If you live in or around Santa Barbara, California, I’d like to invite you to a talk I’ll be giving at the Sage Center for the Study of Mind. It’s called, “Soul Made Flesh: Neuroscience in 1659 and 2009.” I’ll be talking about how the whole science of the brain was launched by alchemists, mystics, and other rogue natural philosophers during the English Civil War, and draw a few lessons for understanding the brain and mind in an age of fMRI scans, brain-machine interfaces, and other remarkable developments. I’ll be drawing on my book, Soul Made Flesh, as well as on my recent columns, articles, and blog posts on the brain.

The talk (which is free) will