimpanzees can recognize themselves in a mirror, and see something on their face in a mirror and take it off their own face, but then mocks the idea that that makes them like us. After all, we have whole industries employing millions of people based around making little tubes of pigment that we put on our faces in the mirror. Again, he just throws a lot of complexity out there without saying why that makes us completely unique, rather than just somewhere on a spectrum with chimps. And again, why is this a good thing?
Overall I guess I enjoyed the book, but there were two recurring elements that bothered me:
1) Tallis makes a very big point right up front about how this book is about the "head" and not the "brain." He derides the "neuromythologists" who push the crazy notion that the self, and thoughts, are located in the brain, and are the product of neurons; and yet he never really supplies much of an theory of his own. He seems to be more or less of a secular type, so there's no indication that he's arguing for the existence of a soul, he just seems to think that the every day workings of being a self-conscious, thinking human are just way too complex for it be just the product of a bunch of neurons. And yet . . . what's the alternative? He goes so far as to say that thoughts are not in the brain, but if not, where are they? Right up front he says that one reason his book is about the head and not the brain is that there are already so many books out there about the brain and self, so he had to take a different angle. He seems to have been cornered by not wanting to have his book be about the brain into making some rather bizarre assertions without backing them up beyond "it's just all so complex!" Isn't that the argument evolution deniers use?
2) Throughout the book, he keeps coming back to the idea that humans are incredibly exceptional, completely unprecedented not just in the history of the world, but in the history of the universe. He is really in love with the idea that the way we see and observe and interact with the world and are conscious of ourselves as selves is so special as to make us way more than "just animals." I would agree to a certain extent, but I wouldn't necessarily agree that this is entirely a good thing (ever seen the film Baraka?). And again, he doesn't really back it up. He brings up the fact that chimpanzees can recognize themselves in a mirror, and see something on their face in a mirror and take it off their own face, but then mocks the idea that that makes them like us. After all, we have whole industries employing millions of people based around making little tubes of pigment that we put on our faces in the mirror. Again, he just throws a lot of complexity out there without saying why that makes us completely unique, rather than just somewhere on a spectrum with chimps. And again, why is this a good thing?
December 30, 2021
Kafa üzerine çok yönlü bir çalışma. Okuması keyifli.
March 3, 2019
This book just was not for me. The blurb on the back was interesting, and made out for an interesting public science book touring the head and how it works in various physiological contexts. Not that far through though, the writing style was just too off-putting and I couldn’t concentrate for long enough periods for things to fit together in my head. No doubt the premise is good, but I think the combination Tallis’ style of writing and a sense of humour that I don’t quite get made this one just a tad too hard to follow. DNF-ed about a third way through.
April 18, 2022
Overall a great book. The author made a very complex and potentially dull topic very interesting. Both the writing and the way he approached the topic created an engaging book which was a charm to read.
However, I’ve subtracted one star for the frequent and unfounded assertion that humans are so superior to all other species that they’re incomparable. It was distracting at best.
However, I’ve subtracted one star for the frequent and unfounded assertion that humans are so superior to all other species that they’re incomparable. It was distracting at best.
October 5, 2021
Yazar daha çok felsefi bir yaklaşımla konuyu anlatıyor. İlgisi olanlara tavsiye ederim.
May 28, 2014
How interesting that the book art and subtitle of Raymond Tallis's book that I have are different from the one I find here on Good Reads. It could be that I have the American edition, which bears an American-slanted subtitle. The copy I have is: The kingdom of infinite space: a portrait of your head. I think I prefer the Good Reads version, which is: a fantastical journey around your head. Whatever the subtitle or cover art (the one I read has a balloon on it floating on a pale grey background), this was a unique book written by a now Emeritus MD in geriatric medicine.
His erudition and learnedness are the mark of a person who has more than likely split his time and his research attention among many disciplines, fighting many wars of words. This book examines so many things it is hard to summarize it, but first it seems to be about consciousness. That puts it firmly in line with the many recent titles from neuroscientists and those who like to write about neuroscience, the mind and the brain. As Jack Kornfield said recently, the brain is in.
This book, written in British English, differs from most of the books about neuroscience. It is also quite a compendium of the humanities. It is social science meets medical science and anatomy meets philosophy and literary analysis and semiotics and phenomenology meet historicity. The humanities and the 'hard' sciences are fused together in this book in a delightful way. The book is as playful as it is factual.
It is also full of digressions. That reminds me of how recently a friend helped someone who runs a top-rated Academic art studio that focuses on classical realism make contact with one of the Stanford Medical School's programs to give medical students experience learning about the body through life drawing. Offered at BACAA Studio & Lab at Stanford University, it gives a 'rare and unique opportunity to further the understanding of the human anatomy and structure,' according to the course description. Artists observe anatomy up close and under the skin a la Leonardo (da Vinci, not di Caprio).
