ABSTRACT
We have now completed an interpretive and introductory survey of the science of cellular neurophysiology and integration. The material has been presented in a way that, hopefully, emphasizes the meaning of the various experiments while still making clear the procedures and results. The book has been organized in such a way that a conceptual thread is maintained, progressing from the simple to the more complex and from the periphery to the central nervous systems. Necessarily, in presenting a body of knowledge of such complexity, the material must be spread over many pages and, probably, many separated hours of the reader’s time. Very often the effect of this dispersion is to dissipate what, perhaps, may be the most important content of a text. That essential content is, of course, the general perspective that emerges as one is exposed to the many details of the experimental material. In other words, the “trees” of the experiments obscure the “forest” of a general theoretical overview. It may also be the case that each individual experiment is not of great importance; any one of their number might make the same point—as, indeed, it must if a body of knowledge is to become a structured science rather than remain only a disordered collection of isolated and trivial facts.
