Download or read book The Natural History of the Mind written by Gordon Rattray Taylor and published by Dutton Adult. This book was released on 1979 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A History of the Mind written by Nicholas Humphrey and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1999-06-18 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a tour-de-force on how human consciousness may have evolved. From the "phantom pain" experienced by people who have lost their limbs to the uncanny faculty of "blindsight," Humphrey argues that raw sensations are central to all conscious states and that consciousness must have evolved, just like all other mental faculties, over time from our ancestors'bodily responses to pain and pleasure. "Humphrey is one of that growing band of scientists who beat literary folk at their own game"-RICHARD DAWKINS "A wonderful bookbrilliant, unsettling, and beautifully written. Humphrey cuts bravely through the currents of contemporary thinking, opening up new vistas on old problems offering a feast of provocative ideas." -DANIEL DENNETT

Download or read book Between Mind and Nature written by Roger Smith and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2013-06-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From William James to Ivan Pavlov, John Dewey to Sigmund Freud, the Würzburg School to the Chicago School, psychology has spanned centuries and continents. Today, the word is an all-encompassing name for a bewildering range of beliefs about what psychologists know and do, and this intrinsic interest in knowing how our own and other’s minds work has a story as fascinating and complex as humankind itself. In Between Mind and Nature, Roger Smith explores the history of psychology and its relation to religion, politics, the arts, social life, the natural sciences, and technology. Considering the big questions bound up in the history of psychology, Smith investigates what human nature is, whether psychology can provide answers to human problems, and whether the notion of being an individual depends on social and historical conditions. He also asks whether a method of rational thinking exists outside the realm of natural science. Posing important questions about the value and direction of psychology today, Between Mind and Nature is a cogently written book for those wishing to know more about the quest for knowledge of the mind.

Download or read book Trance written by Brian Inglis and published by Grafton Books. This book was released on 1989 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Natural History of Human Thinking written by Michael Tomasello and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Wall Street Journal Favorite Read of the Year A Guardian Top Science Book of the Year Tool-making or culture, language or religious belief: ever since Darwin, thinkers have struggled to identify what fundamentally differentiates human beings from other animals. In this much-anticipated book, Michael Tomasello weaves his twenty years of comparative studies of humans and great apes into a compelling argument that cooperative social interaction is the key to our cognitive uniqueness. Once our ancestors learned to put their heads together with others to pursue shared goals, humankind was on an evolutionary path all its own. “Michael Tomasello is one of the few psychologists to have conducted intensive research on both human children and chimpanzees, and A Natural History of Human Thinking reflects not only the insights enabled by such cross-species comparisons but also the wisdom of a researcher who appreciates the need for asking questions whose answers generate biological insight. His book helps us to understand the differences, as well as the similarities, between human brains and other brains.” —David P. Barash, Wall Street Journal

Download or read book The Mind written by E. Bruce Goldstein and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accessible and engaging account of the mind and its connection to the brain. The mind encompasses everything we experience, and these experiences are created by the brain--often without our awareness. Experience is private; we can't know the minds of others. But we also don't know what is happening in our own minds. In this book, E. Bruce Goldstein offers an accessible and engaging account of the mind and its connection to the brain. He takes as his starting point two central questions--what is the mind? and what is consciousness?--and leads readers through topics that range from conceptions of the mind in popular culture to the wiring system of the brain. Throughout, he draws on the latest research, explaining its significance and relevance.

Download or read book A Brief History of the Mind written by William H. Calvin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-04 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Brief History of Mind offers an exhilarating account of the evolution of the human brain from simpler versions of mental life in apes, Neanderthals, and our ancestors, back before our burst of creativity started 50,000 years ago.

Download or read book A History of the Human Brain written by Bret Stetka and published by Timber Press. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A History of the Human Brain is a unique, enlightening, and provocative account of the most significant question we can ask about ourselves.” —Richard Wrangham, author of The Goodness Paradox Just 125,000 years ago, humanity was on a path to extinction, until a dramatic shift occurred. We used our mental abilities to navigate new terrain and changing climates. We hunted, foraged, tracked tides, shucked oysters—anything we could do to survive. Before long, our species had pulled itself back from the brink and was on more stable ground. What saved us? The human brain—and its evolutionary journey is unlike any other. In A History of the Human Brain, Bret Stetka takes us on this far-reaching journey, explaining exactly how our most mysterious organ developed. From the brain’s improbable, watery beginnings to the marvel that sits in the head of Home sapiens today, Stetka covers an astonishing progression, even tackling future brainy frontiers such as epigenetics and CRISPR. Clearly and expertly told, this intriguing account is the story of who we are. By examining the history of the brain, we can begin to piece together what it truly means to be human.

