The Tides of Mind: Uncovering the Spectrum of Consciousness PDF Download
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Author: David Gelernter
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1631490842
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
A “rock star” (New York Times) of the computing world provides a radical new work on the meaning of human consciousness. The holy grail of psychologists and scientists for nearly a century has been to understand and replicate both human thought and the human mind. In fact, it's what attracted the now-legendary computer scientist and AI authority David Gelernter to the discipline in the first place. As a student and young researcher in the 1980s, Gelernter hoped to build a program with a dial marked "focus." At maximum "focus," the program would "think" rationally, formally, reasonably. As the dial was turned down and "focus" diminished, its "mind" would start to wander, and as you dialed even lower, this artificial mind would start to free-associate, eventually ignoring the user completely as it cruised off into the mental adventures we know as sleep. While the program was a only a partial success, it laid the foundation for The Tides of Mind, a groundbreaking new exploration of the human psyche that shows us how the very purpose of the mind changes throughout the day. Indeed, as Gelernter explains, when we are at our most alert, when reasoning and creating new memories is our main mental business, the mind is a computer-like machine that keeps emotion on a short leash and attention on our surroundings. As we gradually tire, however, and descend the "mental spectrum," reasoning comes unglued. Memory ranges more freely, the mind wanders, and daydreams grow more insistent. Self-awareness fades, reflection blinks out, and at last we are completely immersed in our own minds. With far-reaching implications, Gelernter’s landmark "Spectrum of Consciousness" finally helps decode some of the most mysterious wonders of the human mind, such as the numinous light of early childhood, why dreams are so often predictive, and why sadism and masochism underpin some of our greatest artistic achievements. It’s a theory that also challenges the very notion of the mind as a machine—and not through empirical studies or "hard science" but by listening to our great poets and novelists, who have proven themselves as humanity's most trusted guides to the subjective mind and inner self. In the great introspective tradition of Wilhelm Wundt and René Descartes, David Gelernter promises to not only revolutionize our understanding of what it means to be human but also to help answer many of our most fundamental questions about the origins of creativity, thought, and consciousness.
Author: David Gelernter
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1631490842
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Get Book Here
Book Description
A “rock star” (New York Times) of the computing world provides a radical new work on the meaning of human consciousness. The holy grail of psychologists and scientists for nearly a century has been to understand and replicate both human thought and the human mind. In fact, it's what attracted the now-legendary computer scientist and AI authority David Gelernter to the discipline in the first place. As a student and young researcher in the 1980s, Gelernter hoped to build a program with a dial marked "focus." At maximum "focus," the program would "think" rationally, formally, reasonably. As the dial was turned down and "focus" diminished, its "mind" would start to wander, and as you dialed even lower, this artificial mind would start to free-associate, eventually ignoring the user completely as it cruised off into the mental adventures we know as sleep. While the program was a only a partial success, it laid the foundation for The Tides of Mind, a groundbreaking new exploration of the human psyche that shows us how the very purpose of the mind changes throughout the day. Indeed, as Gelernter explains, when we are at our most alert, when reasoning and creating new memories is our main mental business, the mind is a computer-like machine that keeps emotion on a short leash and attention on our surroundings. As we gradually tire, however, and descend the "mental spectrum," reasoning comes unglued. Memory ranges more freely, the mind wanders, and daydreams grow more insistent. Self-awareness fades, reflection blinks out, and at last we are completely immersed in our own minds. With far-reaching implications, Gelernter’s landmark "Spectrum of Consciousness" finally helps decode some of the most mysterious wonders of the human mind, such as the numinous light of early childhood, why dreams are so often predictive, and why sadism and masochism underpin some of our greatest artistic achievements. It’s a theory that also challenges the very notion of the mind as a machine—and not through empirical studies or "hard science" but by listening to our great poets and novelists, who have proven themselves as humanity's most trusted guides to the subjective mind and inner self. In the great introspective tradition of Wilhelm Wundt and René Descartes, David Gelernter promises to not only revolutionize our understanding of what it means to be human but also to help answer many of our most fundamental questions about the origins of creativity, thought, and consciousness.
