WCalvin

Personal

Bio

William H. Calvin, Ph.D. is a neurobiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, the author of fourteen books including The Cerebral Code (MIT Press 1996), How Brains Think (Science Masters 1996), and, with the neurosurgeon George A. Ojemann, Conversations with Neil's Brain (Addison-Wesley 1994).

 

His research interests include the recurrent excitatory circuitry of cerebral cortex used for split-second versions of the Darwinian bootstrapping of quality, the four-fold enlargement of the hominid brain during the ice ages, and the brain reorganization for language and planning. His language book, a collaboration with the linguist Derek Bickerton, is about the evolution of syntax, Lingua ex machina: Reconciling Darwin and Chomsky with the Human Brain (MIT Press, 2000). A Brief History of the Mind: From Apes to Intellect and Beyond tackles the emergence of higher intellectual function.

 

He has long been following the paleoclimate and oceanographic research on the abrupt climate changes of the ice ages, hoping to find a connection to the big-brain problem, and is the author of The Atlantic Monthly's cover story, "The Great Climate Flip-flop." His 2002 book, A Brain for All Seasons: Human Evolution and Abrupt Climate Change, brings his anthropology and climate interests back together again; it won the Phi Beta Kappa Book Award for Science. The latest book is Global Fever: How to Treat Climate Change.

 

URL

http://WilliamCalvin.org

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