Download or read book The Mechanical Mind in History written by Phil Husbands and published by MIT Press (MA). This book was released on 2008 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea of intelligent machines has become part of popular culture. Tracing the history of the actual science of machine intelligence reveals a rich network of cross-disciplinary contributions, and the origins of ideas now central to artificial intelligence, artificial life, cognitive science and neuroscience.

Download or read book The Mind s Eye written by Oliver Sacks and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-10-26 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From “the poet laureate of medicine" (The New York Times) and the author of the classic The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat comes a fascinating exploration of the remarkable, unpredictable ways that our brains cope with the loss of sight by finding rich new forms of perception. “Elaborate and gorgeously detailed.... Again and again, Sacks invites readers to imagine their way into minds unlike their own, encouraging a radical form of empathy.” —Los Angeles Times With compassion and insight, Dr. Oliver Sacks again illuminates the mysteries of the brain by introducing us to some remarkable characters, including Pat, who remains a vivacious communicator despite the stroke that deprives her of speech, and Howard, a novelist who loses the ability to read. Sacks investigates those who can see perfectly well but are unable to recognize faces, even those of their own children. He describes totally blind people who navigate by touch and smell; and others who, ironically, become hyper-visual. Finally, he recounts his own battle with an eye tumor and the strange visual symptoms it caused. As he has done in classics like The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Awakenings, Dr. Sacks shows us that medicine is both an art and a science, and that our ability to imagine what it is to see with another person's mind is what makes us truly human.

Download or read book Natural History of Intellect written by Ralph Waldo Emerson and published by . This book was released on 1893 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Natural History of the Mind written by William R. Sickles and published by Nova Publishers. This book was released on 1997 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a simple explanation of how the mind evolved. One of the many interesting facts emerging from this study is that vision appeared long before there was any brain of significance. Perception therefore had to be direct awareness of forms, patterning, smells, and so on. Survival depended on sensory input being an immediate representation of reality. The world as seen could not have been something pieced together and mulled over in a brain which didn't exist. Memory and learning are said to occur at a molecular level for much the same reasons. Today's social insects exhibit enormously complex behaviour, yet their brains are microscopic. All such facts, gleaned from both the past and present, have a major impact upon theories about how our own minds operate.

Download or read book Mind as Machine written by Margaret A. Boden and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-06-19 with total page 789 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The development of cognitive science is one of the most remarkable and fascinating intellectual achievements of the modern era. The quest to understand the mind is as old as recorded human thought; but the progress of modern science has offered new methods and techniques which have revolutionized this enquiry. Oxford University Press now presents a masterful history of cognitive science, told by one of its most eminent practitioners. Cognitive science is the project of understanding the mind by modeling its workings. Psychology is its heart, but it draws together various adjoining fields of research, including artificial intelligence; neuroscientific study of the brain; philosophical investigation of mind, language, logic, and understanding; computational work on logic and reasoning; linguistic research on grammar, semantics, and communication; and anthropological explorations of human similarities and differences. Each discipline, in its own way, asks what the mind is, what it does, how it works, how it developed - how it is even possible. The key distinguishing characteristic of cognitive science, Boden suggests, compared with older ways of thinking about the mind, is the notion of understanding the mind as a kind of machine. She traces the origins of cognitive science back to Descartes's revolutionary ideas, and follows the story through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the pioneers of psychology and computing appear. Then she guides the reader through the complex interlinked paths along which the study of the mind developed in the twentieth century. Cognitive science, in Boden's broad conception, covers a wide range of aspects of mind: not just 'cognition' in the sense of knowledge or reasoning, but emotion, personality, social communication, and even action. In each area of investigation, Boden introduces the key ideas and the people who developed them. No one else could tell this story as Boden can: she has been an active participant in cognitive science since the 1960s, and has known many of the key figures personally. Her narrative is written in a lively, swift-moving style, enriched by the personal touch of someone who knows the story at first hand. Her history looks forward as well as back: it is her conviction that cognitive science today--and tomorrow--cannot be properly understood without a historical perspective. Mind as Machine will be a rich resource for anyone working on the mind, in any academic discipline, who wants to know how our understanding of our mental activities and capacities has developed.

Download or read book Brains Through Time written by Georg F. Striedter and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book encourages readers to view similarities and differences in various species as fundamental to a comprehensive understanding of nervous systems.

