In this sweeping and electrifyingly sceptical book, [Cobb] tells the story of the scientific understanding of the brain, from early philosophers’ intuitions to the balked, frustrated present.

This ambitious intellectual history follows the changing understanding of the brain from antiquity to the present, mainly in Western thought.

In the midst of a public health crisis that is rapidly revealing itself to be a mental health crisis as well, we may need a new idea of the brain — and its limits — as a tool for organizing both medicine and self-understanding. There are clues in Cobb’s books about how to reckon with neuroscience and its limits.

Fuhgeddaboudit, Mr. Cobb says, albeit in his own elegant British prose. Despite unarguable progress in methods of studying the brain, we still haven’t the foggiest idea of how the billions of neurons interact and connect to produce the brain’s activity.

Although scientists still struggle to understand the brain, they know a great deal about it; Cobb, a professor of biological sciences, delivers an excellent overview.