The art of neuroscience

“How the Mind Works” by Steven Pinker

Book number 2 out of 5, in my quest of reading one Steven Pinker book a year that are in my possession.

This one is a 673 pages-long book about how the mind works, but one which bizarrely seldom mentions about its underlying neuroscience. Granted that this book was published in 1997, which shows how far the biological field of our brain has since developed, but the many assumptions and the omittance of any scientific finding to back up the theses are still appalling.

So instead, what is it about then? To be perfectly honest, I don’t really know. There are so many gibberish in between the paragraphs and so many derailing from the main topic, with its good points (such as the computational theory of the mind, or the effect of optical illusion to our brain, or evolutionary psychology) often drowned in a sea of unnecessary gimmicks and overcompensating fancy words.

Perhaps it’s a bit unfair to judge this book after reading excellent [and newer] books on mind such as “Thinking, fast and slow” by Daniel Kahneman, or “The Chimp Paradox” by Steve Peters, any Daniel Goleman’s series, or even the fun one “You Are Not So Smart” by David McRaney that are more straight forward.

But still, the lack of scientific evidence, untidy organisation of information, the many off topics that are way too long, and no clear concluding points (if any) with just a little hint of arrogance are making it hard to like this book.