Download or read book A Natural History of Rape written by Randy Thornhill and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2001-02-23 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biologist and an anthropologist use evolutionary biology to explain the causes and inform the prevention of rape. In this controversial book, Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer use evolutionary biology to explain the causes of rape and to recommend new approaches to its prevention. According to Thornhill and Palmer, evolved adaptation of some sort gives rise to rape; the main evolutionary question is whether rape is an adaptation itself or a by-product of other adaptations. Regardless of the answer, Thornhill and Palmer note, rape circumvents a central feature of women's reproductive strategy: mate choice. This is a primary reason why rape is devastating to its victims, especially young women. Thornhill and Palmer address, and claim to demolish scientifically, many myths about rape bred by social science theory over the past twenty-five years. The popular contention that rapists are not motivated by sexual desire is, they argue, scientifically inaccurate. Although they argue that rape is biological, Thornhill and Palmer do not view it as inevitable. Their recommendations for rape prevention include teaching young males not to rape, punishing rape more severely, and studying the effectiveness of "chemical castration." They also recommend that young women consider the biological causes of rape when making decisions about dress, appearance, and social activities. Rape could cease to exist, they argue, only in a society knowledgeable about its evolutionary causes. The book includes a useful summary of evolutionary theory and a comparison of evolutionary biology's and social science's explanations of human behavior. The authors argue for the greater explanatory power and practical usefulness of evolutionary biology. The book is sure to stir up discussion both on the specific topic of rape and on the larger issues of how we understand and influence human behavior.

Download or read book Another Mind Body Problem written by John Harfouch and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2018-05-22 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mind-body problem in philosophy is typically understood as a discourse concerning the relation of mental states to physical states, and the experience of sensation. On this level it seems to transcend issues of race and racism, but Another Mind-Body Problem demonstrates that racial distinctions have been an integral part of the discourse since the Modern period in philosophy. Reading figures such as Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant in their historical contexts, John Harfouch uncovers discussions of mind and body that engaged closely with philosophical and scientific notions of race in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, in particular in understanding how the mind unites with the body at birth and is then passed on through sexual reproduction. Kant argued that a person's exterior body and interior psyche are bound together, that non-White people lacked reason, and that this lack of reason was carried on through reproduction such that non-Whites were an example of a union of mind and body without full being. Charting the development of this phenomenon from sixteenth-century medical literature to modern-day race discourse, Harfouch argues for new understandings of Descartes's mind-body problem, Fanon's experience of being 'not-yet human,' and the place of racism in relation to one of philosophy's most enduring and canonical problems.

Download or read book Mind Wide Open written by Steven Johnson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2004-02-27 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BRILLIANTLY EXPLORING TODAY'S CUTTING-EDGE BRAIN RESEARCH, MIND WIDE OPEN IS AN UNPRECEDENTED JOURNEY INTO THE ESSENCE OF HUMAN PERSONALITY, ALLOWING READERS TO UNDERSTAND THEMSELVES AND THE PEOPLE IN THEIR LIVES AS NEVER BEFORE. Using a mix of experiential reportage, personal storytelling, and fresh scientific discovery, Steven Johnson describes how the brain works -- its chemicals, structures, and subroutines -- and how these systems connect to the day-to-day realities of individual lives. For a hundred years, he says, many of us have assumed that the most powerful route to self-knowledge took the form of lying on a couch, talking about our childhoods. The possibility entertained in this book is that you can follow another path, in which learning about the brain's mechanics can widen one's self-awareness as powerfully as any therapy or meditation or drug. In Mind Wide Open, Johnson embarks on this path as his own test subject, participating in a battery of attention tests, learning to control video games by altering his brain waves, scanning his own brain with a $2 million fMRI machine, all in search of a modern answer to the oldest of questions: who am I? Along the way, Johnson explores how we "read" other people, how the brain processes frightening events (and how we might rid ourselves of the scars those memories leave), what the neurochemistry is behind love and sex, what it means that our brains are teeming with powerful chemicals closely related to recreational drugs, why music moves us to tears, and where our breakthrough ideas come from. Johnson's clear, engaging explanation of the physical functions of the brain reveals not only the broad strokes of our aptitudes and fears, our skills and weaknesses and desires, but also the momentary brain phenomena that a whole human life comprises. Why, when hearing a tale of woe, do we sometimes smile inappropriately, even if we don't want to? Why are some of us so bad at remembering phone numbers but brilliant at recognizing faces? Why does depression make us feel stupid? To read Mind Wide Open is to rethink family histories, individual fates, and the very nature of the self, and to see that brain science is now personally transformative -- a valuable tool for better relationships and better living.