William H. Calvin's Books and Articles

A third-person bio for a more academic audience:

William H. Calvin, Ph.D.

He started out at Northwestern University, graduating with honors in physics in 1961, then spent a year at MIT and Harvard Medical School exploring what later became neurobiology. His Ph.D. was in Physiology & Biophysics at the University of Washington in 1966, under Charles F. Stevens. He has been on the faculty of the University of Washington since then, with a year as Visiting Professor of Neurobiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He is perhaps best known for a dozen books on brains, evolution, and climate, mostly written for general readers. Two are research monographs, both from MIT Press. The Cerebral Code (1996) was on the neural circuitry of cerebral cortex needed for creating a high-quality plan of action, such as a novel sentence to speak aloud. This was followed by Lingua ex machina (2000) on what brain circuitry is needed for Chomsky’s Universal Grammar. Written with the linguist Derek Bickerton, it shows the intersection of neuroscience with linguistics and the study of human origins.

His interest in brain circuitry for planning novel movements of high quality led him to look at how evolutionary processes created new species and improved their “fit” with the environment. He focused on evolution as a process and started writing about his “six essential features” of a process that bootstraps quality -- and the speciation that can subsequently prevent backsliding. Seeing a need for speed in the neural circuitry, he sought an analogy in what had made the human brain enlargement so rapid (three-fold in only 2.5 million years). Climate change speeds up evolution, so back in 1984 he started going to paleoclimate lectures by the ice-core researchers.

This led to his cover story in the Atlantic Monthly (January 1998), “The great climate flip-flop.” It concerns the abrupt climate flips that have occurred several dozen times in the last 100,000 years. He explained how global warming could trigger the next flip from our present warm-and-wet mode into a cool-dry-windy-dusty climate mode (essentially a devastating worldwide drought, developing in 5-10 years’ time).

He enjoys piecing together scientific stories that involve several disciplines. A Brain for All Seasons: Human Evolution and Abrupt Climate Change, his 2002 book from the University of Chicago Press did just that, looking at paleoanthropology and evolutionary dynamics to see how something might have resonated with the abrupt climate changes every few thousand years. Its final chapters are about the future prospects for our civilization and how we must shore it up against sudden shocks – not just climate flips but also pandemics, bioterrorism, and financial panics – much as cathedrals were shored up a thousand years ago using flying buttresses.

The public policy theme appears again in his 2004 book from Oxford University Press, A Brief History of the Mind: From Apes to Intellect and Beyond. “Where does mind go from here, its powers extended by science-enhanced education and new tools – but with its slowly-evolving gut instincts still firmly anchored to the ice ages? We will likely shift mental gears again, into juggling more concepts simultaneously and making decisions even faster – but the faster you go, the more danger of spinning out of control. Ethics, morals, a sense of what’s right are possible only because of a human level of ability to speculate about the future and modify our possible actions accordingly. Though science increasingly serves as our headlights, we are out driving them, going faster than we can react effectively.”

OR, if you prefer first-person narrative style:

William H. Calvin, Ph.D. I am a theoretical neurobiologist, Affiliate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. I’m also affiliated with Emory University's great apes project and on the Board of Advisors to the Foundation for the Future.

By now I have written a dozen books for general readers. My occasional magazine articles include “The emergence of intelligence” for Scientific American (1994) and “The fate of the soul” for Natural History (June 2004). My 1998 cover story for The Atlantic Monthly, "The great climate flip-flop," grew out of my long-standing interest in abrupt climate change and how it influenced the evolution of a chimpanzeelike brain into a more human one. Together, they are the topic of my 2002 book, A Brain for All Seasons: Human Evolution and Abrupt Climate Change; it won the Phi Beta Kappa Book Award for Science.

A Brief History of the Mind: From Apes to Intellect and Beyond from Oxford University Press (2004) addresses what led up to the “Mind’s Big Bang” about 50,000 years ago, a creative explosion compared to the very conservative trends in toolmaking over the previous 2.5 million years. That span featured two million-year-long periods without much progress – despite the growth in brain size. Not only was the brain increase apparently driven by something invisible to archaeology (perhaps cooperation, protolanguage, or throwing accuracy), but if bigger brains were capable of being more clever, it didn’t carry over to toolmaking. The other big puzzle is that our species, Homo sapiens, big brain and all, was around for perhaps 100,000 years without doing too much that was different from their predecessors and from Neanderthals. Our big brain may (or may not) be essential for our higher intellectual functions (creative structured thought), but it sure isn’t sufficient.

