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The Mind's Sky: Human Intelligence in a Cosmic Context
The bestselling author of Coming of Age in the Milky Way delivers fascinating essays on the human mind, the search for extraterrestrial (and thus nonhuman) intelligence, comet strikes as a source of species extinction, near-death experiences, apocalyptic prophecies, information theory, and the origin of laughter.
Praise for The Mind’s Sky
“It is a joy to read The Mind’s Sky . What a sense of humility in the face of mystery—the spirit of Ulysses, as Tennyson put it, determined ‘to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield’—and sense of poetry too!” —John Archibald Wheeler, physicist, Princeton University
“A few chapters into this wonderful book I suddenly realized that I was taking wider views of my own mind’s sky than I have enjoyed in a long time. Ferris illuminates (among other matters) the mysteries of laughter, nirvana, common sense, and Joe Montana. He makes us think big thoughts.” —Jonathan Weiner, author of The Next 100 Years and Planet Earth
“One of our best and most imaginative writers, Timothy Ferris has never been afraid to tackle big themes. The Mind’s Sky is a dazzling and provocative synthesis of inner and outer space. This book is sure to be as controversial as it is elegant.” —Dennis Overbye, author of Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos
Praise for The Mind’s Sky
“It is a joy to read The Mind’s Sky . What a sense of humility in the face of mystery—the spirit of Ulysses, as Tennyson put it, determined ‘to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield’—and sense of poetry too!” —John Archibald Wheeler, physicist, Princeton University
“A few chapters into this wonderful book I suddenly realized that I was taking wider views of my own mind’s sky than I have enjoyed in a long time. Ferris illuminates (among other matters) the mysteries of laughter, nirvana, common sense, and Joe Montana. He makes us think big thoughts.” —Jonathan Weiner, author of The Next 100 Years and Planet Earth
“One of our best and most imaginative writers, Timothy Ferris has never been afraid to tackle big themes. The Mind’s Sky is a dazzling and provocative synthesis of inner and outer space. This book is sure to be as controversial as it is elegant.” —Dennis Overbye, author of Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos
281 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
11 people are currently reading
329 people want to read
About the author
Timothy Ferris
50 books251 followersTimothy Ferris is the author of a dozen books (most recently The Science of Liberty), plus 200 articles and essays, and three documentary films—"The Creation of the Universe," “Life Beyond Earth,” and “Seeing in the Dark”—seen by over 20 million viewers.
Ferris produced the Voyager phonograph record, an artifact of human civilization containing music and sounds of Earth launched aboard the twin Voyager interstellar spacecraft.
Called “the best popular science writer in the English language” by The Christian Science Monitor and “the best science writer of his generation” by The Washington Post, Ferris has received the American Institute of Physics prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
A Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Professor Ferris has taught in five disciplines at four universities. He is currently an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Ferris produced the Voyager phonograph record, an artifact of human civilization containing music and sounds of Earth launched aboard the twin Voyager interstellar spacecraft.
Called “the best popular science writer in the English language” by The Christian Science Monitor and “the best science writer of his generation” by The Washington Post, Ferris has received the American Institute of Physics prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
A Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Professor Ferris has taught in five disciplines at four universities. He is currently an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 4, 2013
This is not Ferris' best book. It's a loose collection of his thoughts about consciousness in a cosmic context, and I don't know what that really means.
If there's consciousness out there, it most likely is not like ours, at all, Ferris argues. If there are aliens with consciousness, the author fears that they will "bludgeon us into a dog's life or into extinction." There's a good Demon image here and the reference to a "dog's life" is about its subservience as opposed to being wild and free - as if humans are, what, free from myth and illusion, conformity and our own alphas, and fakery and manipulation?
Ferris explains mystic consciousness (unity) in terms of the "internal architecture of the brain" and its "integration program - that is responsible for presenting the multipartite functions of the brain to the conscious mind as a unified whole." But if we push too hard, he writes, "the result might be direct exposure to the cacophonous voices of many inharmonious programs, speaking in a wild diversity of codes for which we have as yet no translation - and that hazardous voyage might well rob any but the most adept explorer of his sense of a coherent self and a coherent universe. Here lies the territory of divine madness...." I liked that.
Referring to Darwin, Ferris writes that "Random genetic mutation creates unique individuals within each species; natural selection sometimes favors the survival prospects of these atypical individuals" who go on to form new species traits. That's a standard understanding but what Ferris is not saying is that before everyone acquires such traits, we are "unique individuals" with variations in our inborn dispositions and will remain such so long as these tendencies and traits are not harmful to survival, prior to reproduction. In other words, there's room for an in-born biological character within each of us.
