Competition: come up with a book title!

June 29, 2018 • 10:26 am

by Matthew Cobb

For the last three years I have been writing a popular science book, and I’m now getting to the final stretch, but I don’t have a satisfactory title. So, I’m looking to readers for inspiration. Please pitch in with your suggestions in the comments, and if myself and the publishers choose your title, you get a free, signed book, your name mentioned in the Acknowledgements and my eternal gratitude.

Here’s the difficult part – what the book is about.

It is a history of our ideas about how the brain works. It starts in pre-history (when we thought everything was about the heart) and goes through the ideas that have been put forward, right up to the present day and even to tomorrow. There is lots of science in there, but also some philosophy from the 17th and 18th centuries.

It is NOT a history of brain anatomy, a history of the Hard Problem (how consciousness arises), a history of neuroscience or a history of psychology, but it does contain some of these things.

The book looks at how the metaphors we have used about how the brain works have changed with technology (to put it crudely: hydraulics -> electricity -> telephone exchange -> computer -> network), but also how they are all inherently unsatisfactory. That’s the challenge – getting over this idea in something snappy.

My original working title was: Thinking Matter – A History of How the Brain Works. This has the advantage of being clever and referring to the first debate about the material basis of thought, in the late 17th century, when Locke suggested there might be ‘thinking matter’. But it’s been used a couple of times before, and the sales team at my publishers (Profile Books in London) thought it was meh. So at the moment it’s informally called ‘The Brain Book’.

In case it inspires you, the chapter titles are currently taken from quotes used in that chapter, so have varying contemporary styles. Those I’ve written so far (takes us up to the post-war world) are:

1. We feel here

2. Where is fancy bred

3. Souls of wheels and springs

4. The electric fluid

5. The bump for theft

6. Most marvellous atoms of matter

7. The functions of the brain

8. An infinite series of switches

9. One way to understand a mechanism is to make that mechanism

10. The fundamental feature of neural machinery

11. A neurophysiological postulate

That’s it. Good luck!

279 thoughts on “Competition: come up with a book title!”

  3. Thoughts on thinking: How we think we thInk.

    Thought

    Thunk

    Thinking about thInking matter

  6. ‘Engines of Consciousness’ or ‘Engines of ____ – some obscure enlightenment term for mind

    I’m trying to call if Shakespeare had a metaphor for mind that used ‘devices’? I could swear he had something that was apt but I’m probably recalling incorrectly because MC would know it already.

    1. There is a quote from Henry V: ““All things are ready, if our mind be so.” Hence, how about:

      IF OUR MIND BE SO: A PROGRESS OF METAPHORS FOR THE BRAIN

      1. Speaking of must-have quotes, how about

        If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.

        –Emerson M. Pugh

  10. Trying to work in some terms suggestive of 19thC machines, and perhaps computers too:

    Intricate Mechanisms of Thought — Three Centuries of Analogies for the Brain

    Tubes, Wires & Dreams — A History of How the Brain might Work.

    Human Thinking Machines — A History.

    The Factory of Ideas — A History of Mechanical Models of Thinking.

  12. As The Light Bulb Goes Off: A History of Ideas About How The Brain Works

    Clockworked: A History of Ideas About How The Brain Works

    Cerebral Musings: A History

  13. “Universe inside a lump of matter: History of the brain’s journey to know itself”

    You’re right — it *is* hard. 🙂

    1. or

      “The Chimneys of Our Brains: Unravelling the History of How the Brain Works”

      or

      “From Noodles to Neurons: Unravelling the History of How the Brain Works”

  16. “Thinking Matter – A History of How the Brain Works” doesn’t seem to reflect the books’ aim, if it is a history of how humans have tried to put thinking into terms that made sense to them.

    “Souls of wheels and springs”, the title of chapter three, was enticing, so why not go for that?

  19. To Find The Mind: A History Of Ideas Framing The Brain In Terms Of Technology – Pros and Cons

    Einstein On Autopilot: Exploration Of Our Brains In The Framework Of Technology, A History

    Einstein On Autopilot: A History Of Ideas About How The Brain Works

  20. The Human Brain: A History from Magic to Science

    Regards,

    John J. Fitzgerald

  23. Matthew, While it usually annoys me when people use words improperly, for some reason when Jerry says he can’t brain today I don’t mind it. In fact I like switching out what it is for what it does in that context. I think you should call your book “Braining,” for it is both about what it is and what it does. LG (PS Unless you think it might be misinterpreted and people might think it is really about braining someone, as in hitting them about the head….that would be bad.)

    1. I like Jerry’s use of “braining” too but I fear your “Braining” title will be assumed to share that use of the word. It sounds like a self-help book for those that think for a living. Actually, I would be interested in such a book. It would have tips like “Make lists of things” and “When you are stuck, go feed the ducks”.

