13 results for "Science"

Why Does My Dog Act That Way? A Complete Guide to Your Dog's Personality

Stanley Coren
We've shared our lives with dogs for thousands of years, but they still act in ways that baffle us. To help us understand them better, Dr. Stanley Coren, the undisputed expert on dog behavior, intelligence, and training, tells the story of how dogs evolved over time into the myriad forms and breeds we love today. Not simply domesticated wolves, dogs are actually much more complex than wild canines; their ability to adapt to a man-made world is far more flexible, their personalities far more diverse. Fascinating findings reveal which breeds were bred to become more dominant, affectionate, cooperative, or even dangerous. This practical, surprising book also presents -- for the first time -- the "Dog Behavior Inventory," a simple, fun test based on the personality-profiling questionnaires used in human psychological studies that you can administer to your own dog to get a detailed picture of his personality and how he compares to other members of his breed. Then, using the findings of the U.S. Army's once- classified studies of "Superdogs," you can train your pet to become a real-life equivalent of Lassie and Rin Tin Tin -- a dog who is not disturbed, angered, or frightened by anything. Filled with the entertaining anecdotes and scientific data that Dr. Coren's avid followers have come to expect and enjoy, this uniquely complete guide to dog psychology can help you to select a new companion and to understand and communicate better with your old friend.
Simon and Schuster 2007-12-04 304 pages

The making of memory: [from molecules to mind]

Rose, Steven
The human brain weighs, on average, just over two pounds, is wrinkled like a walnut and has the colour and something of the consistency of porridge. Yet somehow the interactions of the ten billion cells that comprise it produce our capacity to think, hope, believe, imagine, and also to remember - to learn and recall, perhaps years later, a face, a tune, a poem or a telephone number. Are there molecules of memory? Can we understand the brain best as a computer? What light do diseases of memory shed on its mechanism? What is it, locked into the interactions of the brain cells and the molecules composing them, that carries the memories which make each person unique? Deciphering this, Steven Rose argues, is the key to interpreting the links between brain and mind. In this book he traces the road to a new understanding of memory that he and other researchers have followed, with all its false turnings and misleading signposts. One of the aims of the book is to explore, through a description of the laboratory life of memory researchers, how scientists, in a world not free from political rivalry, ideology and self-deception, nevertheless strive to answer an important and fascinating question. The winner of the Rhone-Poulenc Science Prize 1993.
Bantam Books 1993 355 pages

The Mind's Eye

Oliver W. Sacks
From the author of the #1 national bestselling Musicophilia comes a truly visionary book: an exploration of the remarkable, unpredictable ways that our brains cope with the loss of sight by finding new forms of perception to create worlds as complete and rich as the no-longer-visible world. Following the phenomenal success of his international bestseller Musicophilia , the inimitable Oliver Sacks returns with another book on the extraordinary interaction between our brain and our senses -- in this case, vision. In The Mind's Eye , Sacks examines questions ranging from the primary experiences of how we perceive depth or color or motion to the complex matter of how different individuals have varied ways of thinking and experiencing or recreating the visual world. Like The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and An Anthropologist on Mars , Sacks's new book is based primarily on individual stories -- including Sacks's own experience of an ocular tumor that left him unable to perceive depth. As always, he embeds these case histories in a rich historical and scientific context. Sacks goes beyond basic vision to explore perception, hallucination and the power of visualization, as well as the ocular effects of migraine, epilepsy and other conditions. Oliver Sacks is our perfect guide to the visual world, a realm that, it turns out, is much, much more complicated than we could have imagined.
Alfred A. Knopf 2010 263 pages

Representations Philosophical Essays on the Foundations of Cognitive Science

Jerry A. Fodor
These essays will shape discussion in the philosophy of psychology for years to come. A collection of eleven essays dealing with methodological and empirical issues in cognitive science and in the philosophy of mind, Representations convincingly connects philosophical speculation to concrete empirical research.One of the outstanding methodological issues dealt with is the status of functionalism considered as an alternative to behavioristic and physicalistic accounts. of mental states and properties. The other issue is the status of reductionism considered as an account of the relation between the psychological and physical sciences. The first chapters present the main lines of argument which have made functionalism the currently favored philosophical approach to ontology of the mental.The outlines of a psychology of propositional attitudes which emerges from consideration of current developments in cognitive science are contained in the remaining essays.Not all of these essays are re-presentations. The new introductory essay seeks to present an overview and gives some detailed proposals about the contribution that functionalism makes to the solutions of problems about intentionality. The concluding essay, also not previously published, is a sustained examination of the relation between theories about the structure of concepts and theories about how they are learned. Finally, the essay "Three cheers for propositional attitudes", a critical examination of some of D. C. Dennett's ideas, has been completely rewritten for this volume. A Bradford Book.
MIT Press 1983 343 pages

