Incomplete nature : how mind emerged from matter
- 604 Seiten
- 22 Lesestunden
A radical new explanation of how life and consciousness emerge from physics and chemistry.
Terrence Deacon Reihenfolge der Bücher (Chronologisch)
24. August 1950
Terrence W. Deacon ist ein Autor, der sich mit den tiefgreifenden Fragen nach den Ursprüngen des menschlichen Geistes und der Sprache befasst. Seine Arbeit untersucht das faszinierende Zusammenspiel von Biologie, Neurowissenschaften und der Evolution des symbolischen Denkens, das die menschliche Erfahrung definiert. Mit wissenschaftlicher Genauigkeit und literarischem Gespür deckt er die komplexen Mechanismen auf, die es uns ermöglicht haben, die einzigartige Spezies zu werden, die wir sind. Seine Schriften bieten den Lesern eine fesselnde Reise in das, was es bedeutet, menschlich zu sein.
Incomplete Nature
- 602 Seiten
- 22 Lesestunden
Examines the emergent processes that bridge the gap between organisms that think and have consciousness and those that do not and discusses the origins of life, information, and free will.
The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain
- 527 Seiten
- 19 Lesestunden
This revolutionary book provides fresh answers to long-standing questions of human origins and consciousness. Drawing on his breakthrough research in comparative neuroscience, Terrence Deacon offers a wealth of insights into the significance of symbolic thinking: from the co-evolutionary exchange between language and brains over two million years of hominid evolution to the ethical repercussions that followed man's newfound access to other people's thoughts and emotions.Informing these insights is a new understanding of how Darwinian processes underlie the brain's development and function as well as its evolution. In contrast to much contemporary neuroscience that treats the brain as no more or less than a computer, Deacon provides a new clarity of vision into the mechanism of mind. It injects a renewed sense of adventure into the experience of being human.
Human language is one of the most distinctive behavioural adaptations on the planet. Languages evolved in only one species, in only one way, without precedent, and without parallel. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution have produced hundreds of thousands of species with brains, and tens of thousands with complex learning abilities. Only one of these has ever wondered about its place in the whole scheme, because only one - through its language - evolved with the ability to do so. This book aims to alter the understanding of what it means to be human: the universe isn't a soulless, blindly spinning clockwork, but instead nascent hear and mind.