Book Description
In How the Mind Works, 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.