The River of Consciousness

　　《意識之川流》是薩克斯去世前兩星期，親自擬定內容的最後一本書。

　　不同於過往的每一本著作，各自聚焦在神經醫學的特定主題，

　　薩克斯在《意識之川流》中，展現了他範圍寬廣的專業與熱情，

　　他在神經科學、精神醫學、生物演化、藝術等眾多議題之間流暢游移，

　　並重新描摹了他心儀的三位科學英雄——達爾文、佛洛伊德、詹姆斯。



　　薩克斯和達爾文一樣，喜愛蒐集案例，是極其敏銳的觀察者和詮釋者；

　　薩克斯和佛洛伊德一樣，渴望了解人類行為與心靈中最神祕的部分；

　　薩克斯也和詹姆斯一樣，著迷於探究時間感、意識流、記憶和創意。

　　《意識之川流》就在薩克斯與這三位先哲跨越時空的智慧激盪下，

　　散發出人類意識最動人的光芒。



好評推薦



　　薩克斯知道讀者會想念他，在離世前特別遺留了這十篇文章。

　　的確，我們有福了。我在一個晚上讀完了這些文章，薩克斯旁徵博引，

　　描寫了花瓣、照相機、炸彈……當然還有神經元。

　　他也解釋了時間、記憶和學習本身的重要性。

　　薩克斯做了偉大先知能做的事情，把我們帶到我們自己永遠無法發現的地方。

　　——潔倫（Hope Jahren），植物學家、《樹，記得自己的童年》作者



　　每一頁都充滿活力、好奇、熱誠......以及薩克斯對新思想經驗的開放態度......

　　這是他過去所有作品的綜合展現。

　　——《紐約時報書評》



　　閱讀《意識之川流》，就像凝視著不斷變化的溪流，

　　你能夠看穿水流激盪之下，小卵石如何移動.......

　　薩克斯邀請讀者進入他的心靈，從他非凡的洞察力角度來體驗世界。

　　——《科學新聞》雜誌



　　本文取自天下文化出版《意識之川流：薩克斯優游於達爾文、佛洛伊德、詹姆斯的思想世界》

From the bestselling author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, a collection of essays that displays Oliver Sacks’s passionate engagement with the most compelling ideas of human endeavor: evolution, creativity, memory, time, consciousness, and experience.

＂Curious, avid and thrillingly fluent.＂ --The New York Times Book Review

In the pieces that comprise The River of Consciousness, Dr. Sacks takes on evolution, botany, chemistry, medicine, neuroscience, and the arts, and calls upon his great scientific and creative heroes--above all, Darwin, Freud, and William James. For Sacks, these thinkers were constant companions from an early age. The questions they explored--the meaning of evolution, the roots of creativity, and the nature of consciousness--lie at the heart of science and of this book.

The River of Consciousness demonstrates Sacks’s unparalleled ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless endeavor to understand what makes us human.

Oliver Sacks was a physician, writer, and professor of neurology. Born in London in 1933, he moved to New York City in 1965, where he launched his medical career and began writing case studies of his patients. Called the ＂poet laureate of medicine＂ by The New York Times, Sacks is the author of more than a dozen books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, Awakenings (which inspired an Oscar-nominated film and a play by Harold Pinter), On the Move, and Gratitude. He was the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees and was made a Commander of the British Empire in 2008 for services to medicine. He died in 2015.