Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul [Paperback]

Traditionally, the human soul is regarded as a nonphysical concept that can only be examined by psychiatrists and theologists. In his new book,The Astonishing Hypothesis,Nobel Laureate Francis Crick boldly straddles the line between science and spirituality by examining the soul from the standpoint of a modern scientist, basing the soul's existence and function on an in-depth examination of how the human brain sees. Francis Crickis the British physicist and biochemist who collaborated with James D. Watson in the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA, for which they received the Nobel Prize in 1962. He is the author ofWhat Mad Pursuit, Life Itself,andMolecules and Men.Dr. Crick lectures widely all over the world to both professional and lay audiences, and is a Distinguished Research Professor at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California.Chapter 1

Introduction
Q: What is the soul?

A: The soul is a living being without a body, having reason and free will.

Roman Catholic catechism

The Astonishing Hypothesis is that You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased it: You're nothing but a pack of neurons. This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people alive today that it can truly be called astonishing.

The interest of human beings in the nature of the world, and about their own natures in particular, is found in one form or another in all peoples and tribes, however primitive. It goes back to the earliest times from which we have written records and almost certainly from before that, to judge from the widespread occurrence of careful human burial. Most religions hold that some kind of spirit exists that persists after one's bodily death and, to some degree, embodielã!