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The Accidental Mind
- How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
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The Accidental Mind
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Summary
You've probably seen it before: a human brain dramatically lit from the side, the camera circling it like a helicopter shot of Stonehenge, and a modulated baritone voice exalting the brain's elegant design in reverent tones... to which this book says: Pure nonsense.
In a work at once deeply learned and wonderfully accessible, the neuroscientist David Linden counters the widespread assumption that the brain is a paragon of design - and in its place gives us a compelling explanation of how the brain's serendipitous evolution has resulted in nothing short of our humanity.
A guide to the strange and often illogical world of neural function, The Accidental Mind shows how the brain is not an optimized, general-purpose problem-solving machine, but rather a weird agglomeration of ad-hoc solutions that have been piled on through millions of years of evolutionary history.
Moreover, Linden tells us how the constraints of evolved brain design have ultimately led to almost every transcendent human foible: our long childhoods, our extensive memory capacity, our search for love and long-term relationships, our need to create compelling narrative, and, ultimately, the universal cultural impulse to create both religious and scientific explanations. With forays into evolutionary biology, this analysis of mental function answers some of our most common questions about how we've come to be who we are. The book is published by Harvard University Press.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- J. Mann
- 29-12-19
Be Patient and it will get better
I nearly gave up on this book - the early parts I found nearly unlistenable, really too much technical information and most of it going over my head, however I'm glad I didn't because after a while it is very interesting and understandable.
One aspect that did stand out however is all the horrible animal torture that goes on in brain science - and how the author appears to have no sense that he is describing acts of evil. What if all these experiments were being done on humans?
I did find listening to the casual way animals must have suffered horribly just to find out what bit of the brain does what quite upsetting, particularly as the book is blind to the massive suffering involved in what is clearly being described.
It does raise questions on what we can justify in the name of knowledge - they might be gains but they are certainly ill-gotten gains.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
- Judy Corstjens
- 24-06-11
Interesting
I think if you have a brain you can't help but be interested in how it works, and this book certainly offers some interesting hypotheses. I got a little fed up hearing how stupidly the brain is designed (i.e., because it isn't) and while admiring the author's measured and scientific approach, I have to say I didn't warm to him as a person. Still, connecting dreams and religion to the brain's compulsion for seamless narrative is something of a tour de force.
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Tari
- 13-04-13
Ahh!
After reading "The Self Illusion" by Bruce Hood this was the perfect follow up. Linden's text is easily accessible for non-academic seekers of knowledge and is totally fascinating.
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