It explores the now oh-so-popular subject of brain science and consciousness in a questioning way without coming up with much dogma. He leaves it open. It's casual and first-person and lyrical, like well, a human mind is.
But, it is also an impressive explanation of every orifice and substance the head produces. I must admit that I skipped the parts about barfing and a few other sections about secretions. This is science writing at its most poetic.
I'd never heard of Tallis before, a Brit, but found this book on our bookshelf (who put it there?) and gave it a read. Now, it is time for me to take on The Future of the Mind, which seems to have supplanted "The Blessings of a B" as my next book. And if you're wondering why I'm writing about what book I'm going to read next in a review of the book I've just read then you will see how infectious Tallis's prose style is. He wanders and defends that wandering as suitable to minds.
His erudition and learnedness are the mark of a person who has more than likely split his time and his research attention among many disciplines, fighting many wars of words. This book examines so many things it is hard to summarize it, but first it seems to be about consciousness. That puts it firmly in line with the many recent titles from neuroscientists and those who like to write about neuroscience, the mind and the brain. As Jack Kornfield said recently, the brain is in.
This book, written in British English, differs from most of the books about neuroscience. It is also quite a compendium of the humanities. It is social science meets medical science and anatomy meets philosophy and literary analysis and semiotics and phenomenology meet historicity. The humanities and the 'hard' sciences are fused together in this book in a delightful way. The book is as playful as it is factual.
It is also full of digressions. That reminds me of how recently a friend helped someone who runs a top-rated Academic art studio that focuses on classical realism make contact with one of the Stanford Medical School's programs to give medical students experience learning about the body through life drawing. Offered at BACAA Studio & Lab at Stanford University, it gives a 'rare and unique opportunity to further the understanding of the human anatomy and structure,' according to the course description. Artists observe anatomy up close and under the skin a la Leonardo (da Vinci, not di Caprio).
It explores the now oh-so-popular subject of brain science and consciousness in a questioning way without coming up with much dogma. He leaves it open. It's casual and first-person and lyrical, like well, a human mind is.
But, it is also an impressive explanation of every orifice and substance the head produces. I must admit that I skipped the parts about barfing and a few other sections about secretions. This is science writing at its most poetic.
I'd never heard of Tallis before, a Brit, but found this book on our bookshelf (who put it there?) and gave it a read. Now, it is time for me to take on The Future of the Mind, which seems to have supplanted "The Blessings of a B" as my next book. And if you're wondering why I'm writing about what book I'm going to read next in a review of the book I've just read then you will see how infectious Tallis's prose style is. He wanders and defends that wandering as suitable to minds.
November 8, 2016
Tallis, Raymond. The Kingdom of Infinite Space.
This is the second book I’ve read this month whose title begins with ‘The Kingdom …’ It is obviously intended to impress with its majesty and universality. In fact one feels cheated if the book doesn’t live up to its royal title. Tallis’s book, the title a quotation from Hamlet, is a ramble around the human head, the chapters on snot and smoking being for me amongst the most remarkable, although the one on kissing runs them close.
I had first read this book a few years ago, but must have forgotten every word of it, which is odd because it contains much insightful comment about who we are and who we from time to time think we are. What, then, was my problem with the book? Well, for a start the language is at times so choked with asides and speculation that the meaning becomes obscure. A course in writing clearly and simply, even when venturing into abtruse realms, would be my first recommendation for the author. Of course, the learned reviewers play their part in recommending Tallis’s brilliance and expertise, but one wonders if they can really follow all the arguments the author indulges in.
Let us take Tallis’s investigation of the kiss for example. He begins by following the anticipation of two imagined lovers. He tells us that ‘Time expands in proportion as we resent the distance between us and our goals.’ Is this a general axiom? Does time expand etc? Do we ‘resent’ waiting? He tries to explain: ‘This distance, if it cannot be slept away, has to be lived through a succession of experiences and thoughts and events and actions. Strange things happen to time when distorted in the field of impatience. Zeno kicks in: the interval is halved and halved and yet there seem to be just as many moments to be got through.’ ‘As many moments’ of what? And what exactly is ‘the field of impatience’? What is Tallis up to? Is he trying to recapture the feeling of frustration a lover feels while waiting for his beloved? What the author does is to leave his reader dallying in this ‘field of impatience,’ while he, Tallis, maunders on about ‘the doleful mystery, the acuity [his favourite word] with which we resolve time into its component tasks [which]increases as the interval to be crossed decreases.’ What are time’s ‘component tasks’? How does one ‘resolve’ them? Does he mean ‘crossed’ or ‘endured.’?
Somebody needs a good editor, preferably not a linguist or a scientist.
