The Kingdom of Infinite Space: A Portrait of Your Head - Raymond Tallis [epub]

In this pathbreaking book, one of Britain’s most eloquent and original thinkers writes about the head, what happens in it, and how it is and is not connected to our sense of identity and consciousness. Blending science, philosophy, and humor, Raymond Tallis examines the extraordinarily complex relationship we have with our heads. His aim, as he says, “is to turn readers into astonished tourists of the piece of the world that is closest to them, so they never again take for granted the head that looks at them from the mirror.” Readers will delight that this is precisely what he accomplishes.

The voyage begins with a meditation on the self-portrait of a mirror image, followed by a consideration of the head’s various secretions. Tallis contemplates the air we exhale; the subtle meanings of nods, winks, and smiles; the mysteries of hearing, taste, and smell. He discusses the metaphysics of the gaze, the meaning of kissing, and the processes by which the head comes to understand the world. Along the way he offers intriguing digressions on such notions as “having” and “using” one’s head, and enjoying and suffering it. Tallis concludes with his thoughts on the very thing the reader’s head has been doing throughout the book: thinking.

**

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Tallis, a UK poet, novelist, philosopher and professor of geriatric medicine, here combines his talents to produce a ponderous, celebratory tour of the human head which, while thorough, avoids the other-worldly complexities of the brain. Instead, Tallis (The Hand: A Philosophical Inquiry into Human Being) fills his essays with a curious and personal mix of bio-mechanics, philosophy and wonder: "the head harvests sights and sounds and smells and tastes; sequesters indoor and outdoor, private and public, urban and rural air; and ingests food and drink and medicines and worse. And its outputs are as impressively varied." He examines each sense in detail, along with functions such as smiling, blushing, breathing and kissing in playfully-titled chapters ("Head Traffic: Eating, Vomiting and Smoking"). Tallis's mix of history, etymology, literature and science, along with his infectious enthusiasm ("Our ability to pick sounds out of a background of other sounds... is the equivalent of picking out all the ripples associated with one raindrop from a puddle in a downpour") leads him to many interesting points. Readers looking for a thoughtful assessment of what's right behind their noses-without all the tedious neurology-will find this an entertaining, eye-opening experience.

From Booklist

British medical doctor Tallis considers the looks and actions of the human head—without discussing the brain. That would seem like performing trapeze without a net, yet Tallis pulls it off with panache. Notifying readers of his penchant for digression, Tallis appears to meander through the sense organs domiciled in the head, but he unfailingly brings rambles full circle to a central theme: “the great gaps that have opened up between humans and animals.” Tallis doesn’t go so far as to separate humans from the natural world, but he stresses our cultural distance from it in an effervescent writing style. Anatomy, literary quotations, philosophy, and psychology merge in Tallis’ launch from what heads do physiologically (eat, see, breathe, hear, etc.) into the social communication human culture attaches to such bodily functions, shown in the great variety of eye contact, from winking to weeping, among other kinds of facial expression. Creative and proudly humanistic, Tallis’ tour might induce readers to scrutinize their reflections as minutely as Tallis does his own.