Word: brain
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...standard history. Subtitled "A study in the psychology of decorative art," this wittily illustrated volume ranges from a New Yorker cover of Saul Steinberg's to a wall inscription of Pompeii. Gombrich's central thesis concerns the need for order that resides in every human brain. Sometimes nature is accommodating: in hexagonal snowflakes, in the rhythmic chirping of crickets, in the natural laws of gravity and motion. Far more often, the eye sees chaos and the hand seeks to regulate it. The manner of regulation, says Gombrich, exhibits itself in decorative art. From the most elaborate Gothic structures...
BROCA'S BRAIN by Carl Sagan Random House; 347 pages...
From the title essay, which deals with the discovery of 19th century Brain Researcher Paul Broca's own brain in a formaldehyde-filled jar in a Paris museum, to his final speculation on out-of-body experiences and life after death, Carl Sagan (The Dragons of Eden) again balances technical expertise with humanistic thinking. The astronomer is not always successful, as when he tries to relate the psychology of the Big Bang to the experience of birth. But he is unassailable on subjects of pure science: the awesome structure of a grain of salt; the strange, hospitable atmosphere...
DIED. Franz J. Polgar, 79, celebrated mesmerist and mind reader who claimed to have hypnotized more than a million people during his lifetime; of illness resulting from a brain tumor; in Miami. The Hungarian-born Polgar, who held doctorates in economics and psychology, said he discovered his telepathic powers upon recovering from amnesia and aphasia caused by World War I battle wounds. A good snowman who performed on the lecture circuit, he also conducted a lifelong campaign to establish hypnosis as a scientific discipline, especially useful as a substitute for anesthesia during childbirth and in curing the smoking habit...
...spurious charge that the Kremlin doctors, most of them Jews, were poisoning political luminaries in their care. In his terminal paranoia, Stalin came to believe in the plot and suspected that his personal physician was a British agent. As blood vessels began to burst inside his own brain, plunging him into a prolonged agony, the dictator would not let any doctor near him on his deathbed...