My neurobiology research interests primarily concern the neocortical circuits used for detailed planning and for improving the quality of the plan as you “get set,” presumably utilizing a milliseconds-to-minutes version of the same Darwinian process (copying competitions biased by natural selection) seen in the immune response and species evolution on longer time scales. My research monograph, The Cerebral Code: Thinking a Thought in the Mosaics of the Mind (MIT Press, 1996) concerns darwinian processes in neural circuitry that can operate on the time scale of thought and action to resolve ambiguity and shape up novel courses of action. My language book, a collaboration with the linguist Derek Bickerton, is about the evolution of syntax, Lingua ex Machina: Reconciling Darwin and Chomsky with the Human Brain (MIT Press, 2000).

I started out in physics at Northwestern University, then branched out into neurophysiology via studies at MIT, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Washington (Ph.D., Physiology & Biophysics, 1966). I’ve had a long association with academic neurosurgeons and psychiatrists without ever having had to treat a patient. Lately I hang out with the paleoanthropologists and biologists.

Bio

I talk a lot about ape-to-human evolution and all those abrupt climate changes along the way. But mostly I try to extend Darwin's intellectual revolution to brain mechanisms. What sort of darwinian brain wiring allows us, in just a split second, to shape up a better thought?

William H. Calvin is a theoretical neurophysiologist on the faculty of the University of Washington School of Medicine, and author of The Cerebral Code: Thinking a Thought in the Mosaics of the Mind (MIT Press, 1996) on his own research into darwinian processes that operate on the time scale of thought and action. His collaboration with the linguist Derek Bickerton is about the evolution of syntax, Lingua ex Machina: Reconciling Darwin and Chomsky with the Human Brain (MIT Press, 2000). His human evolution book, A Brain for All Seasons: Human Evolution and Abrupt Climate Change, won the Phi Beta Kappa Book Award for "contributions to the literature of science."

He also writes books for general readers, such as How Brains Think, in the widely-translated Science Masters series. The Throwing Madonna, The Cerebral Symphony, and The Ascent of Mind are about brains and evolution. The River That Flows Uphill is about his two-week float trip down the rapids of the Colorado River in the bottom of the Grand Canyon. In Conversations with Neil's Brain, he narrates a long day of neurosurgery for epilepsy, telling stories about how the brain works but focusing on how an internal voice is generated, one that occasionally speaks aloud. His October 1994 Scientific American article explores "The Emergence of Intelligence." A Brief History of the Mind: From Apes to Intellect and Beyond is the latest, from Oxford University Press.

All of his books and recent articles have Web pages.

He started out in physics at Northwestern University, then branched out into neurophysiology via studies at MIT, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Washington (Ph.D., Physiology & Biophysics, 1966). He has had a long association with academic neurosurgeons and psychiatrists "without ever having to treat a patient."

There is a narrative bio at the end of The Cerebral Code, reprinted below:

After an early flirtation with photojournalism and electrical engineering, I majored in physics at Northwestern University (B.A., 1961), spent a year at M.I.T. and Harvard Medical School absorbing the atmosphere of what eventually became known as neuroscience, then went to the University of Washington to do a degree in physiology and biophysics (Ph.D., 1966) working under Charles F. Stevens. I subsequently stayed in Seattle, spending 20 years on the faculty of the Department of Neurological Surgery at the other end of the building, a wonderful postdoctoral education as well as a home for my theoretical and experimental work on neuron repetitive firing mechanisms. After a 1978-79 sabbatical as visiting professor of neurobiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, my interests began to shift toward theoretical issues in the ensemble properties of neural circuits -- and to the big brain problem of hominid evolution. Friends in psychology, zoology, archaeology, and physical anthropology tried hard to educate me as I stumbled into their fields during the 1980s. As I began writing books and royalty advances arrived, I increasingly took unpaid leave, stopped writing grant applications, and shed responsibilities. Other university researchers may spend a third of their time teaching students and coping with the bureaucracy; I now spend about the same proportion of my time writing books for general readers and coping with publishers. For some years now, I have been an affiliate member of the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington -- again a wonderful education, though I am no more a psychiatrist now than I was a neurosurgeon before. Pressed for a specialization, I usually say that I'm a theoretical neurobiologist.

If it's my abrupt climate interests that you need a bio for, consult my climate page. If it is early history, how I got interested in various things, see E. Simon Hanson, "An interview with William H. Calvin," at www.brainconnection.com.

Articles about William H. Calvin

The Atlantic Monthly's Editor's Column "77 NORTH WASHINGTON STREET"

The OMNI Magazine Prime Time interview bio is at http://www.omnimag.com/talk/bios/wcalvin.html

The San Diego Union-Tribune had an excellent feature story by Mark Sauer in their May 22, 1996 issue, using baseball as a lead into the throwing theory for language origins.

There's a feature in the Los Angeles Times.

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