"The mind is what the brain does" is one way of thinking about, uh, thinking. How would you describe the brain, and how might your grandparents have described it?
Psychologist and geneticist Matthew Cobb explores the answer in The Idea of the Brain: The Past and Future of Neuroscience. The book describes the insights and dead-ends that have marked our quest to understand the brain.
Cobb shows how our ideas about the brain have been inextricably shaped by the nature of our most advanced technology, from 17th century hydraulics to 21st century computers -- and the limitations of these metaphors. Pull up a chair and think about your brain.