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  • Published: 6 October 1995
  • ISBN: 9780099582113
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 480
  • RRP: $37.99

Shadows Of The Mind

A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness



By the author of The Emperor's New Mind

'One of the most important works of the second half of the twentieth-century' The Times

‘One of the most important works…of the twentieth century’ The Times

Shadows of the Mind is a profound exploration of what modern physics has to tell us about the human mind.

A visionary description of what a new physics - one that is adequate to account for our extraordinary brain - might look like. It is also a bold speculation on the biological process that makes consciousness what it is.


In this illuminating book Penrose provides powerful arguments to support his conclusion that there is something in the conscious activity of the brain that transcends computation – something that can’t be explained by present-day science.

  • Published: 6 October 1995
  • ISBN: 9780099582113
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 480
  • RRP: $37.99

About the author

Roger Penrose

Professor Sir Roger Penrose is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. He has received a number of prizes and awards, including the 1988 Wolf Prize for physics which he shared with Stephen Hawking for their joint contribution to our understanding of the universe.

Also by Roger Penrose

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Praise for Shadows Of The Mind

Penrose has come closer than anyone to a rigorous discussion of the most intriguing problems of all: what are we? How do we think? And what is it that makes us human?

The Times

Clearly the product of a brilliant mind

Times Literary Supplement

His book may be the first accessible report to a general readership about the site, if not the actual substance, of the holy grail of consciousness - the precise point where quantum activity interacts with classical physical activity in the brain... His passionate attempt at popular exposition lends importance to a debate that he believes too crucial to be left to the specialists alone

Sunday Times