斑斓阅读系列中重构古埃及
The ancient Egyptians are an enduring source of fascination--mummies and pyramids, curses and rituals have captured our imaginations for generations. We all have a mental picture of ancient Egypt, but is it the right one? How much do we really know about this once great civilization? In this absorbing introduction, Ian Shaw, one of the foremost authorities on Ancient Egypt, describes how our current ideas about Egypt are based not only on the thrilling discoveries made by early Egyptologists but also on fascinating new kinds of evidence produced by modern scientific and linguistic analyses. He also explores the changing influences on our responses to these finds, by examining the impact of Egyptology on various aspects of popular culture such as literature, cinema, opera, and contemporary art. He considers all aspects of ancient Egyptian culture, from tombs and mummies to the discovery of artefacts and the decipherment of hieroglyphs, and from despotic pharaohs to animal-headed gods. From the general reader interested in Ancient Egypt, to students and teachers of ancient history and archaeology, to museum-goers, this Very Short Introduction will not disappoint.
Be careful to buy this book only if you want to learn about Egyptology as an academic discipline, more than about what scholars think really went on in ancient Egypt. This book is a learned and fascinating introduction to the study of ancient Egypt. If you are looking to understand how scholars painstakingly piece together tiny shards of ambiguous and insufficient evidence to construct an understanding of ancient Egypt, this is your book. If you seek a primer the current state of knowledge on life, religion, politics, culture, and society in ancient Egypt, you should probably buy another book. I bought the book out of a desire to learn more about what current scholarly thinking about ancient Egypt in order to open up a window on that fascinating civilization. Instead, I discovered a compelling (if dry) narrative on how Egyptologists work and reach conclusions. This is a really interesting topic in its own right, and, of course, it is fundamental to evaluating what is presented as "what we know" about ancient Egypt in an intelligent fashion. However, you might not want to spend time learning about Egyptology, but instead want to learn about ancient Egypt. If so, this is likely not the book for you right now
The title of this excellent entry in an excellent series should be 'Egyptology', as it is more about the study of ancient Egypt than the history itself. At 190 pages, it is a little longer than many entries in this series, but the final 30 of those pages are References, Timeline and so on, which provide a good springboard for further study.
Pharaonic Egypt was Earth's first great empire and it lasted for 3 millennia. The author examines the way in which that civilization has been perceived, interpreted and mythologized by, among others, Victorians seeking verification of Biblical stories and by modern, popular culture.
Ian Shaw writes well and comes across as an erudite and objective scholar. He has not used this book as an opportunity to put forward any unorthodoxy of his own, and has not been afraid to include many quotations from other Egyptologists. All of this makes the book a perfect introduction to this fascinating subject.
agree with the other reviewers that this book is not so much about Ancient Egypt as it is about Egyptology. I would say it even expects a previous knowledge of the periods and dynasties of Ancient Egypt. In that respect it fails to live up to its title.
As a book about Egyptology it's slightly dry and not very tight. The author seems to be all over the place. After reading this book, I have learned very little of Egyptology as a discipline except for a few theories expounded in the text.
I would not recommend this book. I am interested in reading Egyptian Myth: A very short introduction as a possible better introduction to Egyptian history, myths, and beliefs.
2
I knew absolutely nothing about ancient Egypt and cared less. I was still fascinated by this book and inspired to follow it up.
It starts with the Narmer Palette, an artefact in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and uses the decoration on both sides, pictures and hieroglyphs, to explain some of the things we think we know about ancient Egypt and how we think we know them. It's thought the elegantly outlined depression between the serpopards was used for crushing pigment for eyeshadow....serpopards? Leopards with the heads and neck of snakes.
The book goes on to look specifically at how we establish the narrative history of ancient history (or rather, perhaps, speculate about it rather than establish it), the roles of kings, and the issues of identity (the significance of race and gender in particular) and of religion (mummification, the pyramids and so on). Ancient Egypt really was ancient - the Pharaonic period started 5000 years ago and the timeline in the book goes further back than that - and covered a very long period, lasting into the Roman era AD. It's not surprising perhaps that it's very hard to "know" much, and of course, things will have changed quite a lot in the thousands of years covered by the Egyptian era.
In particular the book exposes some of the conflicts between archeologists, who look at what's left of the buildings and artifacts, and those who read and interpret the writing and hieroglyphs found on them. It had never occurred to me that there might be a division like that.