What Could He Be Thinking

Michael Gurian
Having studied how boys and girls develop differently, Michael Gurian turns his attention to adult men in this entertaining, informative, and groundbreaking book on the male brain. Following two decades of neurobiological research, "What Could He Be Thinking? answers the questions women and the world are asking about husbands, fathers, boyfriends, and coworkers. Mixing neurobiology with Gurian's very readable writing style, anecdotes from everyday life, and a new vision of the male psyche, the book will satisfy the tremendous curiosity women and our culture have about the roots of male behavior. Women know intuitively that men are different from them. What women are now just coming to realize is that the men they are married to, having sex with, working with, parenting with, and trying to fathom, act and think in very male ways, not only because they are socialized to do so, but because they are built to - neurobiologically. The new field of brain science has revealed wonderful secrets about a man's mind. In this book, women who are eager to understand the men in their lives can discover the new brain science in an entertaining way, as they get answers to the prime question every woman asks at some time in her life: What could he be thinking? The book provides fascinating information about the male brain, male habits, male tendencies and the nuances of men's' actions and thoughts. It is a provocative, exciting vision into the minds of men.
St. Martin's Press 2001

Delusion and Mass Delusion

Joost A. M. Meerloo
2021 Hardcover Reprint of the 1949 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Meerloo's best-known book is Rape of the Mind, published in 1956. The book received wide attention in part because it dealt with totalitarian applications of brainwashing techniques during the Korean War. Rape of the Mind explains how scientific brainwashing is done and argues that "hardly anyone can resist such." "Fear, and continual pressure are known to create a menticidal hypnosis. The conscious part of the personality no longer takes part in the automatic confessions. The brainwashee lives in a trance, repeating the record grooved into him by somebody else." In Delusion and Mass Delusion, Meerloo attempts to explain the mechanisms within the mind that allow for such manipulation. He attempts an explanation of the several mechanisms undergirding thought, many of which are not obviously available to individuals. An interesting early study on brainwashing by an early student of the practice.
Martino Fine Books 2021-10-14 140 pages

Max Wertheimer Productive Thinking

Max Wertheimer
Max Wertheimer (1880-1943), a pioneer of 20th-century psychology, had a major influence on the development of cognitive psychology, especially the psychology of perception and of productive thinking. His work "Productive Thinking" (1945), written in New York, is regarded as a milestone in creativity research. Consisting of many examples of creative thought processes - from geometric tasks to socio-psychologically relevant conflict resolutions to the development of Einstein's theory of relativity - the book leads the reader through a multi-faceted body of thought in the psychology of thinking. Only a few texts in psychology have remained significant even after a period of three quarters of a century - Max Wertheimer's Productive Thinking is such an exception. This book, which also presents an exposition of Gestalt psychology, highlights the "productive" (insightful) versus automatic (unreflected) thought processes for many areas of life. In addition to examples from school teaching, the chapter on the emergence of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity is of lasting interest to today's generation of psychologists, pedagogues, brain researchers, neuroscientists and philosophers. Wertheimer had the unique opportunity to analyze Einstein's thinking in direct conversation. An introductory commentary by Viktor Sarris for this new edition of the first publication of Productive Thinking in 1945 offers a detailed account of the genesis and reception of Wertheimer's work.
Springer International Publishing 2020-03-31 257 pages

The Structure and Measurement of Intelligence

Hans Eysenck
What is meant by the term "intelligence" and, once de- fined, how do we go about achieving a valid measurement of this faculty? This classic textbook, originally published in 1979, and now reissued with a new preface by Sybil Eysenck, incorporates a broad range of findings and reanalyzes much of the existing literature in this area. In The Structure and Measurement of Intelligence, Hans Eysenck draws on methods for determining the effect of genetics and environment on the development of intelligence and examines the validity of the term as defined in relation to internal as well as external criteria. He tests a number of hypotheses on intelligence against empirical research findings and considers various criticisms in detail. The significance of intelligence and its measurement in society are explored in depth. Eysenck greatly expands upon such questions as: Does IQ measure intelligence? How valid is the nature versus nurture argument? and, How might socioeconomic status influence one's intelligence? Designed primarily for students and scholars in psychology and education, this text will make thought-provoking reading for all concerned with the development and measurement of intelligence in the individual.
[distributor] Taylor & Francis, c/o Bookpoint 2017-10-27 226 pages

