Facing Reality

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XI

   PDF

2. Introduction: Man, Brain and Science

   • John C. Eccles

   Pages 1-7

3. The Neuronal Machinery of the Brain

   • John C. Eccles

   Pages 8-24

4. Synaptic Mechanisms Possibly Concerned in Learning and Memory (cf. Eccles, 1966b, 1966c)

   • John C. Eccles

   Pages 25-43

5. The Experiencing Self

   • John C. Eccles

   Pages 44-62

6. The Brain and the Unity of Conscious Experience

   • John C. Eccles

   Pages 63-84

7. Evolution and the Conscious Self

   • John C. Eccles

   Pages 85-101

8. The Understanding of Nature

   • John C. Eccles

   Pages 102-117

9. Man, Freedom and Creativity

   • John C. Eccles

   Pages 118-134

10. The Necessity of Freedom for the Free Flowering of Science

    • John C. Eccles

    Pages 135-150

11. The Brain and the Soul

    • John C. Eccles

    Pages 151-175

12. Education and the World of Objective Knowledge

    • John C. Eccles

    Pages 176-187

13. Epilogue

    • John C. Eccles

    Pages 188-190

14. Back Matter

    Pages 191-210

    PDF

The titling of this book - "Facing Reality" - came to me unbidden, presumably from my subconscious! But, when it came, it seemed to be right, because that essentially is what I am trying to do in this book. " Facing" is to be understood in the sense of "looking at in a steadfast and unflinching manner". It thus contrasts with "Confronting" which has the sense of "looking at with hostility and defiance". As I face life with its joys and its sorrows, its successes and its failures, its peace and its turmoil, my attitude is one of serene acceptance and gratitude and not one of angry and arrogant confrontation and rejection. The other component of the title - "Reality" - is the ultimate reality for each of us as conscious beings - our birth - our self-hood in its long stream of becoming throughout our life - our death and apparent annihilation. This is the Reality that we each of us must face if we are to live and adventure as free and responsible beings and not as mere playthings of chance and circumstance, going through a mean­ ingless farce from birth to death with the search ever for distraction and self-forgetfulness. As a brain scientist I have specialist knowledge of that wonderful part of the body that is alone concerned in the whole Iife-Iong interplay between the conscious self and the extern al world, including other selves.

• Gehirn
• Philosophische Anthropologie
• birth
• brain
• death
• education
• evolution
• memory

• Department of Physiology, School of Medicine and Dentistry, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, USA

  John C. Eccles

Policies and ethics