Author: Pascal Boyer
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300235178
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 393
Book Description
A scientist integrates evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and more to explore the development and workings of human societies. “There is no good reason why human societies should not be described and explained with the same precision and success as the rest of nature.” Thus argues evolutionary psychologist Pascal Boyer in this uniquely innovative book. Integrating recent insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and other fields, Boyer offers precise models of why humans engage in social behaviors such as forming families, tribes, and nations, or creating gender roles. In fascinating, thought-provoking passages, he explores questions such as: Why is there conflict between groups? Why do people believe low-value information such as rumors? Why are there religions? What is social justice? What explains morality? Boyer provides a new picture of cultural transmission that draws on the pragmatics of human communication, the constructive nature of memory in human brains, and human motivation for group formation and cooperation. “Cool and captivating…It will change forever your understanding of society and culture.”—Dan Sperber, co-author of The Enigma of Reason “It is highly recommended…to researchers firmly settled within one of the many single disciplines in question. Not only will they encounter a wealth of information from the humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences, but the book will also serve as an invitation to look beyond the horizons of their own fields.”—Eveline Seghers, Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture
Minds Make Societies
Author: Pascal Boyer
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300235178
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 393
Book Description
A scientist integrates evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and more to explore the development and workings of human societies. “There is no good reason why human societies should not be described and explained with the same precision and success as the rest of nature.” Thus argues evolutionary psychologist Pascal Boyer in this uniquely innovative book. Integrating recent insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and other fields, Boyer offers precise models of why humans engage in social behaviors such as forming families, tribes, and nations, or creating gender roles. In fascinating, thought-provoking passages, he explores questions such as: Why is there conflict between groups? Why do people believe low-value information such as rumors? Why are there religions? What is social justice? What explains morality? Boyer provides a new picture of cultural transmission that draws on the pragmatics of human communication, the constructive nature of memory in human brains, and human motivation for group formation and cooperation. “Cool and captivating…It will change forever your understanding of society and culture.”—Dan Sperber, co-author of The Enigma of Reason “It is highly recommended…to researchers firmly settled within one of the many single disciplines in question. Not only will they encounter a wealth of information from the humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences, but the book will also serve as an invitation to look beyond the horizons of their own fields.”—Eveline Seghers, Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300235178
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 393
Book Description
A scientist integrates evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and more to explore the development and workings of human societies. “There is no good reason why human societies should not be described and explained with the same precision and success as the rest of nature.” Thus argues evolutionary psychologist Pascal Boyer in this uniquely innovative book. Integrating recent insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and other fields, Boyer offers precise models of why humans engage in social behaviors such as forming families, tribes, and nations, or creating gender roles. In fascinating, thought-provoking passages, he explores questions such as: Why is there conflict between groups? Why do people believe low-value information such as rumors? Why are there religions? What is social justice? What explains morality? Boyer provides a new picture of cultural transmission that draws on the pragmatics of human communication, the constructive nature of memory in human brains, and human motivation for group formation and cooperation. “Cool and captivating…It will change forever your understanding of society and culture.”—Dan Sperber, co-author of The Enigma of Reason “It is highly recommended…to researchers firmly settled within one of the many single disciplines in question. Not only will they encounter a wealth of information from the humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences, but the book will also serve as an invitation to look beyond the horizons of their own fields.”—Eveline Seghers, Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture
Actual Minds, Possible Worlds
Author: Jerome S. BRUNER
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674029011
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
Drawing on recent work in literary theory, linguistics, and symbolic anthropology, as well as cognitive and developmental psychology Professor Bruner examines the mental acts that enter into the imaginative creation of possible worlds, and he shows how the activity of imaginary world making undergirds human science, literature, and philosophy, as well as everyday thinking, and even our sense of self. - Publisher.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674029011
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
Drawing on recent work in literary theory, linguistics, and symbolic anthropology, as well as cognitive and developmental psychology Professor Bruner examines the mental acts that enter into the imaginative creation of possible worlds, and he shows how the activity of imaginary world making undergirds human science, literature, and philosophy, as well as everyday thinking, and even our sense of self. - Publisher.
The Book of Minds
Author: Philip Ball
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022679587X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 513
Book Description
Minds and where to find them -- The space of possible minds -- All the things you are -- Waking up to the world -- Solomon's secret -- Aliens on the doorstep -- Machine minds -- Out of this world -- Free to choose -- How to know it all.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022679587X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 513
Book Description
Minds and where to find them -- The space of possible minds -- All the things you are -- Waking up to the world -- Solomon's secret -- Aliens on the doorstep -- Machine minds -- Out of this world -- Free to choose -- How to know it all.