Author: Adalyn Grace
Publisher: Imprint
ISBN: 1250307805
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
The thrilling sequel to instant New York Times bestseller All the Stars and Teeth, called “captivating” by Tomi Adeyemi, “Vicious and alluring” by Hafsah Faizal, and “phenomenal” by Adrienne Young. Now author Adalyn Grace is back with more high seas adventure in All the Tides of Fate, this electrifying fantasy, perfect for fans of Stephanie Garber’s Caraval and Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass series. Through blood and sacrifice, Amora Montara has conquered a rebellion and taken her rightful place as queen of Visidia. Now, with the islands in turmoil and the people questioning her authority, Amora cannot allow anyone to see her weaknesses. No one can know about the curse in her bloodline. No one can know that she’s lost her magic. No one can know the truth about the boy who holds the missing half of her soul. To save herself and Visidia, Amora embarks on a desperate quest for a mythical artifact that could fix everything—but it comes at a terrible cost. As she tries to balance her loyalty to her people, her crew, and the desires of her heart, Amora will soon discover that the power to rule might destroy her. An Imprint Book Praise for All the Stars and Teeth: “Jam-packed with swashbuckling adventure, swoonworthy romance, and dark, lush magic.” - Christine Lynn Herman, author of The Devouring Gray “If an epic sea fantasy filled with strange pirates and vengeful mermaids speaks to your interests, well...we may have found your favorite book ever....a tale of magic and second chances that’s fresh and thrilling in equal measure.” –Entertainment Weekly One of Buzzfeed's "Most Anticipated YA Books of 2020"
Author: Steven Pressfield
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 055390406X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 452
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Book Description
Narrated from death row by Alcibiades’ bodyguard and assassin, a man whose own love and loathing for his former commander mirrors the mixed emotions felt by all Athens, Tides of War tells an epic saga of an extraordinary century, a war that changed history, and a complex leader who seduced a nation. Brilliant at war, a master of politics, and a charismatic lover, Alcibiades was Athens’ favorite son and the city’s greatest general. A prodigal follower of Socrates, he embodied both the best and the worst of the Golden Age of Greece. A commander on both land and sea, he led his armies to victory after victory. But like the heroes in a great Greek tragedy, he was a victim of his own pride, arrogance, excess, and ambition. Accused of crimes against the state, he was banished from his beloved Athens, only to take up arms in the service of his former enemies. For nearly three decades, Greece burned with war and Alcibiades helped bring victories to both sides — and ended up trusted by neither. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Steven Pressfield's The Profession. Praise for Tides of War “Pressfield’s battlefield scenes rank with the most convincing ever written.”—USA Today “Pressfield serves up not just hair-raising battle scenes . . . but many moments of valor and cowardice, lust and bawdy humor. . . . Even more impressively, he delivers a nuanced portrait of ancient athens.”—Esquire “Unabashedly brilliant, epic, intelligent, and moving.”—Kirkus Reviews “Pressfield’s attention to historic detail is exquisite. . . . This novel will remain with the reader long after the final chapter is finished.”—Library Journal “Astounding, historically accurate tale . . . Pressfield is a master storyteller, especially adept in his graphic and embracing descriptions of the land and naval battles, political intrigues and colorful personalities, which come together in an intense and credible portrait of war-torn Greece.”—Publishers Weekly
Author: Robert Whitlow
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
ISBN: 141857564X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 431
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Book Description
The Tides of Truth series follows one lawyer's passionate pursuit of truth--in matters of life and the law. Competition is tough at the Savannah law firm where Tami Taylor serves as a law clerk. But Tami's work sets her apart--and the firm's partners see something special in her. So they assign her to a libel case against an abrasive, outspoken preacher who is either a prophet or a lunatic. On the surface it appears to be an open and shut case; the preacher seems fully outside the bounds of law. And Tami's strict religious upbringing could be the firm's ace-in-the-hole. But as the investigation continues, Tami is troubled by the preacher's uncanny prophetic abilities. And their client seems to be hiding something. Tami returns to her hometown, struggling with several critical choices--as two very different men from the firm vie for her heart. Just when the challenges seem insurmountable, hope for Tami arrives from a surprising place. And it's a higher hope than she's ever imagined.
