Saturday 13 April 2013

My next book idea - Sleep...

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After a rather prolonged search, I have settled upon the topic of my next 'book' (the last two books have only been about 24000 words, so are really more like booklets in terms of word length).

The idea is to collect a wide range of my thoughts about Sleep and its place in human life - this will range from some ideas about the 'function' of sleep in animals in a scientific sense - insofar as it known - which is not very far at all - see

http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2009/04/sleep-elaborationawake-pruning-seap.html

via consideration of sleep as a visionary state (shamanism, creativity, dreams of enlightenment, prophecy) to culminate in my understanding of why we, humans, sleep in an ultimate (religious) sense: how we can understand the strange fact that it is a universal experience of Man to be in this peculiar state for about twenty years of a normal lifespan.

I find this a fascinating topic, I think I have something new-ish to say about it; and I am looking forward to putting the book together!

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5 comments:

vanderleun said...

Oh yes, that seems to be a great id.... ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.........

Samson J. said...

Well, I'm excited about it. I find sleep fascinating.

Anonymous said...

Good news! Long ago the sleep researcher Dement was on the radio NPR in USA. He had the chance to give some advice toward the end of the show. It was "Make sleep a priority in your life."

Pheidippides said...

Sounds like an interesting idea - you might want to look into polyphasic sleep, specifically something called the "uberman sleep schedule" for it however, since that involves massive sleep reduction with little to no negative effects.

Bruce Charlton said...

@P - I hadn't heard of this. It looks like a deliberate induction of Narcolepsy. It is also the pattern which parents of young chidlren are often forced to adopt. I can see shamanic-type benefits, but " little to no negative effects" can't be correct, surely. I certainly exerienced problems with this type of regime.