This is the second book I’ve read this month whose title begins with ‘The Kingdom …’ It is obviously intended to impress with its majesty and universality. In fact one feels cheated if the book doesn’t live up to its royal title. Tallis’s book, the title a quotation from Hamlet, is a ramble around the human head, the chapters on snot and smoking being for me amongst the most remarkable, although the one on kissing runs them close.
I had first read this book a few years ago, but must have forgotten every word of it, which is odd because it contains much insightful comment about who we are and who we from time to time think we are. What, then, was my problem with the book? Well, for a start the language is at times so choked with asides and speculation that the meaning becomes obscure. A course in writing clearly and simply, even when venturing into abtruse realms, would be my first recommendation for the author. Of course, the learned reviewers play their part in recommending Tallis’s brilliance and expertise, but one wonders if they can really follow all the arguments the author indulges in.
Let us take Tallis’s investigation of the kiss for example. He begins by following the anticipation of two imagined lovers. He tells us that ‘Time expands in proportion as we resent the distance between us and our goals.’ Is this a general axiom? Does time expand etc? Do we ‘resent’ waiting? He tries to explain: ‘This distance, if it cannot be slept away, has to be lived through a succession of experiences and thoughts and events and actions. Strange things happen to time when distorted in the field of impatience. Zeno kicks in: the interval is halved and halved and yet there seem to be just as many moments to be got through.’ ‘As many moments’ of what? And what exactly is ‘the field of impatience’? What is Tallis up to? Is he trying to recapture the feeling of frustration a lover feels while waiting for his beloved? What the author does is to leave his reader dallying in this ‘field of impatience,’ while he, Tallis, maunders on about ‘the doleful mystery, the acuity [his favourite word] with which we resolve time into its component tasks [which]increases as the interval to be crossed decreases.’ What are time’s ‘component tasks’? How does one ‘resolve’ them? Does he mean ‘crossed’ or ‘endured.’?
Somebody needs a good editor, preferably not a linguist or a scientist.
March 27, 2012
For anyone who has ever felt concern about the creeping influence of "neuromythology" (the religious-like belief that all aspects of our consciousness and behavior can be reduced to our neural states), I suggest taking a look at some of Raymond Tallis' work.
I was hooked the moment he said in the foreword: "There is...no shortage of books on the brain. Indeed, I would venture that there is a serious lack of such a shortage...To put it bluntly, the brain is absurdly overrated."
What follows is a phenomenological treatment of the head (not the brain!), and all of its associated processes, from sneezing to dreaming to dying. I must admit that all of the most intriguing ideas (namely, the parts where he's say something like "of course it's all hooey to equate your mind with your brain, and this is just an enormous myth...) were followed by footnotes to Tallis' more academic works. And as interesting as it was to read about blushing and winking, I wished there had been more on the "Thinking Head", which is the final and best chapter.
This was a great introduction to Tallis, and a very hopeful reminder that there is much about being human that is astonishing. To attempt to equate consciousness with the sort of high-order processing that a computer does is to dismiss the complexity of awareness. As Tallis states: "It makes computers nearer to pebbles than we are to computers."
I was hooked the moment he said in the foreword: "There is...no shortage of books on the brain. Indeed, I would venture that there is a serious lack of such a shortage...To put it bluntly, the brain is absurdly overrated."
What follows is a phenomenological treatment of the head (not the brain!), and all of its associated processes, from sneezing to dreaming to dying. I must admit that all of the most intriguing ideas (namely, the parts where he's say something like "of course it's all hooey to equate your mind with your brain, and this is just an enormous myth...) were followed by footnotes to Tallis' more academic works. And as interesting as it was to read about blushing and winking, I wished there had been more on the "Thinking Head", which is the final and best chapter.
This was a great introduction to Tallis, and a very hopeful reminder that there is much about being human that is astonishing. To attempt to equate consciousness with the sort of high-order processing that a computer does is to dismiss the complexity of awareness. As Tallis states: "It makes computers nearer to pebbles than we are to computers."
June 16, 2009
This was quite an interesting read, but I’m not sure what to make out of the book. The book is about our heads. Yes, a book entirely dedicated to our heads. It’s a mixture of biology, philosophy, psychology, cognitive sciences, cultural studies, and a few other things. The book touches on the things that are located in our heads and the things that they do: thinking, vision, speech, breathing, smelling, tasting, blushing, crying, eating, drinking, vomiting, smoking, kissing, etc. Each subject is investigated from a variety of perspectives. And then there are a few “explicitly philosophical digressions” as well. You think Tallis, having written a book about head, is one of the people who think that we’re identical with our heads, that our thoughts and emotions are exclusively products of our brain. Not so. Tallis is against equating consciousness with brain chemistry. His views on the subject are “neither metaphysical, nor materialistic, but humanistic.” I didn’t quite understand what he meant by that.
A very interesting collection of subjects, as I said, but hard to grasp the big picture that Tallis brings up in the introduction and the philosophical digressions. Tallis is one of those people who can only be described as über-intellectual. He’s well-read and erudite in a scary way – maybe too smart for his own good (or for the good of his readership).