Understanding Understanding Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition

Heinz von Foerster
In these essays Heinz von Foerster discusses some of the fundamental principles that govern how we know the world and how we process the information from which we derive that knowledge. Included are path- breaking articles concerning the principles of computation in neural nets (1967), the definition of self-organizing systems (1960), the nature of cognition (1970), as well as recent expansions on these themes (e.g. "How recursive is communication," 1993). Working with Norbert Wiener, Warren McCullough, and others in the 1960s and 1970s, von Foerster was one of the founders of the science of cybernetics, which has had profound effects both on modern systems theory and on the philosophy of cognition. At the Biological Computer Laboratory at the University of Illinois he produced the first parallel computers and contributed to many other developments in the theory of computation and cognition.
Springer New York 2010-10-15 362 pages

New World New Mind

Robert Ornstein,Paul Ehrlich
Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich explain that we are causing our own problems because we have created a world where our basic mental functions are no longer suitable. We evolved over a period of millions of years to survive in small tribal families on the wild grassy plains of East Africa. Now the way we live has nothing to do with that time and place, but the mental tools that were developed to survive on the savanna have remained unchanged. These instincts were wonderfully adapted to the environment that shaped them. But that world, the world that made us, is gone. Now these same instincts are causing us to destroy the world that we made. The threats we face are of our own making, and we can unmake them. If people learn how we have come to this point, we can restore our hope for the future. New World New Mind describes the way our minds have evolved, and offers suggestions for how to cope with who we are in the world we live in now. Recent decades have seen remarkable progress in many areas. For example, despite the abject suffering of millions of people, it is nonetheless true that there has been unprecedented alleviation of poverty and disease for the world's poorest people. There are so many promising and astonishing advances in medicine, technology, and the social and physical sciences that if we give ourselves a chance to survive, our species could enter a golden age.
Malor Books 2020-09 320 pages

Why Humans Vary in Intelligence

Seymour W. Itzkoff
The third volume in a projected four-part series on the evolution of human intelligence, a series acknowledged by opponents and supporters alike as one of the most important recent investigations into the sources and nature of human intelligence. Professor Itzkoff first sets forth the evolutionary facts as a beacon to illuminate his biological theory of variable intelligence. Filling out the evidence from the psychological and brain sciences presented in THE FORM OF MAN and TRIUMPH OF THE INTELLIGENT, he here develops a full-scale model of the mind that more fully explains the relationship between I.Q. and the broader expressions of human intelligence as experienced in daily life. (His model of variable intelligence further delves into the historical consequences of our ancient biological and psychoneurological heritage. Issues such as gender, race, and ethnic variability are treated factually and responsibly, taking into account the full range of empirical evidence available to scholars.) The result is a theory having three complementary bodies of evidence - evolutionary, psychoneurological, and historical - building into a perspective on the factual «why» of human intellectual differences. These differences can best be observed in the richness and diversity of individual personality as well as in the cultures of our world. Itzkoff here takes the first tentative steps toward a biological explanation of the nature and structure of culture. WHY HUMANS VARY IN INTELLIGENCE is an appeal for the rational study of human nature, a plea to allow for further nonideological research into this most crucial area of contemporary concern.
Peter Lang Publishing, Incorporated 1989-09 392 pages

The Form of Man

Seymour W. Itzkoff
The Form of Man presents a new interpretation, consonant with Darwinian evolutionary theory, recent evidence of human evolution, and the realities of cultural life. The exploration begins with the study of the form of life, traversing the tentative gropings of intelligent organic matter in its long struggle to establish itself as life's major adaptation. Seymour Itzkoff explains how intelligence as an adaptation is the slowest and most complex of life's vehicles to escape the degradation of energy predicted by the second law of thermodynamics. Dr. Itzkoff proposes that two evolutionary processes were keys to shaping human nature along its own particular path. Paedomorphosis (infantilization) explains many of man's unique anthropoid features. Orthoselection (evolution in a straight line) allows us to complete a picture of mankind's rapid catapult in brain size expansion almost into our own day. Both concepts reveal how man could have escaped the close selective honing that would have made him a far more practical creature. The final dramatic moment came with the sudden icy extrusion of a super sapient, Homo sapiens sapiens, sometime after 100,000 B.P. It ransformed the structure of all existing transitional hominids and created the conditions for both the growth of civilization and the paradoxical dilemmas and tragedies in our present polyglot humanity.
Peter Lang Publishing, Incorporated 1989-09 336 pages