Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language and Life

Campbell attacks Darwin's theory, writing, "One major difficulty is that the central argument of Darwinian theory circles back on itself, explaining nothing." He goes into detail on why evolution is unscientific.

The brain makes decisions along the way as to what information it will process and how it will interpret what it takes in. "All seeing is interpretation" he writes. He describes the "editing" process of the brain: "...that does not imply that memory necessarily preserves the original meaning intact. The brain goes to work on information while it is being stored in memory,interpreting, drawing inferences, making assumptions, fitting it into a context of past experience and knowledge already acquired."

This is a helpful book on information theory, the workings of the brain, and the process of interpreting what one sees. It will open the mind of the nonjudgmental reader.


Grammatical man is also very verbose   July 23, 2003
 8 out of 10 found this review helpful

The grammatical man has been highly recommended by some of the icons of popular science including Martin Gardner (Intellectual Journey of the highest sort) This is however a book that makes that journey too circuitous, sometimes even tortuous, to complete. For a book on information theory it is quite ironic that the average sentence in the book has brain-numbingly little information. Some examples: 'The pioneers of communication theory, cybernetics, and intelligent machines came to recognize that they were dealing with a new set of concepts and a new vocabulary unlike any that the science had previously known' Another hollow pearl 'On this issue, researchers tend to be divided along Chomskyan and anti-Chomskyan lines, some at the extreme edges, others somewhere in no man's land, being shelled by both sides' Fine lines, but vacuous if entire chapters are filled with them. Definitely not a book for the impatient reader or one with a reasonable mathematical aptitude. The book tires itself out after the first five or six chapters by needlessly running around the same Chomskyan and shannonian bushes. You (a person with a little exposure to either of the fields) would find that the same theory is phrased and rephrased in words. I do agree that popular science books need to assume little prior knowledge on the readers part, but that should not mean that a point has to belabored and hammered (eloquently...have to give him that) in. I gave the book three stars because of the the first few chapters. It is a steady boring downhill intellectual journey after that.
Sai


somewhat "outdated"   May 6, 2003
 16 out of 18 found this review helpful

If you're attracted to this book because of an interest in the implications of entropy on various aspects of life, including language and information, then you should keep looking.

This was no doubt a radical and satisfying read when it first came out in the early 1980s, but the subject area has matured since then.

I will recommend the very recent "Mother Nature's Two Laws" by A. D. Kirwan as a fine alternative.


So many insights on "things being", you have to take notes   April 27, 1998
 18 out of 20 found this review helpful

Jeremy Campbell performs an absolutely brilliant work, linking and polishing all the important concepts about every level of the universe, in such a way that even when they are the most arcane and "for-initiated-only" in their respective fields, they become crystal clear and ebulliently alive through the pages. I actually HAD to take notes carefully quoting him, in order to preserve the understanding and the wonder conveyed by the exact writing. An invaluable piece on the uniqueness of information that is a truly unique piece of the richest information itself. A book to be read many times, especially good if you are a scientist battling with specific facts every day and would appreciate to refresh your perspective of what is the universe all about.