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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... become a parking lot, only about half of the earth's land is accessible to vehicles with wheels or tracks, but most of the earth's land is accessible to vehicles with feet: animals, the vehicles designed by natural selection. But legs ...
... become smarter and more powerful, the anxiety has waned. Today's ubiquitous, networked computers have an unprecedented ability to do mischief should they ever go to the bad. But the only mayhem comes from unpredictable chaos or from ...
... becoming captain of the volunteer fire department, and leaving little love notes around the house for their wives. People find these discoveries arresting, even incredible. The discoveries cast doubt on the autonomous “I” that we all ...
... brain patches to implement very different programs. Only when the program is run does the coherence become evident. As Tooby and Cosmides have written, There are birds that migrate by the stars, bats that Standard Equipment 25.
... become nauseated and avoid certain foods. Though their sickness is usually explained away as a side effect of hormones, there is no reason that hormones should induce nausea and food aversions rather than, say, hyperactivity ...