Reading Our Minds
Author: Daniel Barron
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781734420784
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781734420784
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds: 100 New Ways to See the World (Maps for Curious Minds)
Author: Ian Wright
Publisher: The Experiment, LLC
ISBN: 1615196269
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 181
Book Description
A singular atlas of 100 infographic maps from thought-provoking to flat-out fun. And don’t miss the next book in the series, North American Maps for Curious Minds! Publisher’s note: Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds was published in the UK under the title Brilliant Maps. Which countries don’t have rivers? Which ones have North Korean embassies? Who drives on the “wrong” side of the road? How many national economies are bigger than California’s? And where can you still find lions in the wild? You’ll learn answers to these questions and many more in Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds. This one-of-a-kind atlas is packed with eye-opening analysis (Which nations have had female leaders?), whimsical insight (Where can’t you find a McDonald’s?), and surprising connections that illuminate the contours of culture, history, and politics. Each of these 100 maps will change the way you see the world—and your place in it.
Publisher: The Experiment, LLC
ISBN: 1615196269
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 181
Book Description
A singular atlas of 100 infographic maps from thought-provoking to flat-out fun. And don’t miss the next book in the series, North American Maps for Curious Minds! Publisher’s note: Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds was published in the UK under the title Brilliant Maps. Which countries don’t have rivers? Which ones have North Korean embassies? Who drives on the “wrong” side of the road? How many national economies are bigger than California’s? And where can you still find lions in the wild? You’ll learn answers to these questions and many more in Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds. This one-of-a-kind atlas is packed with eye-opening analysis (Which nations have had female leaders?), whimsical insight (Where can’t you find a McDonald’s?), and surprising connections that illuminate the contours of culture, history, and politics. Each of these 100 maps will change the way you see the world—and your place in it.
Markets, Minds, and Money
Author: Miguel Urquiola
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674246608
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 361
Book Description
A colorful history of US research universities, and a market-based theory of their global success. American education has its share of problems, but it excels in at least one area: university-based research. That’s why American universities have produced more Nobel Prize winners than those of the next twenty-nine countries combined. Economist Miguel Urquiola argues that the principal source of this triumph is a free-market approach to higher education. Until the late nineteenth century, research at American universities was largely an afterthought, suffering for the same reason that it now prospers: the free market permits institutional self-rule. Most universities exploited that flexibility to provide what well-heeled families and church benefactors wanted. They taught denominationally appropriate materials and produced the next generation of regional elites, no matter the students’—or their instructors’—competence. These schools were nothing like the German universities that led the world in research and advanced training. The American system only began to shift when certain universities, free to change their business model, realized there was demand in the industrial economy for students who were taught by experts and sorted by talent rather than breeding. Cornell and Johns Hopkins led the way, followed by Harvard, Columbia, and a few dozen others that remain centers of research. By the 1920s the United States was well on its way to producing the best university research. Free markets are not the solution for all educational problems. Urquiola explains why they are less successful at the primary and secondary level, areas in which the United States often lags. But the entrepreneurial spirit has certainly been the key to American leadership in the research sector that is so crucial to economic success.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674246608
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 361
Book Description
A colorful history of US research universities, and a market-based theory of their global success. American education has its share of problems, but it excels in at least one area: university-based research. That’s why American universities have produced more Nobel Prize winners than those of the next twenty-nine countries combined. Economist Miguel Urquiola argues that the principal source of this triumph is a free-market approach to higher education. Until the late nineteenth century, research at American universities was largely an afterthought, suffering for the same reason that it now prospers: the free market permits institutional self-rule. Most universities exploited that flexibility to provide what well-heeled families and church benefactors wanted. They taught denominationally appropriate materials and produced the next generation of regional elites, no matter the students’—or their instructors’—competence. These schools were nothing like the German universities that led the world in research and advanced training. The American system only began to shift when certain universities, free to change their business model, realized there was demand in the industrial economy for students who were taught by experts and sorted by talent rather than breeding. Cornell and Johns Hopkins led the way, followed by Harvard, Columbia, and a few dozen others that remain centers of research. By the 1920s the United States was well on its way to producing the best university research. Free markets are not the solution for all educational problems. Urquiola explains why they are less successful at the primary and secondary level, areas in which the United States often lags. But the entrepreneurial spirit has certainly been the key to American leadership in the research sector that is so crucial to economic success.