There is an outline of the rise of Egyptology in the nineteenth century, the mistakes made by early investigators which may have destroyed important evidence (and why they made the mistakes), and, finally some discussion of the impact of ancient Egypt on the twentieth century. This short section gives equal space to the Anthony and Cleopatras of Burton and Taylor on the one hand and of Kenneth Williams and Amanda Barrie on the other - this book has its feet on the ground.
There are good illustrations to support the text (full-page photos of both sides of the Narmer Palette, for example, so you see exactly what the author is writing about), a glossary and several pages of further reading and useful websites.
I was really surprised at being drawn in so thoroughly. Fascinating introduction.
斑斓阅读系列之意识新探
The last great mystery for science, consciousness has become a controversial topic. Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction challenges readers to reconsider key concepts such as personality, free will, and the soul. How can a physical brain create our experience of the world? What creates our identity? Do we really have free will? Could consciousness itself be an illusion? Exciting new developments in brain science are opening up these debates, and the field has now expanded to include biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers. This book clarifies the potentially confusing arguments and clearly describes the major theories, with illustrations and lively cartoons to help explain the experiments. Topics include vision and attention, theories of self, experiments on action and awareness, altered states of consciousness, and the effects of brain damage and drugs. This lively, engaging, and authoritative book provides a clear overview of the subject that combines the perspectives of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience--and serves as a much-needed launch pad for further exploration of this complicated and unsolved issue.
I have to admit that at first I dismissed this little introduction to consciousness, but then I read the book again. It's a gem. Blackmore makes it all clear right up front what the problem of consciousness is and several ways that consciousness might be defined. She considers whether consciousness is some integral feature of brain processes or something in addition to the physical features of the brain (a position that goes by the clumsy name of "epiphenomenalism"). Next she talks about a last Cartesian seduction in the thinking of some materialists called "the Cartesian theatre", a phrase coined by Daniel Dennett that means that some scientists have embraced the material operation of the brain but still believe that consciousness is something that appears at a place and time in the brain. It as if there is a little theatre in the brain where consciousness is played.
Blackmore next questions the natural or intuitive idea that consciousness is present in a continuous stream: this is a grand illusion and how the brain may create this illusion is investigated. She focuses on visual perceptual consciousness and presents research that questions our natural understanding of what is going on with our brains while we experience the world. There follows a consideration of "the self" (a useful construction, it seems), conscious will, and altered states of consciousness (psychedelic drugs, meditation, and out-of-body experiences). All in all this is a brief, but very clear and stimulating discussion of consciousness. I find it remarkable that so much was packed in a little volume that left me stimulated and grateful instead of exhausted, bored, or confused.
It's just a great place to begin trying to get a grip on what the fuss is and why consciousness is such a curious and marvelous phenomenon.
No one book can cover all there is to say about the burgening field of Consciousness Studies of Consciousness Research, but this book comes as close as any one up-to-date one can; furthermore, it has all the usual physical advantages of Oxford University Press' "Very Short Introduction" titles: small enough to actually fit into a pockes yet so well bound that when carried so the spine will never crack nor pages ever fall out.
Susan Blackmore's experience as a Zen meditator adds depth to the section on altered states of consciousness as well as to her final summary on the future of consciousness and consciousness research.
A minor disappointment was the abscence of any treatment of Artificial Intelligence and the philosophical problems it raises, especially unfortunate since she sha covered that subtopic well and thoroughly in a longer book. Also some cartoon drawings are rudimentary and add little to the text, but on the other hand, some photographic, do-it-yourself demonstrations of how our conciousness differs from what we believe we introspectively know it to be are excellent.
Another positive for any book but especially one suitable as an initial introduction to a topic is an excellent bibliography for further reading.
2
I first encountered Blackmore's work when, after searching long and hard for a scientific explanation of out-of-body experiences, I came across her book Beyond the Body. It was astonishingly well researched and offered a rational, convincing explanation for phenomena that were usually neglected by the scientific community. I became an instant fan and have followed her work ever since. But now, alas, she has aligned herself with the Dawkins/Dennett axis of drivel, and my loyalty to her is badly shaken. In this book (a shorter version of her Consciousness: An Introduction) she follows Dennett by denying the existence of consciousness and then indulging in much speculation about the properties and evolutionary history of this non-existent entity. Consciousness, she maintains, is an 'illusion', which she defines as something that exists but does not have the properties it appears to have. She then proceeds to discuss it as if it does not in fact exist, and slips into calling it a 'delusion', which she apparently regards as a synonymous term. So far, so Dennett. She follows Dawkins by labeling just about everything a 'meme' (as Poe might have said 'All that we see or seem is but a meme within a meme'), unless she happens not to approve of it, in which case it is 'a virus of the mind'. As an example, she indulges in a quite intemperate and completely irrelevant rant against religion, in which Roman Catholicism is described as a parasitic infection. Like Dennett and Dawkins, she leaves no axe unground.
So why do I give the book 5 stars if I disagree with so much of it? Well, I guess you can't keep a good scientist down, and Blackmore is still a great scientist. She brings considerable knowledge and erudition to the subject, presents fair summaries of opposing views, and gives excellent descriptions of odd phenomena like Libet's Delay and the Cutaneous Rabbit. And her style is as readable as ever. I was suspicious when I saw that her son Jolyon had contributed many of the illustrations - it smacked of nepotism - but I have to say his drawings are really charming and add greatly to the text. The other illustrations are useful too - with the possible exception of a photograph of the author opening a fridge door - which isn't always the case with this series. The book ends with a very useful Further Reading list. It's thus an excellent introduction to the subject (although I think John Searle's The Mystery of Consciousness is still the best place to start).
So, I shall keep the faith and continue to read everything Susan Blackmore publishes. I just hope that one day, just as she once abandoned a belief in the paranormal, she sees the light and abandons the axis of drivel.
3Scientists try to approach the function of the human brain just as they approach the functioning of any other organ in our bodies: as a natural feature of the natural world. According to this view, what we call our "mind" is dependent upon the physical brain, making the mind just as natural and material as other biological processes like digestion. Even so, it's difficult to entirely escape the lure of dualism — the view that "mind" is completely separate from and independent of the physical brain. Usually dualism is accompanied by the belief that the mind is basically the soul — an immaterial, eternal "thing" which represents our true selves. This view has been promoted by theistic religions for millennia.
Because research into the nature and functioning of the brain is still in its relatively early stages, there's a lot of open ground and disputed ideas. Scientific researchers are not united behind a single explanation or way of conceptualizing how the brain creates the mind and consciousness. This means that there is a lot to read and digest before you can claim to at least understand where the current research stands — but fortunately there is a good place to start. Susan Blackmore's Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction is part of Oxford University Press "very short introduction" series and, like other volumes, does a great job at explaining even complicated issues in a way that is comprehensible and engaging for even a general audience. Perhaps the most significant problem in the study of human consciousness is whether there is real problem there or not.
Some argue that there are "easy problems" like explaining how processes like perception and memory work, then the "hard problem" of explaining how consciousness itself works. Others argue that there is no "hard problem" because if we can explain all the "easy problems," then we will have explained consciousness (or at least the explanation for consciousness will immediately and obviously follow). The difference can stated as: is consciousness an "extra thing" or "extra ingredient" in our minds, or is any sufficiently advanced mental processing system also necessarily "conscious"?
For many religious theists, this question necessarily turns on the existence of a soul. Machines and robots cannot be "conscious," for example, because they cannot have souls — only God can imbue a living being with a soul and it cannot automatically appear simply because a system becomes complex enough. Even some scientists who don't believe in souls will agree that simply having all the same parts and complexities as a human brain would not lead to consciousness, but many others think that it would. This means that efforts to create a "conscious" machine will have profound implications for the common belief in dualism, souls, and a "mind" that is immaterial, supernatural, and separate from the physical brain.
Like most scientists and researchers, Blackmore rejects the traditional religious explanations for the mind: she rejects dualism, she rejects the existence of a mind or soul that is independent of the brain, and she rejects the idea that the mind is in any way eternal.
Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction, by Susan BlackmoreBlackmore goes further than most, however, and is inclined to believe that even the existence of a coherent, consistent "self" is likely an illusion. Most scientists seem to be trying to hold on to this, and intuitively it is something that seems to be true. There is a significant amount of evidence and logic which suggests otherwise, though — and if it's true that our traditional, intuitive notion of consistent self is wrong, then what does this say about the existence of a soul?
Although Susan Blackmore certainly has her own views, this doesn't interfere with her explanations — readers won't get the feeling that she is only setting up straw men to attack or that she's giving short shrift to views she doesn't accept. She doesn't hide her own perspective, but she also doesn't let it get in the way of giving readers a broad education in where current research stands, what different researchers think, and of course possible problems with it all.
Blackmore doesn't cover everything, of course, nor could she in a short introduction like this. Yet she does cover plenty, and anyone simply looking for an overview of the field will get all they need. If someone would like more detailed information, a good follow-up would be Blackmore's Conversations on Consciousness, where she interviews many leading researchers to ask them what they think and why.
