Managing Knowledge: Apply the Discoveries of Neuroscience & Understand the Human Factor
Barry Evans
Code Green Publishing (2011)

How and why each of us “should fill each mercurial moment with conscious living, awareness, and experience.”

Disclaimer: I have not as yet read Barry Evans’ earlier book, The Trousers of Reality – Volume One: Working Life, and thus am unqualified to suggest whether or not that book should be read before this one. Opinions are somewhat divided about that. After I read Trousers One, I’ll add a note to this review of Trousers Two.

In this second volume, Evans makes an important distinction between managing knowledge about knowledge that has become insufficient (if not outdated, obsolete, and indeed inaccurate) and managing knowledge that has only recently been generated by various neurosciences. Increasing, absorbing, and digesting the latter information, he believes, will enable us to “glimpse the beauty of the possibilities, of the peak state, of where evolution can lead human beings if we stay the course.”

As he observes on Page 6, “We are lucky to be living through a singular revolution in the exploration of consciousness. For about four hundred years there has been an accepted model of how we interact with our brain. This has been the model of dualism. It is being re-thought and indeed re-taught. The work and courage of some amazing scientists is challenging our perception of reality. The research in this field is as rich as it is ongoing. You do not have to understand the deep mathematics, the complex psychology or the medical terms in order to start working with what these amazing people are telling us.”

So, what we have in this volume is an abundance of information, insights, and counsel that will help us to increase our understanding of the meaning and significance of the recent discoveries of neuroscience insofar as the human factor is concerned.

These are among the passages of greatest interest and value to me, also listed to suggest the range of subjects that Evans explores with rigor and eloquence:

o It’s Through Doing That We Become (Pages 15-18)
o The Important Principles of Neuroplasticity (21-23)
o The Plastic Principle and Critical Periods (38-39)
o The Resilience of the Brain (54-56)
o Practising Perfection (70-71)
o Reality as a Metaphor (79-80)
o Intrinsic Value (92-93)
o Infinite Paradox Machine (104-107)
o Filtering and Curious Water (133-136)
o Connection Is the Mechanics of Inspiration (151-153)
o How to Connect (154-156)
o The Ladder of Life (161-162)
o Epigenetics (184-186)
o The Slices Out of Context (207-210)
o The Principle of Counterbalance (247-253)

J. H. Flavell was probably the first to use the term metacognition when suggesting that it “refers to one’s knowledge concerning one’s own cognitive processes or anything related to them, e.g., the learning-relevant properties of information or data. For example, I am engaging in metacognition if I notice that I am having more trouble learning A than B; if it strikes me that I should double check C before accepting it as fact.” That was in 1976.

With all due respect to J. H. Flavell’s importance, the first time I encountered the term (metacognition) was years later when, quite by accident, I was browsing through a friend’s copy of Metacognition: Knowing about Knowing, published by MIT Press (1994) and co-edited by Janet Metcalfe and Arthur P. Shimamura. In recent years, I have read and reviewed a number of books that discuss one or more dimensions of metaccognition and am deeply grateful to their authors as well as to Evans for what I have learned. I am by no means a scholar and never will be, an d that is probably true of most people who read Managing Knowledge. It is far more challenging than a primer but will generously reward those who read it with appropriate care.

No brief commentary such as mine can possibly do full justice to the scope of material that Barry Evans provides in this volume but I hope that I have at least suggested why I think so highly of him and his work. Also, I hope that those who read this commentary will be better prepared to determine whether or not they wish to read the book and, in that event, will have at least some idea of how the revelations of recent research in the neurosciences could perhaps be of substantial benefit to them as well as to their own organization.