How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then And Now (Science Masters Series) - Softcover

Calvin, William H

Softcover

ISBN 10: 046507278X ISBN 13: 9780465072781

Publisher: Basic Books, 1997

Synopsis

If you're good at finding the one right answer to life's multiple-choice questions, you're "smart." But "intelligence" is what you need when contemplating the leftovers in the refrigerator, trying to figure out what might go with them or if you're trying to speak a sentence that you've never spoken before. As Jean Piaget said, intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do, when all the standard answers are inadequate. This book tries to fathom how our inner life evolves from one topic to another, as we create and reject alternatives. Ever since Darwin, we've known that elegant things can emerge (indeed, self-organize) from "simpler" beginnings. And, says theoretical neurophysiologist William H. Calvin, the bootstrapping of new ideas works much like the immune response or the evolution of a new animal species,except that the brain can turn the Darwinian crank a lot faster, on the time scale of thought and action. Drawing on anthropology, evolutionary biology, linguistics, and the neurosciences, Calvin also considers how a more intelligent brain developed using slow biological improvements over the last few million years. Long ago, evolving jack-of-all trades versatility was encouraged by abrupt climate changes. Now, evolving intelligence uses a nonbiological track: augmenting human intelligence and building intelligent machines.

About this title

From the Author:

You can browse chapters of all my books....
HOW BRAINS THINK has a web page at http://weber.u.washington.edu/~wcalvin/bk8.html

and my other books are linked from my home page: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~wcalvin

See also my parallel book from MIT Press

THE CEREBRAL CODE
Thinking a Thought in the Mosaics of the Mind

whose web page is http://weber.u.washington.edu/~wcalvin/bk9.html

Book Description:

A new theory of Intelligence, from a renowned and highly respected writer on brains and evolution

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 046507278X
• ISBN 13: 9780465072781
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 198