Product Description

"Presented with extraordinary lucidity, cogency and panache...Powerful and gripping...To have read [the book] is to have consulted a first draft of the structural plan of the human psyche...a glittering tour de force" - Spectator "Why do memories fade? Why do we lose our tempers? Why do fools fall in love? Pinker's objective in this erudite account is to explore the nature and history of the human mind...He explores computations and evolutions, and then considers how the mind lets us "see, think, feel, interact, and pursue higher callings like art, religion and philosophy" - Sunday Times

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11067 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 672 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Why do fools fall in love? Why does a man's annual salary, on average, increase £375 with each inch of his height? When a crack dealer guns down a rival, how is he just like Alexander Hamilton, whose face is on the 10-dollar bill? How do optical illusions function as windows on the human soul? Cheerful, cheeky, occasionally outrageous MIT psychologist Steven Pinker answers all of the above and more in his marvellously fun, awesomely informative survey of modern brain science. Pinker argues that a combination of Darwin's theories and some canny computer programs are the key to understanding ourselves--but he also throws in apt references to Star Trek, Star Wars, The Far Side, history, literature, W.C. Fields, Mozart, Marilyn Monroe, surrealism, experimental psychology and Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty and his 888 children. If How the Mind Works were a rock show, tickets would be scalped for £100. This book deserved its spot at the top of the bestseller lists. It belongs on a short shelf alongside such classics as Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, by Daniel C. Dennett, and The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology, by Robert Wright. Pinker's startling ideas pop out as dramatically as those hidden pictures in a Magic Eye 3D stereogram poster, which he also explains in brilliantly lucid prose.

About the Author
Steven Pinker is a best-selling author and Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT. "Deserves the superlatives that are lavished on him" - The New York Times Book Review

Customer Reviews

Sparkling, provocative science writing
Steven Pinker is Professor of Psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the renowned books, 'The language instinct' (Penguin, 1995) and 'Words and rules: the ingredients of language' (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000). In this book, described by one reviewer as 'the best book ever written on the human mind', he puts forward a general theory about how and why the human mind works the way it does. Yet it is not a ponderous book; it is beautifully written and full of jokes and stories.

Pinker marries Darwin's theory of evolution to the latest developments in neuroscience and computation. He shows in detail how the process of natural selection shaped our entire neurological networks; how the struggle for survival selects from among our genes those most fit to flourish in our environment. Nature has produced in us bodies, brains and minds attuned to coping intelligently with whatever our environment demands. Housed in our bodies, our minds structure neural networks into adaptive programmes for handling our perceptions. Pinker concludes, "The mind is a system of organs of computation, designed by natural selection to solve the kinds of problems our ancestors faced in their foraging way of life."

Our beliefs and desires are information, allowing us to create meaning. "Beliefs are inscriptions in memory, desires are goal inscriptions, thinking is computation, perceptions are inscriptions triggered by sensors, trying is executing operations triggered by a goal." Pinker writes that the mind has a 'design stance' for dealing with artefacts, a 'physical stance' for dealing with objects, and an 'intentional stance' for dealing with people. "Causal and inferential roles tend to be in sync because natural selection designed both our perceptual and our inferential modules to work accurately, most of the time, in this world." With this down-to-earth kind of explanation, there is no need to invoke mysterious intangible powers: "We don't need spirits or occult forces to explain intelligence." Pinker sums up the recent amazing developments in neurobiology and cognitive science. This book, like those by his colleagues Daniel Dennett ('Darwin's dangerous idea' and 'Consciousness explained') and Richard Dawkins ('River out of Eden' and 'Unweaving the rainbow'), should be required reading. They are all Darwinians, but then why shouldn't they be? It is just like saying that all physicists are Einsteinians nowadays, or that all poets and playwrights are Shakespeareans, or that all osteopaths are Stillians. Their books make Karl Popper, so hostile to Darwin, and Californian gurus like Fritjof Capra, sadly outdated.

By giving coherent, intelligible accounts of the ways in which our bodies and minds have evolved, writers like Pinker can help us to understand better how and why our bodies work in the ways they do.

