How the Mind Works
How the Mind Works Books
- ISBN13: 9780393334777
- Shape up: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
“A develop of scientific writing: erudite, witty, and clear.” —New York Review of Books The Pulitzer Prize finalist and national epic How the Mind Works is a fascinating, provocative work exploring the mysteries of human plotting and behavior. How do we see in three dimensions? How do we remember names and faces? How is it, indeed, that we ponder the nature of our own consciousness? Why do we fall in like? In this bold, extraordinary book, Pinker synthesizes the best of cognitive science and evolutionary biology to clarify what the mind is, how it has evolved, and, ultimately, how it works. This edition includes a new afterword that explores the impact of the book and its relevance today.
Why do fools fall in like? Why does a man’s annual salary, on average, increase $600 with each inch of his height? When a crack dealer guns down a rival, how is he just like Alexander Hamilton, whose face is on the ten-dough bill? How do optical illusions function as windows on the human soul? Cheerful, cheeky, occasionally outrageous MIT psychologist Steven Pinker answers all of the above and more in his wonderfully fun, awesomely informative survey of modern brain science. Pinker argues that Darwin plus canny computer programs are the key to understanding ourselves–but he also throws in apt references to Star Trek, Star Wars, The Far Side, history, literature, W. C. Fields, Mozart, Marilyn Monroe, surrealism, experimental psychology, and Moulay Ismail the Cruel and his 888 children. If How the Mind Works were a rock show, tickets would be scalped for $100. This book deserved its spot as Number One on epic lists. It belongs on a small shelf alongside such classics as Darwin’s Perilous Thought: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, by Daniel C. Dennett, and The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology, by Robert Wright. Pinker’s startling thoughts pop out as dramatically as those hidden pictures in a Key Eye 3D stereogram poster, which he also clarifies in brilliantly lucid prose.
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I too, have read a fantastic number of books about the mind, body, and, spirit, but “How The Mind Works” by Steven Pinker, is a real STINKER ! The book clearly takes home the grand prize in the “HOG-WASH” department ! Textbook of the mind, oh please, people wake up and smell the coffee beans in Brazil ! Sterograms, (key eye pictures), general visualation, music, art, emotions, religion, sex, humor, and philosophy, (I don’t reckon so, Mr. Pinker!) One would better off slapping oneself upside the side of one’s head and being done with it! Back to the real world folks, what a crock of…!
Rating: 2 / 5
This book focuses too much on the material basis for our consciousness, without examining the spiritual drivers of our consciousness as given to us by God.
God made us in his image, so that we may possibly like him as he loved us. He therefore gave us consciousness and language so that we may possibly praise his name. THAT is how the mind, and spirit, works.
Rating: 2 / 5
Don’t be seduced by Pinkermania; he’s trapped in a small box and he won’t be taking a look nearly anytime soon. Edward Oaks couldn’t have said it better in his review:
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9803/articles/oakes.html
Rating: 1 / 5
I tried to read this book, but I was stopped cold when Mr. Pinker declared that there was no such thing as a soul. Outside of any religious sense, I still fail to see how he comes to this conclusion, and how he can justify it. By the use of intricate judgment, I suppose. He is arrogant enough to declare himself an authority; but I remember the real authority Leo Buscaglia saying “I met many PhD’s. When I left the man who had worked with me (in getting his license), I told him ‘Call me if you ever need help.’”
Just my humble attitude.
Rating: 1 / 5
Ordered this book with High hopes…….
Immediately it became clear that this is just another mistaken person in attempts to define and locate the mind.
Statements like “The mind is what the brain does” is SO far off the mark!!!….
I urge that Mr. Pinker read The Implicate Order by David Bohm.
I am Certainly not after lofty definitions of the mind….just helpful ones.
The computational theory of mind misses the mark in a huge way.
It Nearly has an argument viewing from the top of Emergence and the Hierarchy Principle…..nearly….But that too misses the mark…..at least you can see why one would give credit to that argument. Mr. Pinker’s book…i found to be dull, unimaginative and so far off the mark that i cant judge his position at MIT….it is scary that this is the prevailing plotting on the theme. A poor waste of time. Some fascinating thoughts and in rank….but the attempts to tie that into a larger theory makes some pretty wild (and ignorant) assumptions….
Rating: 1 / 5