Author: Adam Nicolson
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374721289
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 298
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Book Description
Adam Nicolson explores the marine life inhabiting seashore rockpools with a scientist’s curiosity and a poet’s wonder in this beautifully illustrated book. The sea is not made of water. Creatures are its genes. Look down as you crouch over the shallows and you will find a periwinkle or a prawn, a claw-displaying crab or a cluster of anemones ready to meet you. No need for binoculars or special stalking skills: go to the rocks and the living will say hello. Inside each rock pool tucked into one of the infinite crevices of the tidal coastline lies a rippling, silent, unknowable universe. Below the stillness of the surface course different currents of endless motion—the ebb and flow of the tide, the steady forward propulsion of the passage of time, and the tiny lifetimes of the rock pool’s creatures, all of which coalesce into the grand narrative of evolution. In Life Between the Tides, Adam Nicolson investigates one of the most revelatory habitats on earth. Under his microscope, we see a prawn’s head become a medieval helmet and a group of “winkles” transform into a Dickensian social scene, with mollusks munching on Stilton and glancing at their pocket watches. Or, rather, is a winkle more like Achilles, an ancient hero, throwing himself toward death for the sake of glory? For Nicolson, who writes “with scientific rigor and a poet’s sense of wonder” (The American Scholar), the world of the rock pools is infinite and as intricate as our own. As Nicolson journeys between the tides, both in the pools he builds along the coast of Scotland and through the timeline of scientific discovery, he is accompanied by great thinkers—no one can escape the pull of the sea. We meet Virginia Woolf and her Waves; a young T. S. Eliot peering into his own rock pool in Massachusetts; even Nicolson’s father-in-law, a classical scholar who would hunt for amethysts along the shoreline, his mind on Heraclitus and the other philosophers of ancient Greece. And, of course, scientists populate the pages; not only their discoveries, but also their doubts and errors, their moments of quiet observation and their thrilling realizations. Everything is within the rock pools, where you can look beyond your own reflection and find the miraculous an inch beneath your nose. “The soul wants to be wet,” Heraclitus said in Ephesus twenty-five hundred years ago. This marvelous book demonstrates why it is so. Includes Color and Black-and-White Photographs
Author: Jonathan White
Publisher: Trinity University Press
ISBN: 1595348069
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
In Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean, writer, sailor, and surfer Jonathan White takes readers across the globe to discover the science and spirit of ocean tides. In the Arctic, White shimmies under the ice with an Inuit elder to hunt for mussels in the dark cavities left behind at low tide; in China, he races the Silver Dragon, a twenty-five-foot tidal bore that crashes eighty miles up the Qiantang River; in France, he interviews the monks that live in the tide-wrapped monastery of Mont Saint-Michel; in Chile and Scotland, he investigates the growth of tidal power generation; and in Panama and Venice, he delves into how the threat of sea level rise is changing human culture—the very old and very new. Tides combines lyrical prose, colorful adventure travel, and provocative scientific inquiry into the elemental, mysterious paradox that keeps our planet’s waters in constant motion. Photographs, scientific figures, line drawings, and sixteen color photos dramatically illustrate this engaging, expert tour of the tides.
Author: Marc Seifer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1594778043
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 469
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Book Description
A new comprehensive model of mind and its nearly infinite possibilities • Recasts psychology as a vehicle not for mental health but for higher consciousness • Shows that we have consciousness for a reason; it is humanity’s unique contribution to the cosmos • Integrates the work of Freud, Jung, Gurdjieff, Tony Robbins, Rudolf Steiner, the Dalai Lama as well as ESP, the Kabbalah, tarot, dreams, and kundalini yoga The culmination of 30 years of research, Where Does Mind End? takes you on an inward journey through the psyche--exploring the highest states of consciousness; the insights and theories of ancient and modern philosophers, psychologists, and mystics; the power of dreams, chi energy, tarot, and kundalini yoga; and proof of telepathy and other facets of parapsychology--to explain the mystery of consciousness and construct a comprehensive model of mind and its nearly infinite possibilities. Starting with the ancients and early philosophers such as Zoroaster, Aristotle, Descartes, and Leibniz, the author examines models of mind that take into account divine and teleological components, the problem and goal of self-understanding, the mind/body conundrum, and holographic paradigms. Seifer then moves to modern times to explain the full range of Freud’s psychoanalytic model of mind, exploring such ideas as the ego, superego, and id; the unconscious; creativity; and self-actualization. Using Freud’s psychoanalytical model as framework, he reveals an overarching theory of mind and consciousness that incorporates such diverse concepts as Jung’s collective psyche; ESP; the Kabbalah; Gurdjieff’s ideas on behaviorism and the will; the philosophies of Wilhelm Reich, P. D. Ouspensky, and Nikola Tesla; the personality redevelopment strategies of Tony Robbins; and the Dalai Lama’s and Rudolf Steiner’s ideas on the highest states of consciousness. Recasting psychology as a vehicle not for mental health but for higher consciousness, he shows that by casting off the mechanical mental operation of day-to-day life, we naturally attain the self-integration to which traditional psychology has long aspired. By entering the true path to fulfillment of the soul’s will, we help the planet by transforming ourselves and raising our energy to a higher realm.
