George Makari is a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College. The author of Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis, and Soul Machine: The Invention of the Modern Mind.
Reading Level: College level. Some background in the history of philosophy and science would be very helpful, but if not, don’t worry as the author will educate you in the narrative.
Number of Pages: 656
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It might seem odd that I am reviewing a book about the history of the mind, but I have my reasons. The first is that Dr. Makari takes the reader on a very detailed tour of different views about the soul or spirit—both now old-fashioned and unused terms—and into the emergence of what we now know as mind. He starts in the seventeenth-century and ends in the mid-nineteenth-century when British and European thinkers were really trying to get at the essence of what is mind. Is it “a necessary theory, a physical thing, a language game, or a deep-seated prejudice?” This is also a very important time period because it is in which the Church slowly lost its power over intellectual thinking in the West the idea of a soul and immortality began to be questioned more and more resulting in the loss of the soul and the rise of the Mind. The human soul is lost during this time of deep questioning and intellectual revolution, but what is also lost in the process is the Body; the ascendancy of mind in human thought meant the condemnation of the body as a valid source of conscious experience.
Very few philosophical rocks are left unturned by Makari who spends much time with Locke, Newton, Descartes, Diderot, Voltaire, Hobbes, Bacon, Hegel, Mesmer, and Schelling. If you are not familiar with any of these names, don’t worry, as Makari is an excellent teacher. As philosophical and scientific thinking during this period moves humans away from the concept of soul and to the mind in the brain, this position was further solidified by political upheaval in France. Makari writes, “When the French Revolution drove out the Church and the protectors of the soul, a fully formed secular, modern lineage of the mind was waiting, ready to emerge.” And it certainly did emerge there and then spread around the West in the form of Cartesian Rationalism. This diffusion of ideas concerning the mind was instrumental in shaping modern secular ethics and political liberalism.
Throughout his exploration, Makari repeatedly points out the conflicts between scientific and religious views of the mind. By doing so, he illustrates how these points of opposition have shaped our understanding of what it means to be a human being. Soul Machine is an impressive and often daunting work but one which fully elaborates the history of the mind’s evolution. Makari’s analysis reveals the profound impact of philosophical debates, scientific discoveries, and religious beliefs on our conception of the mind and the loss of both the modern person’s soul and body.
Closing Thoughts
Trying to grasp consciousness is like trying to grasp smoke; it flows through our fingers only to disappear into nothingness. A brilliant and comprehensive history of the creation of the modern Western mind. Soul Machine takes us back to the origins of modern thinking which left religious authority to die on the vine. This is the story of how a new concept―the mind―emerged as a wide-ranging solution, one that was part soul and part machine, but not quite either one entirely.
This is a powerful book from a learned man. It is boldly ambitious in its scope and originality. Makari and his Soul Machine give us a new perspective on making of the modern Western mind although, sadly, the what, when, where, and why of consciousness still slips from our grasp. The subtext or shadow story is how the body-soul was kicked out of modern thought. Fortunately, the concept has been re-discovered by the embodied cognition movement which envisions mind as a holistic unit of mind-body-environment. This is the next stage in our somatic evolution.
Paul Shane, Ph.D., LMT
Director, Academic Content
References
Makari, G. (2015). Soul Machine: The Invention of the Modern Mind. New York, NY: W.W. Norton Publishing.