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
Results 6-10 of 88
... comes from our genetic program, but that does not mean that there is a gene for every trait or that learning is less important than we used to think. The mind is an adaptation designed by natural selection, but that does not mean that ...
... comes from a special thing the brain does, which makes us see, think, feel, choose, and act. That special thing is information processing, or computation. Information and computation reside in patterns of data and in relations of logic ...
... comes from a complex interaction between the processor and the input. When trying to understand how a car works, one cannot neglect the engine or the gasoline or the driver. All are important factors. The sound coming out of this CD ...
... comes from. But this book is about how the mind works, not about why some people's minds might work a bit better in certain ways than other people's minds. The evidence suggests that humans everywhere on the planet see, talk, and think ...
... comes from the vertebrate eye. Just as a watch has too many finely meshing parts (gears, springs, pivots, and so on) to have been assembled by a tornado or a river eddy, entailing instead the design of a watchmaker, the eye has too many ...