How the Mind Works (Penguin Press Science)
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Amazon.co.uk 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 marvellously fun, awesomely informative survey of modern brain science. Pinker argues that a combination of Darwin's theories and some 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 at the top of the 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.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Big, brash, and a lot of fun.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Why are there so many robots in fiction, but none in real life? Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
36 of 38 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The two leitmotifs of this stimulating book are "the computational theory of mind" and the theory that the mind is an array of "mental organs" that have evolved through natural selection. Kind of like Babbage and Turing meet Darwin and Dawkins. Pinker pulls together material from many sources to illustrate these theories and weaves them together into a compelling overview of the mind.
The computational bits left me feeling out of my depth at several points, but also feeling reassured that this wasn't science lite. And while the evolutionary bits were less challenging - and easier to read - they offered more than enough food for thought.
Apparently some people find the computation plus evolution theory controversial. Others find the ideas old hat. And Pinker himself seems to rub plenty of people up the wrong way for various reasons. Myself, I find the arguments fresh and convincing, and Pinker very enjoyable to read. He covers an awful lot of ground with great gusto, he packs the detail in and makes his points with wry humour.
A book to read once to get the gist and a second time to get the detail.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Like his previous book The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works is popular science at its best: clear, witty, and boldly committed to a specific position within the field, it makes the state of the art in the cognitive neurosciences available to the general public. How the Mind Works presents the most forcefully argued theory of the mind, its origins, and structure that I know of. Highly recommended!
49 of 54 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Steven Pinker is Professor of Psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the renowned books, 'The language instinct' (Penguin, 1995) and 'Words and rules: the ingredients of language' (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000). In this book, described by one reviewer as 'the best book ever written on the human mind', he puts forward a general theory about how and why the human mind works the way it does. Yet it is not a ponderous book; it is beautifully written and full of jokes and stories.
Pinker marries Darwin's theory of evolution to the latest developments in neuroscience and computation. He shows in detail how the process of natural selection shaped our entire neurological networks; how the struggle for survival selects from among our genes those most fit to flourish in our environment. Nature has produced in us bodies, brains and minds attuned to coping intelligently with whatever our environment demands. Housed in our bodies, our minds structure neural networks into adaptive programmes for handling our perceptions. Pinker concludes, "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."
Our beliefs and desires are information, allowing us to create meaning. "Beliefs are inscriptions in memory, desires are goal inscriptions, thinking is computation, perceptions are inscriptions triggered by sensors, trying is executing operations triggered by a goal." Pinker writes that the mind has a 'design stance' for dealing with artefacts, a 'physical stance' for dealing with objects, and an 'intentional stance' for dealing with people. "Causal and inferential roles tend to be in sync because natural selection designed both our perceptual and our inferential modules to work accurately, most of the time, in this world." With this down-to-earth kind of explanation, there is no need to invoke mysterious intangible powers: "We don't need spirits or occult forces to explain intelligence." Pinker sums up the recent amazing developments in neurobiology and cognitive science. This book, like those by his colleagues Daniel Dennett ('Darwin's dangerous idea' and 'Consciousness explained') and Richard Dawkins ('River out of Eden' and 'Unweaving the rainbow'), should be required reading. They are all Darwinians, but then why shouldn't they be? It is just like saying that all physicists are Einsteinians nowadays, or that all poets and playwrights are Shakespeareans, or that all osteopaths are Stillians. Their books make Karl Popper, so hostile to Darwin, and Californian gurus like Fritjof Capra, sadly outdated.
By giving coherent, intelligible accounts of the ways in which our bodies and minds have evolved, writers like Pinker can help us to understand better how and why our bodies work in the ways they do.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Eye eye!
Very good book and it contains my candidate for the merriest ribbing of Freud ever put to paper.
(Some of the minutiae of the section on visual cognition, I admit,... Read more
(Some of the minutiae of the section on visual cognition, I admit,... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Veeaicht
A good read
The title of the book is a bit tongue-in-cheek. It does not explain how the mind creates consciousness or feelings. Read more
Published 6 months ago by J. Penfold
Modern models of the human mind
We make innumerable asumptions about how our minds work, or should work. Closer examination of the evidence reveals just how wrong many of these assumptions are. Read more
Published 14 months ago by anozama
Rather disappointing
If you are interested in how the brain/mind works, I would not start looking here. There book is a long ramble of opinion with little evidence. Read more
Published 15 months ago by M. P. Bell
interesting theories
In Pinker's acclaimed how the mind works we are given a theory, one I find very persuasive, that the mind is a product of the brain. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Den
This Book Is Superb
How anyone seriously interested in the subject matter of this book can only give it one star has me stumped. It is a fantastic introduction to psychology. Read more
Published on 20 Aug 2009 by G. Hunt
Superficial and stimulating!
Steven Pinker is the author of the modular mind theory which is refuted by his colleagues. Further analogies with computer architecture are similarly presented here with his... Read more
Published on 13 Jan 2008 by T. Barnes
The algorithmic mind
Unravelling the mechanisms of human thinking and emotions is garnering increased attention from dedicated scientists and thinkers. Read more
Published on 17 Oct 2005 by Stephen A. Haines
How the Mind Works - an analogy for a review
This is a book (also available in audio-book) which can best be described with an analogy:
It is like a book titled "How a clock works". Read more
Published on 22 April 2005 by David
Fun to read, but not to be confused with a real science book
Steven Pinker manages to entertain tremendously and keep our brain cells working at the same time. His ideas are good, but in my opinion he uses circulair reasoning to prove his... Read more
Published on 29 May 2003 by Sophia Burns
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