How the Mind Works
by Steven Pinker
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Book Summary Information
Author: Steven PinkerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-01-01
ISBN: 0393318486
Number of pages: 672
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Product features:
- Sociology, Human Nature, The Mind
Book Reviews of How the Mind Works
Book Review: Could have/should have been much better
Summary: 3 Stars
This is a book by a noted expert in a fascinating area which both could have and should have been much better.
Generally, reading Steven Pinker at one the same time reminds one both of Josephus, the First Century Jewish historian and the comedian Dennis Miller. Pinker is like Josephus because like Josephus Pinker is unnecessarily discursive and Pinker is like Dennis Miller because one comes away from the experience of listening to him thinking that the guy was more interested in showing you that he knew of lot of stuff rather than actually trying to inform you about a lot of stuff.
Here are a couple of for instances:
In discussing intelligence generally, Pinker segues into a long discussion about Frank Drake and the famous Drake equation for positing the existence of intelligent life off the planet. In praising Congress for zero funding the Search for Intelligence Life (SETI), Pinker noted that Drake's equation unnecessary factored in the inevitable quality of the emergence of intelligent life. Not only was Pinker's observance an incorrect rendition of Drake's formula but it was also quite to the point of why Congress zero funded the program.
Congress zero funded the program (like the Supercolliding Superconductor) because Congress was too sheepish to go to its constituents and tell them that like military prowess, scientific research runs to the heart of a nation's strength. In other words, Congress thought like the midevil Chinese when they dismantled the Emporer's fleet.
In discussing family values, Pinker noted the old saw that people were more at risk of homocide from their relatives than strangers. Then, when he went on to try and prove his point, he did so by semantically re-categorizing spouses and significant others as "non blood relations." Throughout his discussion, it seemed as if Pinker was more intent on seeming clever than providing actual, on the ground analysis.
And indeed, these limitations aren't necessarily critical because Josephus is great history reading and Dennis Miller at least has the potential to be entertaining. Even Pinker himself, writing in this same, style, produced a great book when he wrote "The Blank Slate."
But Josephus and Miller and Blank Slate are different because in this book, a book which purports to describe the actual workings of the human mind, there is a need for the author to be clear, cogent and to the point.
How DOES the mind work? How did it evolutionarily come to be? What are its evolutionary objectives? What systems does it use to carry out those objectives? Are there ways in which it can be decieved? How? Why?
Like the articulation of a scientific theory is improved by it's elegance, books expositing on scientific matters must needs themselves be elegant.
And so, for those truly interested in this topic, I would recommend the following list of books:
1) "The Selfish Gene" -- Richard Dawkins' 1976 book remains a classic exposition on contemporary gene theory and it's implications for human life;
2) "The Red Queen" -- Matt Ridley produced a wonderful, up to the date book detailing sexual mating and its implications;
3) "Before the Dawn" -- Nicholas Wade's 2006 book likewise provides up to the date research and insight not only the fact of human evolution but the fact that human evolution is still continuing apace even today and how;
4) "Phantoms in the Brain" -- V.S. Ramashandran has produced a wonderful, highly readable book about the different ways in which human cognition can falter;
5) "A Brief Introduction to Consciousness" -- Again, V.S. Ramashandran plums the depths of human consciousness and in so doing produced a highly readable and eloquent survey of the mind;
6) "Consciousness Explained" -- Dan Dennett's exposition on the workings of the brain easily rivals and exceeds that presented by Pinker. True, Dennett may ultimately be proved to be wrong but at least he presents a cohesive and credible theory of cognition;
7) "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" -- Again, Dan Dennett is wonderful at bringing complicated concepts to life with his unique brand of brilliant insight;
8) "How We Love" -- Helen Fisher's book on human attraction and mating practices places an appropriate literary focus on humanity's actual genetic focus, namely: reproduction;
9) "The Origins of Virtue" -- Again Matt Ridley has tackled a significant topic rendering it both accessible and relevant. Why do people cooperate? Because it's in their self interest to do so and Ridley's book shows one how; and finally
10) "Religion Explained" -- Pascal Boyer takes a nettlesome problem and uses actual scientific method to arrive at a solution. Like Dennett, Boyer's findings may ultimately be either wrong or just incomplete but again like good science is supposed to it provides an explanation and not just mere pedantic puffery.
By no means should this review be construed as a screed against Pinker. As stated, his Blank Slate was a remarkable master work and underscored the importance of academic tolerance. However, it's because Pinker is capable of such quality that he can legitimately be expected to have produced better.
In other words, an eagle is most striking in flight among the clouds...not standing on the ground in a field of turkeys.
Summary of How the Mind Works
"[How the Mind Works] marks out the territory on which the coming century's debate about human nature will be held."?Oliver Morton, The New Yorker
In this extraordinary bestseller, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading cognitive scientists, does for the rest of the mind what he did for language in his 1994 book, The Language Instinct. He explains what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and ponder the mysteries of life. And he does it with the wit that prompted Mark Ridley to write in the New York Times Book Review, "No other science writer makes me laugh so much. . . . [Pinker] deserves the superlatives that are lavished on him." The arguments in the book are as bold as its title. Pinker rehabilitates some unfashionable ideas, such as that the mind is a computer and that human nature was shaped by natural selection, and challenges fashionable ones, such as that passionate emotions are irrational, that parents socialize their children, and that nature is good and modern society corrupting. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize A New York Times Notable Book of the Year and Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1997 Featured in Time magazine, the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Nature, Science, Lingua Franca, and Science Times Front-page reviews in the Washington Post Book World, the Boston Globe Book Section, and the San Diego Union Book Review IllustrationsWhy do fools fall in love? Why does a man's annual salary, on average, increase $600 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 ten-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 marvelously fun, awesomely informative survey of modern brain science. Pinker argues that Darwin plus 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 as Number One on 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.
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