Did the Soul Die in the 1990s? The Making (and Unmaking) of So-Called Consciousness Studies

In the early 1990s, consciousness became a newly respectable focus in neuroscience. Nobel Prize–winning biologist Francis Crick, along with collaborator Christoph Koch, declared that “the time is now ripe for an attack on the neural basis of consciousness.” Around the same time, fellow Nobel laureate Gerald Edelman proposed combining the search for the “neural correlates of consciousness” with a Darwinian, selectionist view of brain function. By 1997, author Tom Wolfe captured his sense of the state of the field in a Forbes article with a headline that seemed to say it all: “Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died.”

In the decades since, the field’s early optimism has faced unexpected challenges. Research emerging from unlikely places—such as intensive care units, operating rooms, hospices, and retreat centers—has begun to chip away at the original vision. These new perspectives are reframing fundamental questions that studies of consciousness seek to answer. 

This event is co-hosted by the Southern California Society for the History of Medicine and The Huntington.