660 pages
English language
Published Nov. 7, 1999 by W.W. Norton.
"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
Makes you think a lot on how we think. Lots of examples to illustrate each explanation.
I liked the book, i think it is an intellectually stimulating piece of work. My main objection is Pinker's notion that behaviour is adapted to a Stone Age way of life and cannot cope wery well with the modernity of Space Age world.
'Our brains', he writes, 'are not wired to cope with anonymous crowds, schooling, written language, governments, police, courts, armies, modern medicine, formal social institutions, high technology, and other newcomers to the human experience.'
I cannot understant it. Why not? Is the human mind that created all these and many more, after all.
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