R. Scott Bakker facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
R. Scott Bakker
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Bakker at SFeraKon 2009
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| Born | February 2, 1967 Simcoe, Ontario, Canada |
| Occupation | Philosopher/Novelist |
| Genre | Science Fiction/Fantasy |
Richard Scott Bakker, born on February 2, 1967, is a writer from Canada who creates exciting fantasy stories. He grew up on a tobacco farm near Simcoe, Canada. Besides writing novels, he is also known for his ideas about how our brains work and how we think.
Contents
R. Scott Bakker's Books
Bakker has written several books, mostly in the fantasy and science fiction genres. He is famous for his long fantasy series and also for thrillers that explore deep ideas about the human mind.
Fantasy and Thriller Books
The Second Apocalypse Series
The Second Apocalypse is a large fantasy series. It is made up of three main parts: The Prince of Nothing, The Aspect-Emperor, and The No-God. When Bakker started writing in the early 2000s, he planned it as a trilogy (three books). However, he had so many characters and ideas that he decided to split each book into its own sub-series.
The Prince of Nothing books were published between 2004 and 2006. The Aspect-Emperor series came out between 2009 and 2017. The final part, The No-God, has not been published yet.
Neuropath: A Science Thriller
While working on his fantasy series, Bakker also wrote a science thriller called Neuropath. This book explores ideas about how our brains and minds work. It was published in 2008.
The Disciple of the Dog: A Detective Story
In 2010, Bakker released another novel called Disciple of the Dog. This book is a detective story. It features a private investigator named Disciple Manning. He has a special memory condition that helps him remember almost everything. The story is about him solving a case involving a missing girl and a small town. Bakker had ideas for more books in this series, but they have not been written yet.
Other Stories and Ideas
Bakker also has some other stories he has been working on. One is called Light, Time, and Gravity. It's a story about a professor remembering his teenage years on a tobacco farm. He also plans an anthology (a collection) of short stories called Atrocity Tales. These short stories are set in the same world as The Second Apocalypse.
He has also mentioned two science fiction novellas (short novels). One is Semantica, which is about a future where people use brain enhancements. The other is The Lollipop Factory, but not much is known about it yet.
Ideas About the Brain and Philosophy
Besides writing fiction, Bakker is also a philosopher. He has developed theories about how our brains work and how we understand the world. He often shares these ideas in essays and talks.
Blind Brain Theory
Bakker's main idea is called the Blind Brain Theory. He first formally mentioned it in his book Neuropath. This theory suggests that our conscious mind only experiences a tiny part of what our brain is actually doing. He compares it to how our eyes have a blind spot, or how we can't see colors outside a certain range.
He argues that our feeling of "now" or our conscious awareness might be like an illusion. It's not that our brain isn't processing information, but that our conscious mind can't access all of it. He thinks that in the future, brain scanning technology might show us how much our brains are influenced without us even knowing it.
The Semantic Apocalypse
In 2008, Bakker gave a talk called The End of the World As We Know It: Neuroscience and the Semantic Apocalypse. In this talk, he talked about how science often replaces old ways of explaining things with new, scientific explanations. He believes this will happen with our understanding of the brain too.
He also talked about how people often ignore their own biases, which are like mental shortcuts that can make us think in certain ways. He uses the idea of a "Magical Belief Lottery" to describe how people hold onto old ideas even when new scientific facts come out.
The Last Magic Show
In 2012, Bakker shared a paper called The Last Magic Show: A Blind Brain Theory for the Appearance of Consciousness. This paper brought together many of his ideas about the brain. He explained that his theory helps describe how consciousness seems to us, rather than how it actually works in the brain.
He uses the idea of a "Recursive System" in the brain. This system has an "open" part (all the information the brain processes) and a "closed" part (the information we are aware of). He calls the limit of what we can be aware of "Informatic Asymmetry." He gives examples like change blindness, where we don't notice big changes in a scene if we're not paying attention. This shows how our conscious mind misses a lot of information.
Bakker also uses the example of a magician's coin trick. The magician uses misdirection to make us think the coin disappears, even though it's still there. He says our brain does something similar, making us feel like we have all the information, even when we don't. He also talks about flicker fusion, which is why we see a rapidly flashing light as steady, like a light bulb.
Other Philosophical Writings
Bakker has also written other essays and articles about his philosophical ideas. These include:
- Through the Brain Darkly (mentioned in 2013)
- Back to Square One (published in 2014)
- Crash Space (a short science fiction story published in 2015)
- The Digital Dionysus (a chapter in a book from 2016)
- From Scripture to Fantasy (a paper published in 2017)
- On Alien Philosophy (a paper published in 2017)
See also
In Spanish: R. Scott Bakker para niños
