By Robert Jensen. Baylor’s Eagleman, neuroscientist and author who works in the space between the materialist and the mystic — “where anything’s possible” — may well become “the Carl Sagan of the brain, explaining the billions and billions of neurons in our head to a curious public.” In studying the nature of consciousness, Eagleman tells us that the goal of his research “is to reduce the mystery, but that doesn’t reduce the awe.”