Daniel Tammet's "Embracing the Wide Sky"

Tammet is a "high functioning" autistic famous for reciting pi to over 22,000 places from memory and for demonstrating the ability to learn conversational level Icelandic in one week. There are a number of documentaries on him.

I've read his earlier book Born on a Blue Day, an autobiographical book, and enjoyed it immensely (see here). This new book by Tammet is a serious work of non-fiction in which he presents his ideas of the human mind. It does a very good job of covering this subject by referring to research and data over a wide range of aspects of mental life. In that sense it is very informative. But this book didn't charm me as much as his autobiography. While I would recommend this book as a solid read, it isn't a book that I'm going to put on my favourite list because it didn't catch my imagination.

This is an excellent introduction to the mind, what science knows of how the mind works, some theories of mental processing, and closes with Tammet arguing against those who see minds and machines growing together. He sees a fundamental divide between mind and machine. Back in the 1960s I remember wresting with the book of essays entitled Minds and Machines edited by Alan Ross Anderson. In particular, I was instintively opposed to the thesis of J. R. Lucas in his essay "Minds, Machines and Gödel" which claimed that Gödel's incompleteness theorem establishes that minds and machines are different substances because machines are incomplete, limited systems while mind is open and unending. This kind of rapturous idealization of the human mind is something I don't buy. I watched my mother suffer on her deathbed from left neglect syndrome. It was only too obvious that the "mind" is but a brain and an impaired brain limits our data processing, understanding, and interaction with the world. So I part company with those who want to imput some special vitalism to "mind" that separates it from "matter". I acknowledge that humans are wonderful, minds are deeply mysterious, but so is the universe and life and physical law. I see no insuperable boundary between "mind" and "matter".

Don't let my philosophical quibble with Tammet keep you from this book. It is a very good book for the general reader looking for an introduction. It provides a nicely comprehensive look at research and what is known. There are no obvious gaffs or flaws in his writing. He is a very interesting person, and I have great sympathy with his repeated attempts in this book to get people to see autistics as "just people" with a different wiring. He introduces us to a number of high functioning, very creative people with autism. His own life is a wonderful testament to overcoming physical problems and the ability for a high functioning autistic person to be a wonderful contributor to human society, our culture, and our knowledge.