  29. Anatomy’s Final Frontier:
    A history of How the Brain Works

    The Brain of Ages:
    A history of How the Brain Works

    The Matter of Thought
    A History of How the Brain Works

  31. “Secretions of thought”

    From a quote by Charles Darwin: “Why should we consider it more wonderful that the brain secretes thought than that bodies interact without contact?”

  32. “The Brain in History”, with apologies to the Lewis Mumford classic, “The City in History”. Has portentousness and heft.

  37. As much of the book no doubt chronicles how little we know about the brain, how about:

    “Mind: The Gap”

  38. “A Genealogy of the Conceptual Brain”

    would give the idea of the history of how we have thought about the brain, but also the idea of the brain’s evolutionary history

  39. There are many good ones above, but why not:

    “It’s Braining Inside: brain models from past to present”.

    “Storm Braining: the curious history of our thoughts about our brains”.
    H

    1. Brainstorm: The Crisis Of The Definition Of Mind, Historical And Scientific Perpectives

  41. Matthew:
    How about,
    The Heartless Brain!
    And How matter allows us to think!
    Jim.

  43. Cognitive Interchange – A History of How the Brain Works; how we got from there to here.

  44. So I’ve had some beers & a quiche to balance my manliness…

    [1] THE BRAIN TARDIS HISTORIFIED: Infinite Time And Relative Dimension Space mapped to two pints of Monkey grey goo

    [2] TWO PINTS OF GOD: The history of our infinite imagination machine

    “GOD” in the title is a big seller of any book! Jerry shudda put “GOD” in his last book title – I’m betting he turned down that option! Mistake sales-wise. Big, Big time. Great book undersold

    [3] MONKEY GREY GOO: The most complex known process in the universe toddles, stickily towards understanding itself

    Picture of monkey throwing its own shit at the camera whilst enthusiastically masturbating [My estate agent cousin Bethany, – sells posh to posh – wants to ‘sit’ for this if the price is right. She went to the best schools. Reliable, Discrete, Pert & Delightful]

    [4] UNDERSTANDING ENGINE: The history of the brain understanding itself while not tripping on its shoelaces. Dammit! Feck!

  47. Anyone who wants to win a free book & immortality should understand The Cobb first – an interesting, mostly understated & humorous chap:

    BIOGRAPHY

    I did a BA in Psychology at the University of Sheffield, and went on to do my PhD there, in Psychology and Genetics, looking at the mating behaviour of seven species of fruitfly. Psychology in those days was as much about animal behaviour as it was about human psychology, and I was lucky enough to be in one of the few places in the UK that studied Drosophila behaviour genetics. I decided to make this my research subject when I was a second year undergraduate, having read an article in New Scientist about the recent discovery of the first learning mutant, dunce.

    My first postdoctoral position (1981-1984) was at the Institute of Psychiatry, in London, where I spent my time getting twins drunk. This was interesting, but convinced me that I did not want to do research on human beings.

    At the time, UK science was experiencing some interesting times under the Thatcher government, and it was easier to find work abroad than here. In the middle of the great Miners’ Strike (1984), I moved to France on a Royal Society Science Exchange Programme. I worked at Gif-sur-Yvette, just south of Paris, with Jean-Marc Jallon and was introduced to chemical communication – the study of how animals communicate with each other using their sense of smell and pheromones. One of Jean-Marc’s students, Jean-François Ferveur, became a close friend, and we are still collaborating to this day.

    After the end of my Royal Society grant I was a lecturer in Pyschophysiology at the Université Paris-XIII (Villetaneuse) for 18 months, and then was recruited to the French CNRS (1988). I remained in the CNRS, working first in Orsay, then in Paris, until 2002. During this time I began my work on the sense of smell, using Drosophila maggots as my model organism. From 1995-2002 I studied chemical communication in ants, working at the Laboratoire d’Ecologie in Paris.

    In 2002 I returned to the UK to take up a post as lecturer at the University of Manchester.

    While in Paris I began my work on the history of science, with the encouragement of various historians I met, including Jean Gayon and Michel Morange, whose books I have translated.

    In 2002, I returned to the UK, to take up my post here. In 2007 I was named FLS Teacher of the Year and received the University’s award for Teaching Excellence.

    In 2006 I published The Egg & Sperm Race: The Seventeenth Century Scientists who Unravelled the Secrets of Sex, Life and Growth, and in 2008 the Zoological Society of London gave me an award for Communicating Science.

    In 2009 the French-American Foundation and the Florence Gould Foundation gave me their Translation Prize, jointly with Malcom DeBevoise, for our translation of Michel Morange’s book Life Explained.

    In 2009 I published The Resistance: The French Fight Against the Nazis, a book about the French Resistance in WW2, which won the Anglo-French Society Award, and in 2013 I published Eleven Days in August: The Liberation of Paris, August 1944.

    In 2015 I recently published Life’s Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code (Profile Books in the UK; Basic Books in the US), which was shortlisted for the Royal Society Winton Book Prize.

