How the Mind Works - Softcover

Pinker, Steven

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140244913 ISBN 13: 9780140244915

Publisher: Penguin, 1999

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Steven Pinker is one of the world's most influential thinkers and writers on the human condition. His popular and highly praised books include The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Sense of Style, The Stuff of Thought, The Blank Slate, How the Mind Works, and The Language Instinct. The recipient of several major awards for his teaching, books, and scientific research, Pinker is Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He also writes frequently for The New York Times, the Guardian and other publications. He has been named Humanist of the Year, Prospect magazine's "The World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals," Foreign Policy's "100 Global Thinkers," and Time magazine's "The 100 Most Influential People in the World Today."

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140244913
• ISBN 13: 9780140244915
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 672