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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... comes from a different arrangement of objects. in front of another object, dark paper lying on light paper, a ... come from bright regions and small numbers come from dark regions, then large number equals white equals snow and small ...
... comes from the computer scientist Terry Winograd, shows that the straightforward definition of “bachelor” does not capture our intuitions about who fits the category. Knowing who is a bachelor is just common sense, but there's nothing ...
... comes along with intelligence as part of its very essence. It is a recurring theme in our cultural tradition: Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, Promethean fire and Pandora's box, the rampaging Golem, Faust's ...
... comes from the startling similarities between identical twins, who share the genetic recipes that build the mind ... come equipped with so many small parts that it could predestine us to flush the toilet before and after using it or to ...
... comes, of course, from Charles Darwin. He showed how “organs of extreme perfection and complication, which justly excite our admiration” arise not from God's foresight but from the evolution of replicators over immense spans of time. As ...