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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... 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 in Space, the daleks in Dr. Who, Rosie the Maid in The Jetsons, Nomad in ...
... player represents the inextricably intertwined mixture of two crucial variables: the structure of the machine, and the disk you insert into it. Neither can be ignored. These statements are true but useless—so blankly uncomprehending, so ...
... player depends on two crucial variables: the player's mechanical and electronic design, and the quality of the original recording. Neither can be ignored. When we are interested in how much better one system functions than a similar one ...
... played out on the chessboard of opportunities and constraints defined by other people's behavior. A recent cover story in Time asked, “Adultery: Is It in Our Genes?” The question makes no sense because neither adultery nor any other ...
... play within a play, not the interior monologue of the players. Psychological Correctness The evolutionary psychology of this book is a departure from the dominant view of the human mind in our intellectual tradition, which Tooby and ...