I wrote a book on the theoretical concepts of neuroscience, "The brain, in theory" (to be published by Princeton University Press, probably early 2026). Here is a brief summary.

Mainstreams theories of the brain are rooted in engineering concepts, such as computation, code, control, information, reverse-engineering, optimization. Living organisms are machines and the brain is a computer. Remarkably, the fact that cognition is a biological phenomenon appears entirely anecdotical: biology is just “implementation”. This radical claim is routinely taken as an undisputed fact, grounding the entire edifice of brain theory.

But living organisms are not engineered. Engineering is the use of knowledge to solve technical problems, to build artifacts for a purpose, with a plan. Brains were not made by an engineer, and the whole point of Darwin’s theory is precisely that evolution is not a case of engineering.

Does it matter that brains are not assembled but develop, that neurons are not electrical components but living cells? Starting from a discussion of our biological nature, this book critically reviews the major theoretical concepts about the brain – computation, information, prediction, etc. – and concludes that they are poorly suited to the study of biological cognition. Instead, this book proposes to bring life back into brain theory, and to see the brain as a self-organized, developing community of living entities, rather than as an optimized assembly of machine components.

First chapter and table of contents.

This is related to my former work on the epistemology of neuroscience.