Neuropsychology - Paul Broks

Paul Broks trained as a clinical psychologist at Oxford University and went on to specialize in neuropsychology. He has pursued a career combining both clinical practice and basic research. He lives in Cornwall with his wife and two sons and is currently a senior clinical lecturer at Plymouth University. He writes a regular column for Prospect, the British magazine of current affairs and cultural debates.

Broks's Into the Silent Land: Travels in Neuropsychology (Atlantic Monthly Press) was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award 2003. A mix of neurological case stories
Weinstein's beautifully written explorations of life, literature and art reflect some of my own preoccupations with embodiment and the fragile self. The aging and diseased body undermines our pretensions to selfhood; the "It" inevitably subsumes the "I."

So, it turns out that world-famous British physicist Stephen Hawking doesn't believe in a "Heaven" or an afterlife. When we die, our brains shut down and then... nothing.

Death, according to Hawking, is even more of a drag than we thought. No pearly gates, no rebirth, no playing harps on cloud tops. These stories of stuff that happens after death are just that; they're "fairy tales," Hawking told the UK's Guardian in a recent interview.

after he published his book The Grand Design. In it, he cut "God" out of the universal creation equation. "Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist," he wrote.

Hawking drove home his trouble-making ways, saying, "I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."

"Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in," he told the Guardian.

Fundamentally, Hawking bases his argument on M-theory, an extension of string theory, where 11 dimensions are calculated to exist; our 4-dimensional spacetime is therefore only part of the story. The first step in proving the foundations of M-theory could come from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) where supersymmetry particles may be discovered.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• neuroscience
• oxford
• neuropsychology
• neurons
• brain
• neurobiology
• cognitive
• study
• theory
• mind
• death
• afterlife
• soul
• yt:stretch=16:9
• the
• spirit
• ends
• when
• dies
• body
• Mind
• consciousness
• self

[Kindred1a1]

Thank you soooo much. I read his book. Brilliant man