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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Steven Pinker. Preface. A. ny book called How the Mind Works had better begin on a note of humility, and I will begin with two. First, we don't understand how the mind works—not nearly as well as we understand how the body works, and ...
... better jokes). By inviting me to spend a year as a Fellow of the Center for Evolutionary Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, they provided an ideal environment for thinking and writing and immeasurable friendship ...
... better the than their human masters. Since 1920, when word robot in his play R.U.R., dramatists have freely conjured them up: Speedy, Cutie, and Dave in Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, Robbie in Forbidden Planet, the flailing canister in Lost ...
... better. Somehow it lets us see the bright outdoor coal as black and the dark indoor snowball as white. That is a happy outcome, because our conscious sensation of color and lightness matches the world as it is rather than the world as ...
... better. Wheels have to roll along an unbroken supporting ridge, but legs can be placed on a series of separate footholds, an extreme example being a ladder. Legs can also be placed to minimize lurching and to step over obstacles. Even ...