How the Mind Works
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.52 (556 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B0064RC9HU |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 369 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-11-16 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
In this delightful, acclaimed best seller, one of the world's leading cognitive scientists tackles the workings of the human mind. This new edition of Pinker's bold and buoyant classic is updated with a new foreword by the author.. What makes us rational-and why are we so often irrational? How do we see in three dimensions? What makes us happy, afraid, angry, disgusted, or sexually aroused? Why do we fall in love? And how do we grapple with the imponderables of morality, religion, and consciousness? How the Mind Works synthesizes the most satisfying explanations of our mental life from cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and other fields to explain what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and contemplate the mysteries of life
Fun and worth reading Well-written for the layperson interested in such matters. Do not, however, imagine this is a science text written for peer-review. It isn't. Pinker inserts his own view throughout the book, often relying on his own experiences reading the science literature or his own conclusions drawn from years of experience in the field of cognitive science and linguistics.Fun and worth reading, particularly the sections on language.. This is the best book I have ever read Amazon Customer I read between 25 and 50 books a year, mostly non fiction. This is the best book I have ever read, but you are warned Pinker is a linguist and is showing off on each of the 500+ pages you will need a dictionary. If you want to understand yourself, spouse and coworkers better read this book.. A treatise on evolutionary psychology Dave Schwinghammer Steven Pinker, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT, argues that the mind is a computational computer. He uses Darwin's concept of reverse engineering to show how most of man's mental and emotional traits evolved.Pinker also shows how the mind was designed by natural selection to solve the kinds of problems our ancestors faced in their hunter/gatherer existence, which may be why we have such trouble explaining such esoteric concepts as consciousness and sentience.Pinker does not have a whole lot of respect for Freud, B.F. Skinner, or the Standard Social Science Model, which views the mind as a blank slate at birth. He