    I am currently writing a book on the history of our ideas about brain and behaviour, also for Profile Books, entitled Thinking Matter. In 2017 I will be writing a book for OUP’s Very Short Introduction series, on smell

    COPIED FROM HERE

    1. I lost my sense of smell about 5 years ago. I am not however a Drosophila maggot (at least that is what my brain keeps telling me and I trust its conclusions unarguably).

  50. The Dull Scalpel: The Dissection Of The History And Science Of The Brain, What Do We Know?

  58. Or:

    “I Sing the Brain Hydraulic”

    “The Brain Machine”

    “The Brain Machine Through History”

  61. Where Does the Mind Live?
    A History of Brainy Ideas

    The Brain: How We Got Here

    The Thinking Machine
    The Story of Brain Theories

    Explaining the Brain
    The Road from Myth to Theory

    The Matter that Makes a Difference
    How Our Understanding of the Brain Has Evolved

    I’ll try to think of some more. Good luck.

  62. As you are tracing the emergence of a concept … I first thought
    The brain made flesh – in memory of Carl Zimmer’s book The soul made flesh
    but what about
    How the brain was born: A history of thinking about the thinking

    1. about thinking, of course
      So
      How the brain was born: A history of thinking about thinking
      or How the brain was born: a history of thinking through the ages

      [and I can’t wait for the metaphors] (which made me think: Figuring the brain: a history…)

  63. How about something like,

    “Metaphorically thinking”
    or
    “Evolving metaphors”
    or
    “deux et metaphor”

  65. A couple more:
    “Machine Head” (any DP fan out there?)
    “House of Minds”
    “The Soul Machine”

    1. Occasionally I like to listen to their very first album, before they become set – a right old mixture of psychedelia + harmonies + Tom Jonesy-style lead vocal delivery. The other better known albums are over-familiar to my ears.

    1. there’s already a “Brain Story” out there – in case that’s problem :

      The Story of the Brain

      With the same subtitle

  72. That sounds like the kinds of books I’m immersed in for quite a while, which are all about metaphors in thinking and science. Their titles fall into three categories:

    (1) No-nonsense, descriptive, like “How the Mind Works” or “The Way We Think”, often with a more specific subtitle, “Conceptual Blending And The Mind’s Hidden Complexities”. That’s a bit bland, but appears to find their audience (2) Evocative and a bit playful, like “Women, Fire, Dangerous Things”, “the Mind’s I” or (3) short titles that can sound too simple, but come across like the definitive reference book, like “Surfaces & Essences” or just “Metaphor”.

    Your book sounds like a historiography, “the study of the way history has been and is written – the history of historical writing” about mind and brain. So my pick:

    The Mind in the Mirror —
    A Historiography of the Brain

    On Reflection —
    How Mind & Brain Were Viewed Through The Ages

    Both use the “mind as mirror” metaphor, which I suggest, because it includes a sort of recursive element, and thinking about thinking. Cheers.

  73. “Sane in the memebrain”

    “Membranes to Meme brains, a history of thinking about thinking”

    “Membranes to brain memes”

  74. “They thought it worked HOW ?”
    (Sub-title “How people thought brains worked and what we don’t know today.”)

  76. Apologies if someone else has already said this one: Hearts and Minds (then a descriptive sub title)

  79. One more proposal from my husband, David Clarke:

    “Brain-reading: How the story unfolded”

    (like mind reading, but brain)

  80. What is Mind? A History …
    Infinte Reach: A History…
    The US title: “Brain Farts: A Natural History”

  81. Trying some weird ones here :

    Janus and the Mirror – how our understanding of the brain has changed – a 3000-year history

    Alternatively, and more silly :

    Mind in the Mirror

  83. Given this:

    The book looks at how the metaphors we have used about how the brain works have changed with technology (to put it crudely: hydraulics -> electricity -> telephone exchange -> computer -> network), but also how they are all inherently unsatisfactory. That’s the challenge – getting over this idea in something snappy.

    “Minds as Machines” or maybe “the Mechanical Mind”. The tagline would go something like “the history of how we thought our minds worked”.

    Substitute “brain” for “mind” if you like but since people started off thinking it was all about the heart, I don’t think “brain” cuts it.

      1. Subtitle 1: the changing understanding of the brain
        Subtitle 2 : a 3000-year History

  84. Here’s a Thought:
    Tales & History of Imagination

    Anyway, not every title has to be original, so here’s a fallback option:
    Life’s 2nd Greatest Secret
    (I’d still buy it.)

  85. 1. “Metaphorically Thinking: How the brain gets thinking wrong.”

    2. “Metaphors of Metacognition: Or, The Brain Doesn’t Actually Work That Way.”

    3. “Thinking, like nothing else: A history of how the brain works.”

  86. The Thinking Glass – Looking at How Our Understanding of the human brain has changed – a 3000 year history
    [ old woodcut graphic style of Alice climbing into the looking glass ]

  89. Greetings,
    Try with the word Cogito in the title. It’s catchy, and also deals with the most imortan philosopher, regarding thinking and rise of the subject.
    Ana

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