A very interesting collection of subjects, as I said, but hard to grasp the big picture that Tallis brings up in the introduction and the philosophical digressions. Tallis is one of those people who can only be described as über-intellectual. He’s well-read and erudite in a scary way – maybe too smart for his own good (or for the good of his readership).
August 13, 2010
I love the fact that a book like this exists, one written by a renaissance man of sorts. I've often read reports of eclectic journeys from journalists and highly specialized treatises from academics: this book is both and neither and more.
The very erudite Raymond Tallis might have well written this book by merely staring at the mirror (and having cultivated himself throughout the preceding 50 or 60 years before this occurred). By academic standards, this book is not a scientific reference, nor does the journey depicted in it travel beyond the musings of one man.
But what a pleasure to read this man's journey! What a remarkable achievement in scholarship is to be found in the pages of this book! It's a series of digressions, musings and explorations worded in a way that rings truer than what one may derive from a biology textbook if looking to understand the head, for they are inevitably personal, inevitably private, which brings them to life. To a great degree, this is the elegant rephrasing of a man's conversation with his own consciousness; it is philosophy, in other words, or a wander through its prime inquiry by a man long a philosophical wanderer.
This is a book highly recommended to have a conversation with, to learn about having a voice, having a head, today, in a world of de-personalization and ultra-specialization.
The very erudite Raymond Tallis might have well written this book by merely staring at the mirror (and having cultivated himself throughout the preceding 50 or 60 years before this occurred). By academic standards, this book is not a scientific reference, nor does the journey depicted in it travel beyond the musings of one man.
But what a pleasure to read this man's journey! What a remarkable achievement in scholarship is to be found in the pages of this book! It's a series of digressions, musings and explorations worded in a way that rings truer than what one may derive from a biology textbook if looking to understand the head, for they are inevitably personal, inevitably private, which brings them to life. To a great degree, this is the elegant rephrasing of a man's conversation with his own consciousness; it is philosophy, in other words, or a wander through its prime inquiry by a man long a philosophical wanderer.
This is a book highly recommended to have a conversation with, to learn about having a voice, having a head, today, in a world of de-personalization and ultra-specialization.
September 18, 2012
I found this quite hard to get through. I liked the concept, a tour around the various parts and functions of the head, and I found much of what it covered interesting - love, laughter, vomit, thinking, excursions into many areas of biology, sociology, psychology and philosophy. I just felt most of the time like his point could have been made in half the space, for the most part was overly verbose. I was also I comfortable with the constant feel of an underlying agenda - an anthropocentric and dualist perspective on the unique specialness of humans in the world. However, much was forgiven in a single line describing appearance and the gaze of others on ourselves: "I feel judgement being passed ... On my clumsy attempts at friendliness"; to me a poignant reminder of the author as human just like me or anyone else.
March 21, 2024
The overall topic of the book is the sensorium - that mystifying Heads Up Display where all the sense data from the body commingles into one unified experience (minus touch - the book is strictly about the head and limits itself to taste, sight, smell and hearing).
The author has a less prosaic way of writing nonfiction than usual that might take some getting used to for some. If the interplay between emotion, memory, and physiology are an interest, this book contains a lot of useful information.
The author has a less prosaic way of writing nonfiction than usual that might take some getting used to for some. If the interplay between emotion, memory, and physiology are an interest, this book contains a lot of useful information.
November 6, 2011
Fascinating stuff. An entertaining and lightly philosophical look at all the things our heads do and contain. From fluids to thoughts to sounds and expressions it is concise and is a great reminder of how odd it is to be human and have such a multi-purpose head. It's poetic in some places, scientific in some and silly in lots of places. Highly recommended. Reads like a long magazine article.
June 28, 2013
3.5 stars actually. A rather interesting read, though it was occasionally a little bit difficult to get, probably down to Raymond Tallis being, besides a medical doctor and a former university professor, a poet and philosopher. Hence he tends to go on about things in a somewhat peculiar way.
November 12, 2009
Some interesting, and indeed fascinating stuff, but seriously this could do with being 1/3rd the size. Too many lists, too many digressions, not enough substance.
October 24, 2010
I guess this would be called physio-philosophy, bio-philosophy? I have no clue. But it is a supremely entertaining, thought-provoking book. I highly recommend it.
December 1, 2013
Abandoned halfway through. Boring stuff about humans being so much more special than everything else.
June 25, 2014
Few mediated truths are presented in such an eloquent and insightful ways. I now know the thoughts circling in my head are not that of my own alone but everyone's too. :))
April 6, 2016
Got to page 24 and abandoned. Some of the subject matter was potentially interesting but it was all a bit wordy and philosophical.
July 17, 2016
Love it! Its like a service manual to your head :)
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