A real page-turner of heavyweight ideas.
The two leitmotifs of this stimulating book are "the computational theory of mind" and the theory that the mind is an array of "mental organs" that have evolved through natural selection. Kind of like Babbage and Turing meet Darwin and Dawkins. Pinker pulls together material from many sources to illustrate these theories and weaves them together into a compelling overview of the mind.

The computational bits left me feeling out of my depth at several points, but also feeling reassured that this wasn't science lite. And while the evolutionary bits were less challenging - and easier to read - they offered more than enough food for thought.

Apparently some people find the computation plus evolution theory controversial. Others find the ideas old hat. And Pinker himself seems to rub plenty of people up the wrong way for various reasons. Myself, I find the arguments fresh and convincing, and Pinker very enjoyable to read. He covers an awful lot of ground with great gusto, he packs the detail in and makes his points with wry humour.

A book to read once to get the gist and a second time to get the detail.

The algorithmic mind
Unravelling the mechanisms of human thinking and emotions is garnering increased attention from dedicated scientists and thinkers. Old attitudes and preconceptions are being swept away by newer ideas based on firm research. Steven Pinker has assembled these results to provide an outstanding synopsis of cognitive studies. He refers to the old views of the mind's working as "mysteries." Pinker, as a good scientist, applauds the updating of mental "mysteries" to "problems" capable of resolution. He makes no claim to the problems all being solved, or, in a few instances, even being identified. His approach, however, is a refreshing and innovative one, aimed at anyone wishing to gain an understanding of what it means to be human. As might be expected from the man who wrote The Language Instinct, he's a master of illustrative example and with many anecdotes for teaching the reader.

Pinker uses evolutionary roots as the foundation for his presentation. Like it or not, our genes carry a large part of our mental processes. The mind is not a "blank slate," but is born with vast supply of historical information on which to build as it matures. The "cultural environment" so dear to some commentators makes only a small contribution to who we become as adults. Even a child's peer groups influence its development more than does parental input, and by a huge margin. This situation arises because the mind is an algorithmic processor. It is essentially independent of an individual's environment, with a built-in learning capability to select from the wide spectrum of inputs. To Pinker, this essentially unconstrained process is part of the evolutionary path. Children's independence reflects the need of natural selection to sort among "what is" to arrive at what "will be" in the future. There are certainly no guarantees of how development will proceed over generations.

The computational image is based on "problem-solving." When to take a step, avoid predators, seek a mate, find food. Clearly, as Pinker states, computational mind processes are as universal as brains. Therefore, in Pinker's view, each brain develops modules for dealing with these issues. Like any powerful computer, he stresses, the mind depends on parallel processing for flexibility. How else, for example, could the brain control breathing while also thinking about a Mozart string trio? As humans evolved, they either added new problem-solving modules, or improved on the inherited ones. This is an algorithmic process - adding small instructions over time as adaptations to changing conditions. It is clearly a universal evolutionary process that has achieved enormous expression in the human species. Each acquired "tactic" could be passed down through generations, with each successful transmission building on an inherited base.

"The mind is not the brain, but what the brain does," is the key statement of the book. Pinker supports this image with numerous examples of mind/brain functions. Why our brain "sees" a three-dimensional image in a stereographic display when we know the photographs are two dimensional is but one of many instances he cites. The various factors he proposes must not be considered as independent entities, he stresses. The algorithmic processes form a whole, but not one based neither on conflicting elements nor particularly complementary ones. Weightings of importance take place continually, but even the expression of an idea is not a mental "victory" for that particular idea. The human mind's greatest attribute is its flexibility.

As with any of the recent works on cognition, Pinker's analysis isn't the final word. Given the complexity of the mind, that is clearly an impossible goal. Yet Pinker has broached many new concepts in this book. All deserve further careful study. Pinker avoids dogmatism with his elegant treatment. This book is required in furthering your own thinking about our place in nature and deserves respect and attention. He welcomes serious studies in the subject, even if the work appears to refute his ideas. But he insists that the refutation must rely on solid science and not traditional dogmas. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]