Existential Cognition
Author: Ron McClamrock
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226556413
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
While the notion of the mind as information-processor—a kind of computational system—is widely accepted, many scientists and philosophers have assumed that this account of cognition shows that the mind's operations are characterizable independent of their relationship to the external world. Existential Cognition challenges the internalist view of mind, arguing that intelligence, thought, and action cannot be understood in isolation, but only in interaction with the outside world. Arguing that the mind is essentially embedded in the external world, Ron McClamrock provides a schema that allows cognitive scientists to address such long-standing problems in artificial intelligence as the "frame" problem and the issue of "bounded" rationality. Extending this schema to cover progress in other studies of behavior, including language, vision, and action, McClamrock reinterprets the importance of the organism/environment distinction. McClamrock also considers the broader philosophical question of the place of mind in the world, particularly with regard to questions of intentionality, subjectivity, and phenomenology. With implications for philosophy, cognitive and computer science, AI, and psychology, this book synthesizes state-of-the-art work in philosophy and cognitive science on how the mind interacts with the world to produce thoughts, ideas, and actions.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226556413
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
While the notion of the mind as information-processor—a kind of computational system—is widely accepted, many scientists and philosophers have assumed that this account of cognition shows that the mind's operations are characterizable independent of their relationship to the external world. Existential Cognition challenges the internalist view of mind, arguing that intelligence, thought, and action cannot be understood in isolation, but only in interaction with the outside world. Arguing that the mind is essentially embedded in the external world, Ron McClamrock provides a schema that allows cognitive scientists to address such long-standing problems in artificial intelligence as the "frame" problem and the issue of "bounded" rationality. Extending this schema to cover progress in other studies of behavior, including language, vision, and action, McClamrock reinterprets the importance of the organism/environment distinction. McClamrock also considers the broader philosophical question of the place of mind in the world, particularly with regard to questions of intentionality, subjectivity, and phenomenology. With implications for philosophy, cognitive and computer science, AI, and psychology, this book synthesizes state-of-the-art work in philosophy and cognitive science on how the mind interacts with the world to produce thoughts, ideas, and actions.
Brutal Minds
Author: Stanley K. Ridgley
Publisher: Humanix Books
ISBN: 1630062278
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
“If you are scratching your head as to how radicals could have seized control in Washington, and of American media, while defaming American democracy as a ‘white supremacist’ nightmare, look no further than the left’s transformation of American universities into ideological boot camps for Marxist treachery. Brutal Minds is a model of clarity and straight talk about this national tragedy, whose destructive energies have yet to run their course.” —DAVID HOROWITZ, Bestselling Author of Final Battle Much of university life is controlled by subsidized paranoiacs, amateur psychotherapists, neo-Marxist totalitarians, “student affairs professionals” imbued with authoritarian mentality, and racialist thought reformers who run workshops that destroy family ties and traditional beliefs to clear the way for new relationships grounded in racialist ideology. These are the brutal minds who threaten and abuse students in the name of an academic fraud called “antiracist pedagogy.” In Brutal Minds, award-winning professor Stanley K. Ridgley exposes the dangers of radicalization, cancel culture, academic censorship, and the growing influence of socialists “boldly transforming” colleges across the country into reeducation camps of dull conformity. An educational charade masks activities and ideology as dangerous as those that inspired Communist China’s tragic Cultural Revolution. This book strips away the façade of the modern American university to reveal the malignant bureaucratic viscera inside the institution. It is a dark world, an anti-intellectualist sanctuary where brutal minds find purpose, protection, camaraderie, subsidy, and power. Dr. Ridgley’s book calls us to action to halt this anti-intellectual takeover of higher education and to restore the greatness of one of Western civilization’s most brilliant creations, the American University. “A tale of how one of history’s great institutions—the American university—is undergoing an infiltration by an army of mediocrities whose goal is to destroy it as an institution of knowledge creation and replace it with an authoritarian organ of ideology and propaganda.” —From the Preface to Brutal Minds
Publisher: Humanix Books
ISBN: 1630062278
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
