Sandra Blakeslee
Sandra Blakeslee writes about science for the New York Times from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her specialty is neuroscience. Her latest book, The Body Has a Mind of Its Own, co-written with her science-writer son Matthew Blakeslee, will be published in August 2007. She has co-authored On Intelligence with Jeff Hawkins, Phantoms in the Brain with V.S. Ramachandran, and four books on the long-term effects of divorce with Judith Wallerstein. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and returned Peace Corps volunteer (Borneo), she co-directs the Santa Fe Writing Workshop.
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Science and Spirit
Flesh Made Soul: Can a new theory in neuroscience explain spiritual experience to a non-believer?September 25, 1974. I am on the delivery table at a maternity hospital run by Swiss-German midwives in Bafut, Cameroon. My daughter, Abi, arrives at 1:30 a.m. but because no bed is available, I lie awake in the kerosene lamplight waiting for the dawn. Mornings in this West African highland are chilly and calm. Swirls of woodsmoke carpet the ground. On a nearby veranda, the peace is shattered by the high-pitched ululations of a young woman. Her arms are raised above her head, bearing a tiny bundle. It is her dead infant. As she paces up and down, grieving, I reach for my sleeping newborn and hold her to my body, shaking. The next morning, as dawn breaks, I am in a private room and again the ululations pierce the stillness. But this time the sounds convey elation. A grandmother walks the veranda, holding newborn twins—male firstborns—in her arms. |