Toward the end, Ferris notes some interesting studies suggesting that catastophes hit the earth every 26 million years, wiping out species galore. At that point, there's a good chance that earthly consciousness goes dark, leaving consciousness to aliens, if they exist.
If there's consciousness out there, it most likely is not like ours, at all, Ferris argues. If there are aliens with consciousness, the author fears that they will "bludgeon us into a dog's life or into extinction." There's a good Demon image here and the reference to a "dog's life" is about its subservience as opposed to being wild and free - as if humans are, what, free from myth and illusion, conformity and our own alphas, and fakery and manipulation?
Ferris explains mystic consciousness (unity) in terms of the "internal architecture of the brain" and its "integration program - that is responsible for presenting the multipartite functions of the brain to the conscious mind as a unified whole." But if we push too hard, he writes, "the result might be direct exposure to the cacophonous voices of many inharmonious programs, speaking in a wild diversity of codes for which we have as yet no translation - and that hazardous voyage might well rob any but the most adept explorer of his sense of a coherent self and a coherent universe. Here lies the territory of divine madness...." I liked that.
Referring to Darwin, Ferris writes that "Random genetic mutation creates unique individuals within each species; natural selection sometimes favors the survival prospects of these atypical individuals" who go on to form new species traits. That's a standard understanding but what Ferris is not saying is that before everyone acquires such traits, we are "unique individuals" with variations in our inborn dispositions and will remain such so long as these tendencies and traits are not harmful to survival, prior to reproduction. In other words, there's room for an in-born biological character within each of us.
Toward the end, Ferris notes some interesting studies suggesting that catastophes hit the earth every 26 million years, wiping out species galore. At that point, there's a good chance that earthly consciousness goes dark, leaving consciousness to aliens, if they exist.
November 6, 2016
Ferris covers a lot of ground in one book—science, art, philosophy, and culture—while exploring the broader question of intelligence in universe. The chapters in the book are full of interesting and illustrative examples of observations that have been explained or attempted so by scientific principles and theories.
Reviewed at http://www.ernestdempsey.com/book-rev...
Reviewed at http://www.ernestdempsey.com/book-rev...
September 20, 2025
Har læst bogen i en oversættelsen fra Gyldendal: Bevidsthedens Univers.
Bogen har mange interessante pointer med hensyn til emner og problemstillinger, der måske aldrig bliver helt løst.
Timothy Ferris har en meget omfattende tværfaglig viden.
Bogen har mange interessante pointer med hensyn til emner og problemstillinger, der måske aldrig bliver helt løst.
Timothy Ferris har en meget omfattende tværfaglig viden.
April 28, 2020
Loved it.
February 25, 2017
This book blew my little mind when I first read it many years ago with its informed speculations about the human brain, SETI, and more. The idea that our brains includes modules for rationalizing our own actions and making them seem the result of conscious choice, and for creating a sense of a unified self out of a disparate set of drives and subconscious motivations, seems to explain a lot about human behavior and religious experience. I think it was my first introduction to the Drake equation and some of its ramifications. His take on laughter is convincing. It's a little long on speculation and short on data, but it never crosses the line into New Agey mysticism (despite the title and the cover).
December 7, 2012
Pretty good book, some parts better than others. I especially liked the idea/chapter about his alien self-replicating probe network, storing data, sending it among probes and to civilizations across the galaxy. He painted it so well, and then talked about such a thing becoming conscious, and of it expanding between galaxies, among the galactic clusters and superclusters, an intelligence spanning the universe. It blew my mind, and makes this book worth reading all by itself.
September 8, 2016
Enjoyed the discussion of an autonomous galactic communications network - seems highly plausible. Also, the last chapter on information theory as a bedrock of all science. For having written that before the Web took off, Ferris was spot-on. (Although, I think his focus on the Copenhagen interpretation and meaning-making observations would have benefited from a dash of many-worlds thinking).
April 14, 2009
A pleasant surprise - quite interesting. Desiring a smooth ride, I skipped a couple of chapters of the final section. Although some of the book is slightly dated, I still feel the book merits four stars.
November 22, 2015
The study of multiple intelligences, mixed with the study of the search for intelligent life in the universe. I skipped the SETI stuff. But this was the first readable exposure to multiple intelligences that I came upon. If you have tried to read Howard Gardner, start here.
March 5, 2007
As a teenager, this really helped me to start thinking the "bigger" thoughts.
January 10, 2008
Love Timothy Ferris's stuff.
Want to read
January 13, 2008gcb
July 18, 2012
One of my all time favorite books!!
February 16, 2013
This twenty plus year old book is definitely amongst the best I've read during the same period. The outdated parts aren't a detriment to the preponderance of vivid and interesting ideas.
April 9, 2016
Some interesting stuff.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews