The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars

April 23, 2018
Broks (Into the Silent Land) reflects on the idea of death and what it means to be human in this collection of musings centered loosely on his personal struggle to cope with his wife’s cancer diagnosis and her death some years later. He mingles memories, dreams, and his deepest thoughts with teaching experiences and clinical observations drawn from a career as a neuropsychologist. More than a compilation of case studies, Broks’s book is a digressive journey through the subject of human consciousness. He mixes pub banter, philosophy, Greek myths, the “deathbed” music of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, Paolo Faraldo’s theory of neuronal relativity, Antonio Damasio’s neurobiological search for the self, and many other topics in an attempt to broaden the perspective on neuroscience’s most central question: “how and why physical states of the brain produce mental experiences.” Or, as the author states the question, “How does the insentient, physical stuff of the brain... the 1,200 cubic centimeters of gloop that fills our skulls—how does that stuff create awareness?” Like the box of old family photographs Broks achingly describes, this metascience narrative is well worth sorting through.