How the Mind Works

by StevenPinker (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $4.93

  In this book, Steven Pinker 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. 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.

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $4.23

  From bestselling author Stephen Pinker, How the Mind Works draws on the latest scientific research to present a blueprint for the most sophisticated machine on Earth: the human brain. Why do we laugh? What makes memories fade? Why do fools fall in love? Why do people believe 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, Stephen Pinker offers us a new way of understating ourselves. Witty, lucid and ultimately enthralling . ( Observer ). 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 fro the writing as well as for the science...He is a top-rate writer, and deserves 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 ). Steven Pinker is a best-selling author and Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for cognitive Neuroscience at MIT. Pinker has been awarded research prizes from the National Academy of Sciences and the American Psychological Association, graduate and undergraduate teaching prizes from MIT, and book prizes from the American Psychological Association, the Linguistics Society of America and the Los Angeles Times . He is the author of How the Mind Works , The Blank Slate , The Better Angels of Our Nature , and The Language Instinct .

• Used

  Hardcover
  1998

  $11.94

  In this follow-up to The Language Instinct , the author extends the Darwinian cognitive approach of his previous book to the mind in general, covering its aspects from vision, memory and consciousness to humour, fear, lust and anger. The book attempts to explain current evolutionary psychology's understanding of the human mind.