Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick has taken to attacking a fellow laureate in public of late. Crick recently told a University of California, San Diego audience that a two-year-old book, Neural Darwinism, The Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (Basic Books, 1987) by Nobelist Gerald M. Edelman makes misleading claims for itself. Crick quoted Edelman’s description of the book as “a radically new view of the function of the brain and the nervous system.”
Crick admits that the book contains “a number of sensible remarks and good ideas,” specifically citing Edelman’s theory that after neuronal connections are made at the initial stage they are not changed thereafter. But he went on to tell his UCSD audience that, “Readers should not be misled into surmising that since parts of the book are good, then the whole of it must be good. That is not the case.” The simulations used in the book ...
