Minds Machines & Human Nature
Discover the best books on minds, machines, and human nature. Explore curated reads by Oliver Sacks, Steven Pinker, and more—from neuroscience to philosophy.
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The Third Chimpanzee
by Jared M. Diamond
The Development of an Extraordinary Species We human beings share 98 percent of our genes with chimpanzees. Yet humans are the dominant species on the planet -- having founded civilizations and religions, developed intricate and diverse forms of communication, learned science, built cities, and created breathtaking works of art -- while chimps remain animals concerned primarily with the basic necessities of survival. What is it about that two percent difference in DNA that has created such a divergence between evolutionary cousins? In this fascinating, provocative, passionate, funny, endlessly entertaining work, renowned Pulitzer Prize–winning author and scientist Jared Diamond explores how the extraordinary human animal, in a remarkably short time, developed the capacity to rule the world . . . and the means to irrevocably destroy it.
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My Stroke of Insight
by Jill Bolte Taylor
A brain scientist discusses suffering a stroke at the age of thirty-seven, describing her discovery of differences in the left and right side of the brain and the steps she took over a period of eight years to recover her health.
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Nineteen Eighty-four
by George Orwell
Eternal warfare is the price of bleak prosperity in this satire of totalitarian barbarism.
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The Blank Slate
by Steven Pinker
Each dogma carries a moral burden, so their defenders have engaged in desperate tactics to discredit the scientists who are now challenging them.".
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Strangers to Ourselves
by Timothy D. Wilson
"Is introspection the best path to self-knowledge? What are we trying to discover? In a tour of the unconscious, as contemporary psychological science has redefined it, Timothy D. Wilson introduces a hidden mental world of judgements, feelings, and motives that introspection may never show."--Global Books in Print.
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Godel, Escher, Bach
by Douglas R. Hofstadter
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll Douglas Hofstadter's book is concerned directly with the nature of "maps" or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human intelligence. Gödel, Escher, Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.
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The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales
by Oliver Sacks
Explores neurological disorders and their effects upon the minds and lives of those affected with an entertaining voice.
