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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 153 EAN: 9780965838047 ISBN: 0393318486 Label: W. W. Norton & Company Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 672 Publication Date: January 01, 1999 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Studio: W. W. Norton & Company Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: Why do fools fall in love? 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-dollar 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 marvelously 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 Bloodthirsty 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 bestseller lists. It belongs on a short shelf alongside such classics as Darwin's Dangerous Idea: 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 ideas pop out as dramatically as those hidden pictures in a Magic Eye 3D stereogram poster, which he also explains in brilliantly lucid prose. Product Description: In this extraordinary bestseller, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading cognitive scientists, does for the rest of the mind what he did for language in his 1994 book, The Language Instinct. He explains what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and ponder the mysteries of life. And he does it with the wit that prompted Mark Ridley to write in the New York Times Book Review, "No other science writer makes me laugh so much. . . . [Pinker] deserves the superlatives that are lavished on him." The arguments in the book are as bold as its title. Pinker rehabilitates some unfashionable ideas, such as that the mind is a computer and that human nature was shaped by natural selection, and challenges fashionable ones, such as that passionate emotions are irrational, that parents socialize their children, and that nature is good and modern society corrupting. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Reverse engineeringDarwin initiated the trend of reverse engineering nature. Capek invented the term robot. Creating robots tests the theory of mind. The computational theory of mind rests on the work of Alan Turing, Alan Newell, Herbert Simon, Marvin Minsky, Hilary Putnam, and Jerry Fodor. John Searle and Roger Penrose have attacked separately the computational theory of mind. Mind is a system of organs. Humans entered the cognitive niche. What was needed includes intelligence, large ... Read More Rating: - Great Fun!This is one of the most fun and interesting books ever. It's very informative too, even if the science may be a bit speculative at times. Where the science is weak, Pinker fills in with incredibly thoughtful good sense. Yeah, the title is a bit overblown, perhaps even illogical, but that's part of the fun. Why give a book a boring or wimpy title? I've seen Steven Pinker in person and he is a genius. I sleep through most lectures, but not his. He's a scientist, humorist, satirist, and an incredibly ... Read More Rating: - Steven Pinker vs. Robert Wright: Who said what first?In the spirit of brevity, Pinker completely reiterates Robert Wright in every sense of the word "reiterates." I won't bore anyone with arbitrary citations. If you are a reader. Read Pinker's "How the Mind Works" and then read Robert Wright's "The Moral Animal," I think anyone will agree after checking the publishing dates that Pinker's is at least not innovative or creative. Rating:  - Good, but with some minor faultsI also read Steven Pinker's `the Blank Slate', which had been recommended by a friend who knew of my interest in the brain and brain-mind area. I was also, as many other reviewers here, impressed again by Pinker's prose style. The witty asides are often apropos and lighten what might otherwise be a dry description of the findings of neuroscience. However, though I like his style, I don't always agree with Pinker and in the cases where I perceive him being wrong, this witty and cheeky style can verge on the ... Read More Rating: - A Logical Mind Interprets and Sees a Logical MindI found this book to be excellent and a fun read. It goes into detail about how one can view the human mind from a logical and behaviorist stand-point. He discusses a computer program type analogy for how a mind can work with a minimum of sub-programs or data types. I did find the book a little too heavy on the logical and strictly behaviorist point of view. The human mind or any mind for that matter seems a bit more than a simple set of instructions - but this may not be the case. ... Read More |
