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 | | How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker ISBN-10: 9780965838047 ISBN-10: 0-9658380-4-8 ISBN-13: 9780965838047 ISBN-13: 978-0-9658380-4-7 Paperback 1999-01-01 W. W. Norton & Company Find Lowest Price |
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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. | ||
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. | ||
Reviews | ||
Amazing! One of the best books about how the mind works out there (true to the name of the book). Stephen Pinker is a great writer; his writing is both easy to read and informative. He has a flair for words and uses humor to enrich the reading experience. Scientific and potentially life-changing, if you are interested at all in how people function and want to be amazed at the intricacies of the brain, read this book! | ||
Steven Pinker is a Linguist Who Knows How to Write Prose That title is not my own, I must admit. I believe Matt Ridley wrote something to that effect in his book "Genome" when referencing Steven Pinker's "How the Mind Works" and "The Language Instinct". No doubt that "How the Mind Works" is a book which describes exactly that, how various parts of the human brain work, but much more interestingly it also delves deep into the evolution of the human species and how natural selection might have shaped how our physical minds and our cognitive skills developed. And, Steven Pinker is indeed a science writer who is able to write about his area of expertise and make it accessible, interesting and even funny at times. Though, I do think some of his pop culture references might easily become a bit dated and a few of them are obscure enough to escape recognition by a fairly broad cross section of readers. In the end, a very informative book and well worth the time. | ||
Dense reading and a dissatisfying conclusion Trying to explain "how the mind works" is a big job. Steven Pinker has convinced himself that he's up to the task. It's a thickish book, and the text is dense. I think the earlier chapters are particularly heavy-going; I often had to put the book down for a week or two before I felt ready to come back to it. Pinker steps through practically every facet of humankind and society and uses theories of evolutionary biology to try and explain how it all makes sense. As he progresses through vision, family, allies and enemies, music, humour, art and religion, I found his reasoning more and more vague and dissatisfying. As he says himself, maybe it's not possible to use Darwin's hypotheses to explain some things (like why we enjoy laughing at a good joke). It's not possible to be an expert in every field, but this seems to be the attitude. I was particularly irked by his use of some religious quotations out of context to support his argument, and - as a musician - I thought his chapter on music fell a little flat (pun intended). It is an interesting (if self-indulgent) book, written by an obviously highly intelligent man, and I'm glad I came across it. Just remember to read it with a grain of salt. | ||
Amazing Author & Book Indeed This is simply an excellent book. Steven Pinker has masterfully taken on a very complex subject and made it into an enjoyable read. It truly makes one "think" about how ones mind works. It makes one appreciate the value of things we take for granted, like our ability to see, think, talk, walk, desire, feel, react, etc. It's philosohpy, science, psychology, sociology all come together to explain issues that are very complex and difficult for many of us to get our minds around. This book or at least parts of it should be taught in high schools. I'm sure it will have amazing impact and be an eye openner for many of our youth. Job well done, Mr. Pinker! | ||
Good science, practical Darwinism, but don't get your hopes up Two ideas run throughout this attempt to answer some very big questions: how the human mind got the way it is, how it works, and how people directed by minds interact with each other in society. One idea is "don't ignore the data": Pinker's explanations of how vision and perception work build on what experiments show, and are careful not to add anything based on what might make sense, but is not borne out by the data. The other idea, related, is that Darwinian evolution is not, as it's often understood, "survival of the fittest". It is something much more boring and precise. Random genetic changes, whose performance, expressed in a human being's life, lead to actually producing fewer children, die out. Genetic changes that lead to people who have more children, survive. At any given generation, the more "fit" genes are more common. Perhaps you can identify the people with those more common, "fit" genes, perhaps you can't. Pinker takes these two ideas and does pretty well at explaining a whole lot of human perception and behavior. But from there to any conclusions about how we should behave, or even how we should best live with ourselves and each other, is way out of scope. So if you're prepared to read an interesting book, say "Aha!" a few times, but to keep yourself in check about applying what you've learned, then go for it. | ||
 | | Guided Meditation. Creative Visualization for Generating Energy and Managing Stress by Robert Edward Fussell, Gary M. Smith, Robert, E. Fussell ISBN-10: 9780965838047 ISBN-10: 0-9658380-4-8 ISBN-13: 9780965838047 ISBN-13: 978-0-9658380-4-7 Mass Market Paperback 1999-10-01 Chatgris Press Find Lowest Price |