How the mind works / Steven Pinker.
By: Pinker, Steven.
Material type: BookPublisher: London : Penguin, 1997Description: xii, 660 p. ; 20 cm + pbk.ISBN: 0140244913.Subject(s): Cognitive neuroscience | Neuropsychology | Natural selection | Human evolution | PsychologyDDC classification: 153Item type | Current library | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
General Lending | MTU Bishopstown Library Lending | 153 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 00071209 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Why do we laugh? What makes memories fade? Why do fools fall in love? Why do people believed in ghosts? How do we recognize a face? How the Mind Works explores every aspect of our brains, showing that our minds are not a mystery, but rather a system designed by natural selection over years of human evolution. Whether looking at optical illusions or religion, Mozart or films, Steven Pinker offers us a new way of understanding ourselves.
'Powerful and gripping . . . To have read it is to have consulted a first draft of the structural plan of the human psyche . . . a glittering tour de force.' Spectator
'Witty popular science that you enjoy reading for the writing as well as for the science . . . He is a top-rate writer, and deserve the superlatives that are lavished on him.' The New York Times
'Pinker has a remarkable capacity to explain difficult ideas and he writes with the comic verve of Martin Amis or Woody Allen . . . How the Mind Works will change the way your mind works.' The Times
Includes bibliographical references (pages 589-625) and index.
Standard equipment -- Thinking machines -- Revenge of the nerds -- The mind's eye -- Good ideas -- Hotheads -- Family values -- The meaning of life.
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Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
MIT's Pinker, who received considerable acclaim for The Language Instinct (LJ 2/1/94), turns his attention to how the mind functions and how and why it evolved as it did. The author relies primarily on the computational theory of mind and the theory of the natural selection of replicators to explain how the mind perceives, reasons, interacts socially, experiences varied emotions, creates, and philosophizes. Drawing upon theory and research from a variety of disciplines (most notably cognitive science and evolutionary biology) and using the principle of "reverse-engineering," Pinker speculates on what the mind was designed to do and how it has evolved into a system of "psychological faculties or mental modules." His latest book is extraordinarily ambitious, often complex, occasionally tedious, frequently entertaining, and consistently challenging. Appropriate for academic and large public libraries.Laurie Bartolini, MacMurray Coll. Lib., Jacksonville, Ill. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.Publishers Weekly Review
In The Language Instinct (1994), Pinker demonstrated that the mind is structured for the learning and producing of language. Here, the director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT widens his scope, explaining the structure of the mind in much of its emotional, perceptive, sexual, problem-solving splendor. He masterfully consolidates decades of research into an integrated "computational theory of mind" that encompasses the range of activities we ascribe to our "mental organ." The theory posits modules (or automatically triggered "agents") made of massively interconnected neurons firing in patterned sequences. These agents act as information processors that break down complicated tasks as diverse as detecting visual edges, finding footholds and feeling disgust. A new twist is the proposition that this system, like language, developed via natural selection to solve specific problems confronting our hunting-and-gathering ancestors. The discussion is thus split between describing how the computation of specific tasks might actually work, as the chapter on vision does superbly, and less computationally demonstrable and thus less concrete discussions of how emotions are adapted to group relations, or of the sort of data one considers when choosing a mate. Though clearly written, the book will be mistaken by few for high literature ("so far this might not sound much better than the barf-up-your-baby theory"), and, while Pinker deliberately leaves many fundamental questions about the mind largely unanswered (such as the origins of sentience and the sense of self), he has a gift for making enormously complicated mechanisms-and human foibles-accessible, and he offers a truly comprehensive vision of how number crunching allowed the seeing, hearing and feeling human parts to evolve within a wondrous, modularized and goal-directed whole. Author tour. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reservedCHOICE Review
Pinker (noted scientist and author of the highly acclaimed The Language Instinct, CH, Jul'94) tells us that "The complex structure of the mind is the subject of this book. Its key idea can be captured in a sentence: The mind is a system of organs of computation, designed by natural selection to solve the kinds of problems our ancestors faced in their foraging way of life...." He also explains that the book is essentially about two of the most important theories developed in recent years: "Cognitive science helps us understand how a mind is possible and what kind of mind we have. Evolutionary biology helps us understand why we have the kind of mind we have." This book clearly and stimulatingly explains the insights these theories offer to the major faculties of the mind: perception, reasoning, emotions, social relations, art, music, literature, humor, religion, and philosophy. The mind is an inherently interesting subject for everyone, and this book is an enjoyable and thought-provoking introduction to important ideas. This reviewer read it--and will read it again (and again), and so will anyone else. All levels. R. Bharath formerly, Northern Michigan UniversityKirkus Book Review
With verve and clarity, the author of The Language Instinct (1993) offers a thought-challenging explanation of why our minds work the way they do. Pinker, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT, synthesizes cognitive science and evolutionary biology to present the human mind as a system of mental modules designed to solve the problems faced by our evolutionary ancestors in their foraging way of life, i.e., understanding and outmaneuvering objects, animals, plants, and other people. He brings together two theories: the computational theory of mind, which says that the processing of information, including desires and beliefs, is the fundamental activity of the brain, and the theory of natural selection. He suggests that four traits of our ancestors may have been prerequisites to the evolution of powers of reasoning: good vision, group living, free hands, and hunting. He believes that human brains, having evolved by the laws of natural selection and genetics, now interact according to laws of cognitive and social psychology, human ecology, and history. He considers in turn perception, reasoning, emotion, social relations, and the so-called higher callings of art, music, literature, religion, and philosophy. (Language is omitted here, having been treated in his earlier work.) What could be heavy going with a less talented guide is an enjoyable expedition with the witty Pinker leading the way. To get his message across he draws on old camp songs, limericks, movie dialogue, optical illusions, logic problems, musical scores, science fiction, and much more. Along the way, he demolishes some cherished notions, especially feminist ones, and has some comforting words for those who struggled through Philosophy 101 (solving philosophical problems is not what the human mind was evolved to do). Fascinating stuff. (b&w drawings) (Author tour)Author notes provided by Syndetics
Steven Pinker is an authority on language and the mind. He is Peter de Florez professor of psychology in the department of brain and cognitive sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.