The New Books Network History of Science podcast channel recently released an interview by Dr. Morteza Hajizadeh of Dr. Laura R. Kremmel about her 2022 book “Romantic Medicine and the Gothic Imagination; Morbid Anatomies.”
Plato’s “Apology” is a work I have previously read many times before I took it up once again at the beginning of 2023 as the first book in the year’s Big Read, and the charges made against Socrates by his accusers has many times struck me as poignant given my own intellectual interests. However in light of societal events over the past few years, I found the primary charge particularly so.
Examining the idea of “mind” as it does or may exist in a wide range of forms from biological to artificial, Mr. Ball envisions a “space of possible minds” through which he can lead his readers in consideration of a number of questions pertaining to minds that doesn’t privilege the human one.
Philip K. Dick famously asked the question “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” With his new book examining the mental activity during temporary reversible states of unconsciousness in non-human animals, Prof. David M. Peña-Guzmán could be said to ask “What do sheep dream of?”