How the Mind Works"A model of scientific writing: erudite, witty, and clear." —New York Review of Books In this Pulitzer Prize finalist and national bestseller, one of the world's leading cognitive scientists tackles the workings of the human mind. 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. This edition of Pinker's bold and buoyant classic is updated with a new foreword by the author. |
From inside the book
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... adaptive design of living things in terms of selection among replicators. The two ideas make a powerful combination. Cognitive science helps us to understand how a mind is possible and what kind of mind we have. Evolutionary biology ...
... adaptive in that environment. And contrary to the widespread belief that cultures can vary arbitrarily and without limit, surveys of the ethnographic literature show that the peoples of the world share an astonishingly detailed ...
... adaptive outcomes (a point that has been made forcefully by the biologist George Williams and by Dawkins). The textbook argument for natural selection, accepted even by those who feel that selection has been overrated (such as the ...
... adaptive in Darwin's sense. Natural selection is not a guardian angel that hovers over us making sure that our behavior always maximizes biological fitness. Until recently, scientists with an evolutionary bent felt a responsibility to ...
... adaptive explanations for everything we do. Our ancestral environment lacked the institutions that now entice us to nonadaptive choices, such as religious orders, adoption agencies, and pharmaceutical companies, so until very recently ...