The large, the small and the human mind

Roger Penrose is well known for his work on singularities in General relativity, and more recently for his controversial ideas about quantum theory and the mind, as described in his books 'The Emperors New Mind' and 'Shadows of the Mind'. However those books are long and somewhat intimidating for the novice. This is a shorter book dealing with these ideas. One thing I noticed is that Penrose is very skillful in getting a lot of material into a short book, with good use of diagrams. The first chapter is about cosmology, the second about quantum mechanics. These make an excellent non-technical introduction to these subjects.

The third chapter concerns Penrose's more controversial ideas, bringing in Godels theorem, artificial intelligence and non-periodic tiling, which and makes an entertaining read, even if you don't believe the claims. The first three chapters make up the bulk of the book. At the end there are comments on Penrose's ideas from Abner Shimony, Nancy Cartwright and Stephen Hawking and a reply to these comments from Penrose. This last section is somewhat different in style from the rest, comprising mostly philosophical discussions.