Zihnin ne olduğu ve nasıl çalıştığına dair 22 sene önce yazılmış başucu kitabı. Zengin içeriğine rağmen daha güncel, çevirisi daha iyi, daha kolay okunabilen kitaplar bulunabilir.

Bu kitabı ilginç kılan zihnin, basit evrimsel süreçlerle var olabileceğini ortaya koyması. Hem de bütün karmaşıklığına, gizemine, eşsizliğine rağmen.

Zihnin özellikleri, evrimsel psikoloji çerçevesinde, tersine mühendislikle masaya yatırılıyor. Bu özelliklerin nasıl bir adaptasyon olduğu ve doğal seleksiyonun eleğinde kalmayı nasıl mümkün kıldığı tartışılıyor. 

Tartışma bazen insan doğasının karanlık dehlizlerine, çıkmaz sokaklarına giriyor: Irkçılık, akraba kayırma, özdenetim eksikliği (iradesizlik), cinayet, evlat katli, erkek sadakatsizliği, kadının servet avcılığı...

Bu gerçekler toplumun geniş kesminin itirazına neden olmuş. "Yaratılmışların en şereflisi" olmama gerçeği ile yüzleşemeyen dindarlar ve "kültürel etki"nin sadık savunucusu entellektüeller birlikte saldırmışlar. Öyle ki yazar fikirlerini savunmak adına "Boş Sayfa - İnsan doğasının modern inkârı" isimli başka bir kitap yazmak durumunda kalmış.

Like GEB, this book attempts to cover a lot of ground, and in most places does a great job of putting new thoughts and perspectives in our heads

“Как работи умът”, чудото на еволюцията без цел според Стивън Пинкър
http://www.knigolandia.info/2011/12/b...

На първо място – за какво, по дяволите, се говори в тухлата “Как работи умът”. Всъщност за нещо простичко, както пише той още в началото:
“…умът e сложна система за невронна обработка на информация, която изгражда мисловни модели на физическия и социалния свят и преследва цели, свързани по същността си с оцеляването и възпроизводството в една предмодерна среда”. Туйто. Пинкър се опира изцяло на еволюцията и математиката и изгражда стройна теория за появата на разума и неговото преимущество за разпространението на нашия вид до доминиращ на планетата. А че още в главите си сме в праисторията, това едва ли може да се отрече.

This book was an amazing read!
I cannot get around the fact that it was written by one person, let alone one person with a lot of other books on the same topic, and yet more provocative each time.

I loved the detailed and comprehensive outlook on each subject matter.

It is not a textbook, It is a long essay that gives you a rational, up-to-date, coherent, general yet accurate, A frame for thinking about mind, cognition, and emotions, and also changes our day-to-day worldview about people in general."

The only complaint I have is that this book could have used more hierarchical structure.

The best science writers have an understanding of the subject on which they write that is both deep and broad along with the ability to express these ideas in a way which is both clear and connects it with ideas and experiences that resonate with the general reader. Pinker is, along with Brian Greene and Sean Carroll in physics and Steve Jones and Richard Dawkins in biology, amongst the very finest of these.

4.5/5. The minus half star is for the amount of Woody Allan references. Fuck that guy.

That aside tho, great summary of my cognitive science degree so far. Could've saved me a couple classes tbh.
Aside from the strictly biological facts / cognitive theories: had some interesting asides about how we can or should combine (or sometimes detach) science from morality and ethics. Don't know where I stand in all of those points yet but good to think about.

A daunting book for the casual reader. I found most of the chapters individually readable, interesting, often controversial. But, there were few transitions from one theme to another, which I found distracting. Steven Pinker's overall thesis is that the mind is a neural-based computer that reflects the results of evolutionary psychology - meaning that the basis of much of what we do and why we do it has its roots in our historical hunter-gather origins and how we have evolved (through adaptive, natural selection) since. Pinker does not present a unifying theory of the mind, but does present interesting examples of many aspects of human behavior that he aptly explains according to his evolutionary gene-based model. I found much of what he said logical and believable, although some of the sections were less convincing than others. He spends an inordinate amount of pages on explaining gender, and by extension societal, behavior, which I found more entertaining than completely solid. The most controversial claims that Pinker makes have to do with his thoughts on the arts and religion. Pinker states that the arts have no intrinsic evolutionary value, but are outcomes of our desire for pleasure. Similarly he concludes that religion does not contribute to explaining how our brain has evolved and argues strongly against "creationism" and the value of religion in general. I'll conclude by sharing a quote from Pinker's book that sums up his thesis “human brains evolved by one set of laws, those of natural selection and genetics, and now interact with one another according to another set of laws, those of cognitive and social psychology, human ecology, and history”.

A great book for understanding human behaviour & decision making. It builds mental models and frameworks with strong explanatory power for understanding the human mind. This book impacts the way you view your own behaviour and the behaviour of others by exposing you to a deeper evolution-based grounding to the very complex topic of the human mind.

It is a big book containing just 8 chapters approaching 80-100 pages each . The conclusions arrived at bring insight and enlightenment and are well worth the journey - but be warned - many of these conclusions are preceded by the slow and careful development of ideas, which on occasion can be painstakingly dreary to the reader with non-specialist expertise in this topic (e.g. me). However, the journey (even the dreary bits) is worth it - this book can open your mind - there is much to be gained in reading it.

Harika bir kitap. Pinker müthiş bir yazar..

Steven Pinker is a world famous liberal evolutionary psychologist. As most intellectually focused psychologists I try to read everything he writes. It's the basic psychology science presented in a simple but intellectual way.

Pro:

This is a huge book. It really goes into a lot of psychology topics and most of them are well illustrated. It's one of those books that is a bit hard to get into and read, but you want to read it again because there are so many good nuggets here. I feel like I may have missed a few great points.

Con:

If you have read a few evolutionary psychology books this will feel very familiar in many chapters. I was zoning out quite often as I he kept presenting topics I already had read about like mating, men, women and basic psychology. This also means that it's a great intro book into psychology. I will for sure recommend it to people getting into the field.

Another thing is that it's a bit old. He is often talking about blank slate thinking and how it's bunk science, but old psychology is often more blank slate than current psychology. Since the 90's we have had a lot of gene and heritability studies that showed that most of the factors we thought were mostly environment are actually mostly genetic. Politics, personality, parenting, intelligence. We have had a lot of great studies on the heritability of these traits and they really ought to be included in such a book. It does feel a bit environment focused and it's predictable for a book this old. But it's not the end of the road for psychology knowledge anyhow and you ought to continue reading up on it. For anyone reading up on modern psychology this is it, but presented from a slight liberal view point which probably makes it a great intro book for people who are left of center and have a hard time getting into the hard science.

It's a typical Pinker book. If you like his writing it's a must read for you.

So many great paragraphs that they make up for a few places where he gets lazy and spells out conventions. As the number of notes I took goes, this book is a winner; in addition to all its original content, it has the best summaries I've encountered of many complex ideas/theories. He is remarkably devastating against standard social sciences and postmodernist thinking.

The book may get a little monotone in the technical chapters, but it's a must-read for anyone interested in psychology, evolution, nature-nurture debates, or mundane questions like "Why do men and women want different things?".

I just wish he was more open to the meme theory; then he could be perfect.

I didn't enjoy this book. I struggled through to halfway because a friend insisted it gets better later on. However, the main thing I didn't like was his writing style and I'm pretty sure that doesn't change. In summary I'd say he waffles a lot, the book is poorly structured, he argues points poorly and I found the content uninformative.