Short course in Symbolic Behavior & Language / Leadership
Explore the art of meaning with our curated short course on symbolic behavior and leadership. Dive into Godel, Escher, Bach, The Silent Language, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to master the unspoken codes of effective communication and human insight.
Book
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.
Book
The Silent Language
by Edward T. Hall
A leading American anthropologist analyzes the many vitally important ways in which people "talk" to one another without the use of words. "The Silent Language shows how cultural factors influence the individual behind his back, without his knowledge." —Erich Fromm The pecking order in a chicken yard, the fierce competition in a school playground, every unwitting gesture and action—this is the vocabulary of the "silent language." According to Dr. Hall, the concepts of space and time are tools with which all human beings may transmit messages. Space, for example, is the outgrowth of an animal's instinctive defense of his lair and is reflected in human society by the office worker's jealous defense of his desk, or the guarded, walled patio of a Latin-American home. Similarly, the concept of time, varying from Western precision to Easter vagueness, is revealed by the businessman who pointedly keeps a client waiting, or the South Pacific islander who murders his neighbor for an injustice suffered twenty years ago.
Book
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
by Robert M. Pirsig
While cycling through the western states, a disillusioned American questions the meaning of existence after confronting the ghost of his former, uninstitutionalized self.
