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In this extraordinary book, 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
bestseller, 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, clarity,
and verve that earned The Language Instinct worldwide
critical acclaim and awards from major scientific societies.
Pinker explains the mind by "reverse-engineering"
it -- figuring out what natural selection designed it to
accomplish in the environment in which we evolved. The mind,
he writes, is a system of "organs of computation"
that allowed our ancestors to understand and outsmart objects,
animals, plants, and each other.
How the Mind Works explains many
of the imponderables of everyday life. Why does a face look
more attractive with makeup? How do "Magic-Eye"
3-D stereograms work? Why do we feel that a run of heads
makes the coin more likely to land tails? Why is the thought
of eating worms disgusting? Why do men challenge each other
to duels and murder their ex-wives? Why are children bratty?
Why do fools fall in love? Why are we soothed by paintings
and music? And why do puzzles like the self, free will,
and consciousness leave us dizzy?
The arguments in the book are as bold as
its title. Pinker rehabilitates unfashionable ideas, such
as that the mind is a computer and that human nature was
shaped by natural selection. And he challenges fashionable
ones, such as that passionate emotions are irrational, that
parents socialize their children, that creativity springs
from the unconscious, that nature is good and modern society
corrupting, and that art and religion are expressions of
our higher spiritual yearnings.
How the Mind Works presents a big
picture, but it is not a personal musing; it is a grand
synthesis of the most satisfying explanation of our mental
life that have been proposed in cognitive science and evolutionary
biology, with insights from disciplines ranging from neuroscience
to economics and social psychology. It is also fascinating,
provocative, and thoroughly entertaining.
Steven Pinker is professor of psychology
and director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was educated
at McGill and Harvard, and taught at Harvard and Stanford
before moving to MIT. He has won numerous awards for his
research, teaching, and books on visual cognition and language,
and has written for Time, The New Republic,
and the New York Times.
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