John C. Eccles

Biography of John Carew Eccles
John Carew Eccles was born in Melbourne, Australia, on January 27th, 1903. He owes much to his early training by his father, William James Eccles, who was a teacher as also was his mother, née Mary Carew. He was awarded an Oxford D. Phil. degree in 1929 for a thesis on Excitation and Inhibition. During this Oxford period research was largely on synaptic transmission both in the central nervous system and peripherally in sympathetic ganglia, smooth and cardiac muscle. Using the newly developed techniques of electrophysiology - amplifiers and cathode ray oscilloscopes.
In addition to this purely scientific study of the brain, Eccles has followed Sherrington in developing a philosophy of the human person that is consonant with the whole of brain science. Various aspects of this philosophy were developed in lectures and broadcast talks, and recently the whole of Eccles' philosophical thought has been brought together in a book entitled Facing Reality published by Springer in the Heidelberg Science Library (1970). Dr Eccles died in 1997.
http://www.nobel.se/laureates/medicine-1963-1-bio.html

Eccles, John Carew- Biographical entry
Eccles was Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at the State University of New York, Buffalo 1968-75. Earlier he was Professor of Physiology at the Australian National University 1951-66 and was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1963 (jointly).
http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bsparcs/biogs/P000382b.htm

John Eccles on Mind and Brain\ by David Pratt
David Pratt
According to the prevailing scientific theory of the mind -- known as "identity theory" -- mental states are identical with physicochemical states of the brain. The brain is regarded as a supercomplex computer in which material processes in the cerebral cortex somehow generate thoughts and feelings. Over the course of several decades, partly in collaboration with the philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper, Eccles has developed an alternative theory of the mind, known as dualist-interactionism. His basic philosophical starting point is one with which theosophists can wholeheartedly agree:

I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity. This belief must be classed as a superstition. . . . we have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world. --Evolution of the Brain, Creation of the Self, p. 241

http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/science/prat-bra.htm

Memories of Sir John Eccles
Donald E. Watson
I met Sir John only once, but I've felt close to him for decades. In 1960, as a postdoctoral fellow in neurophysiology, I first read his classical book, The Physiology of Nerve Cells. Appreciating the intellect and imagination of its author, I adopted him as a role model—like a father.
http://sunflower.com/~dewatson/$eccles.html

Review of "Evolution of the Brain": Creation of the Self\ by John Eccles
Selmer Bringsjord and Joseph A. Daraio
I believe that biological evolution is not simply chance and necessity. That could never have produced us with our values. I can sense with [Sherrington] that evolution may be the instrument of a Purpose, lifting it beyond chance and necessity at least in the transcendence that brought forth human creatures gifted with self-consciousness (Eccles, 1989, p. 116).
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v5/psyche-5-10-bringsjord.html