"How the Mind Works"
Posted on: March 3, 2007 - 11:35am
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"How the Mind Works"
Greetings,
After I complete Jared Diamond's "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" I'm considering reading Stephen Pinker's "How the Mind Works". I'm wondering if anyone would care to comment on the book, either in terms of its validity or even its worth as a read...
"The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous rather than cowardly."
-- Robert Anton Wilson (1932-2007; R.I.S.)
"Don't fuck with the Jesus because the Jesus will fuck you up!"
-- The Jesus
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I highly recommend it. Pinker is an excellent writer, and humorous--a very enjoyable read.
The title may be a little too suggestive perhaps. He outlines the computational theory of mind, gives a rather thorough explanation of how stereo vision works (and how those "magic eye" things exploit assumptions made by stereo vision), and writes a good deal about (then recent, 1999 I think) research in evolutionary psychology, but it's not a book on how the mind works on the nuts and bolts level--neuroscience.
It's a "popularizing" book, essentially. Pinker's focus of study is language acquisition in children, so the majority of the conclusions made in the book are not necessarily his, but he does a good job of shedding light on, and giving voice to, many areas of study in psychology.
Browse some reviews at amazon.
Well, I have both "The language instinct" and "words and rules" by Pinker. Unless Pinker changed his writing style, he is very accessible. I have been meaning to read "how the mind works" as well as "The Blank Slate"
"In the high school halls, in the shopping malls, conform or be cast out" ~ Rush, from Subdivisions