Author: Mark Leyner
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
ISBN: 031632311X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
The blazingly inventive fictional autobiography of Mark Leyner, one of America's "rare, true original voices" (Gary Shteyngart). Dizzyingly brilliant, raucously funny, and painfully honest, Gone with the Mind is the story of Mark Leyner's life, told as only Mark Leyner can tell it. In this utterly unconventional novel -- or is it a memoir? -- Leyner gives a reading in the food court of a New Jersey shopping mall. The "audience" consists of Mark's mother and some stray Panda Express employees, who ask a handful of questions. The action takes place entirely at the food court, but the territory covered in these pages has no bounds. A joyride of autobiography, cultural critique, DIY philosophy, biopolitics, video games, demagoguery, and the most intimate confessions, Gone with the Mind is both a soulful reckoning with mortality and the tender story of the relationship between a complicated mother and an even more complicated son. At once nostalgic and acidic, deeply humane, and completely surreal, Gone with the Mind is a work of pure, hilarious genius.
Author: Liz Johnson
Publisher: Revell
ISBN: 1493430408
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
When Meg Whitaker's father decides to sell the family's lobster-fishing business to her high school nemesis, she sets out to prove she should inherit it instead. Though she's never had any interest in running the small fleet--or even getting on a boat due to her persistent seasickness--she can't stand to see Oliver Ross take over. Not when he ruined her dreams for a science scholarship and an Ivy League education ten years ago. Oliver isn't proud of what he did back then. Angry and broken by his father walking out on his family, he lashed out at Meg--an innocent bystander. But owning a respected fishing fleet on Prince Edward Island is the opportunity of a lifetime, and he's not about to walk away just because Meg wants him to. Meg's father has the perfect solution: Oliver and Meg must work the business together, and at the end of the season, he'll decide who gets it. Along the way, they may discover that their stories are more similar than they thought . . . and their dreams aren't what they expected. Bestselling author Liz Johnson invites you back to Prince Edward Island for a brand-new series about family, forgiveness, and the kind of love that heals all wounds. "Johnson kicks off her Prince Edward Island Shores series with this heartwarming romance . . . Johnson's fans will eagerly anticipate the next installment of this promising series."--Publishers Weekly starred review
Author: David Gelernter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195344855
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 254
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Book Description
Technology doesn't flow smoothly; it's the big surprises that matter, and Yale computer expert David Gelernter sees one such giant leap right on the horizon. Today's small scale software programs are about to be joined by vast public software works that will revolutionize computing and transform society as a whole. One such vast program is the "Mirror World." Imagine looking at your computer screen and seeing reality--an image of your city, for instance, complete with moving traffic patterns, or a picture that sketches the state of an entire far-flung corporation at this second. These representations are called Mirror Worlds, and according to Gelernter they will soon be available to everyone. Mirror Worlds are high-tech voodoo dolls: by interacting with the images, you interact with reality. Indeed, Mirror Worlds will revolutionize the use of computers, transforming them from (mere) handy tools to crystal balls which will allow us to see the world more vividly and see into it more deeply. Reality will be replaced gradually, piece-by-piece, by a software imitation; we will live inside the imitation; and the surprising thing is--this will be a great humanistic advance. We gain control over our world, plus a huge new measure of insight and vision. In this fascinating book--part speculation, part explanation--Gelernter takes us on a tour of the computer technology of the near future. Mirror Worlds, he contends, will allow us to explore the world in unprecedented depth and detail without ever changing out of our pajamas. A hospital administrator might wander through an entire medical complex via a desktop computer. Any citizen might explore the performance of the local schools, chat electronically with teachers and other Mirror World visitors, plant software agents to report back on interesting topics; decide to run for the local school board, hire a campaign manager, and conduct the better part of the campaign itself--all by interacting with the Mirror World. Gelernter doesn't just speculate about how this amazing new software will be used--he shows us how it will be made, explaining carefully and in detail how to build a Mirror World using technology already available. We learn about "disembodied machines," "trellises," "ensembles," and other computer components which sound obscure, but which Gelernter explains using familiar metaphors and terms. (He tells us that a Mirror World is a microcosm just like a Japanese garden or a Gothic cathedral, and that a computer program is translated by the computer in the same way a symphony is translated by a violinist into music.) Mirror Worlds offers a lucid and humanistic account of the coming software revolution, told by a computer scientist at the cutting edge of his field.