“If you are scratching your head as to how radicals could have seized control in Washington, and of American media, while defaming American democracy as a ‘white supremacist’ nightmare, look no further than the left’s transformation of American universities into ideological boot camps for Marxist treachery. Brutal Minds is a model of clarity and straight talk about this national tragedy, whose destructive energies have yet to run their course.” —DAVID HOROWITZ, Bestselling Author of Final Battle Much of university life is controlled by subsidized paranoiacs, amateur psychotherapists, neo-Marxist totalitarians, “student affairs professionals” imbued with authoritarian mentality, and racialist thought reformers who run workshops that destroy family ties and traditional beliefs to clear the way for new relationships grounded in racialist ideology. These are the brutal minds who threaten and abuse students in the name of an academic fraud called “antiracist pedagogy.” In Brutal Minds, award-winning professor Stanley K. Ridgley exposes the dangers of radicalization, cancel culture, academic censorship, and the growing influence of socialists “boldly transforming” colleges across the country into reeducation camps of dull conformity. An educational charade masks activities and ideology as dangerous as those that inspired Communist China’s tragic Cultural Revolution. This book strips away the façade of the modern American university to reveal the malignant bureaucratic viscera inside the institution. It is a dark world, an anti-intellectualist sanctuary where brutal minds find purpose, protection, camaraderie, subsidy, and power. Dr. Ridgley’s book calls us to action to halt this anti-intellectual takeover of higher education and to restore the greatness of one of Western civilization’s most brilliant creations, the American University. “A tale of how one of history’s great institutions—the American university—is undergoing an infiltration by an army of mediocrities whose goal is to destroy it as an institution of knowledge creation and replace it with an authoritarian organ of ideology and propaganda.” —From the Preface to Brutal Minds
Passionate Minds
Author: Claudia Roth Pierpont
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307773310
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
With a masterful ability to connect their social contexts to well-chosen and telling details of their personal lives, Claudia Roth Pierpont gives us portraits of twelve amazingly diverse and influential literary women of the twentieth century, women who remade themselves and the world through their art. Gertrude Stein, Mae West, Margaret Mitchell, Eudora Welty, Ayn Rand, Doris Lessing, Anais Nin, Zora Neale Hurston, Marina Tsvetaeva, Hannah Arendt and Mary Mccarthy, and Olive Schreiner: Pierpont is clear-eyed in her examination of each member of this varied group, connectng her subjects firmly to the issues of sexual freedom, race, and politics that bound them to their times, even as she exposes the roots of their uniqueness. "Pierpont['s] graceful essays are at once erudite and personal in their focus." ?The Boston Globe "One of the most ceaselessly interesting books I've read in some time." ?Lorrie Moore, The New York Review of Books
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307773310
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
With a masterful ability to connect their social contexts to well-chosen and telling details of their personal lives, Claudia Roth Pierpont gives us portraits of twelve amazingly diverse and influential literary women of the twentieth century, women who remade themselves and the world through their art. Gertrude Stein, Mae West, Margaret Mitchell, Eudora Welty, Ayn Rand, Doris Lessing, Anais Nin, Zora Neale Hurston, Marina Tsvetaeva, Hannah Arendt and Mary Mccarthy, and Olive Schreiner: Pierpont is clear-eyed in her examination of each member of this varied group, connectng her subjects firmly to the issues of sexual freedom, race, and politics that bound them to their times, even as she exposes the roots of their uniqueness. "Pierpont['s] graceful essays are at once erudite and personal in their focus." ?The Boston Globe "One of the most ceaselessly interesting books I've read in some time." ?Lorrie Moore, The New York Review of Books
Unstrange Minds
Author: Roy Richard Grinker
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0786721928
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
A father's inspiring portrait of his daughter informs this classic reassessment of the "epidemic" of autism. When Isabel Grinker was diagnosed with autism in 1994, it occurred in only about 3 of every 10,000 children. Within ten years, rates had skyrocketed. Some scientists reported rates as high as 1 in 150. The media had declared autism an epidemic. Unstrange Minds documents the global quest of Isabel's father, renowned anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker, to discover the surprising truth about why autism is so much more common today. In fact, there is no autism epidemic. Rather, we are experiencing an increase in autism diagnoses, and Grinker shows that the identification and treatment of autism depends on culture just as much as it does on science. Filled with moving stories and informed by the latest science, Unstrange Minds is a powerful testament to a father's search for the truth.
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0786721928
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
A father's inspiring portrait of his daughter informs this classic reassessment of the "epidemic" of autism. When Isabel Grinker was diagnosed with autism in 1994, it occurred in only about 3 of every 10,000 children. Within ten years, rates had skyrocketed. Some scientists reported rates as high as 1 in 150. The media had declared autism an epidemic. Unstrange Minds documents the global quest of Isabel's father, renowned anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker, to discover the surprising truth about why autism is so much more common today. In fact, there is no autism epidemic. Rather, we are experiencing an increase in autism diagnoses, and Grinker shows that the identification and treatment of autism depends on culture just as much as it does on science. Filled with moving stories and informed by the latest science, Unstrange Minds is a powerful testament to a father's search for the truth.