''Wider than the Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness'' is an

English-language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

book A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arr ...

neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, development ...

by the neuroscientist Gerald M. Edelman. Yale University Press published the book in 2004. The book includes a

glossary A glossary (from grc, γλῶσσα, ''glossa''; language, speech, wording) also known as a vocabulary or clavis, is an alphabetical list of Term (language), terms in a particular domain of knowledge with the definitions for those terms. Tradi ...

, a bibliographic note, and an

index Index (or its plural form indices) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Index (''A Certain Magical Index''), a character in the light novel series ''A Certain Magical Index'' * The Index, an item on a Halo megastru ...

. The title alludes to an English-language

poem Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in ...

written by

Emily Dickinson Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massach ...

in about 1862. In that poem, Dickinson describes the

brain A brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as vision. It is the most complex organ in a v ...

as "wider than the sky", "deeper than the sea", and "just the weight of God". In the preface, Edelman describes, as follows, the purpose of the book. The book's content is similar to the 2000 book Edelman co-authored: '' A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination''. Both books put forward the theory of neuronal group selection, also known as

neural Darwinism Neural Darwinism is a biological, and more specifically Darwinian and selectionist, approach to understanding global brain function, originally proposed by American biologist, researcher and Nobel-Prize recipient Gerald Maurice Edelman (July 1, ...

. Both books make a distinction between

primary consciousness Primary consciousness is a term the American biologist Gerald Edelman coined to describe the ability, found in humans and some animals, to integrate observed events with memory to create an awareness of the present and immediate past of the world ar ...

and higher-order consciousness.

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* * * * {{Consciousness 2004 non-fiction books Biology books Books about consciousness