The Throwing Madonna

Author : William H. Calvin
Publisher : William H. Calvin
ISBN 13 : 0982916779
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Throwing Madonna written by William H. Calvin and published by William H. Calvin. This book was released on 2010-09-15 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A group of 17 essays: The Throwing Madonna; The Lovable Cat: Mimicry Strikes Again; Woman the Toolmaker? Did Throwing Stones Lead to Bigger Brains? The Ratchets of Social Evolution; The Computer as Metaphor in Neurobiology; Last Year in Jerusalem; Computing Without Nerve Impulses; Aplysia, the Hare of the Ocean; Left Brain, Right Brain: Science or the New Phrenology? What to Do About Tic Douloureux; Linguistics and the Brain's Buffer; The Woodrow Wilson Story; Thinking Clearly About Schizophrenia; Of Cancer Pain, Magic Bullets, and Humor; Linguistics and the Brain's Buffer; Probing Language Cortex: The Second Wave; and The Creation Myth, Updated: A Scenario for Humankind.

Author : William H. Calvin
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780070096646
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Throwing Madonna written by William H. Calvin and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Joseph Fracchia
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004471596
Total Pages : 1450 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Bodies and Artefacts: Historical Materialism as Corporeal Semiotics (2 vols.) written by Joseph Fracchia and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-12-20 with total page 1450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an offhand, never systematically elaborated comment Karl Marx deemed ‘human corporeal organisation’ the ‘first fact for the study of human history’. This book explores the implications of Marx’s radically corporeal insight for historical-materialist analysis of socio-economic and cultural forms.

Author : Michael C. Corballis
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780691088037
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book From Hand to Mouth written by Michael C. Corballis and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing with wit and eloquence, Corballis makes nimble reference to literature, mythology, natural history, sports, and contemporary politics as he explains in fascinating detail what is now known about the evolution of language. Line illustrations.

Author : Alondra Oubre
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134384742
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Instinct and Revelation written by Alondra Oubre and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-11 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Instinct and Revelation revolves around the hypothesis that ritual behavior and imaginative awareness in early hominids may have helped to spawn the evolution of the human brain and human consciousness. Using an integral perspective comparable with systems theory, the book carefully interweaves fact and theory from physical and cultural anthropology, psychobiology and the brain sciences, psychology, and to a lesser degree, eastern philosophy. This book breaks from tradition by discussing from a primarily anthropological perspective the origin of human consciousness within a philosophical framework that embraces precepts from human evolution, evolutionary psychology, the neurosciences, biocultural anthropology, and cultural symbolic anthropology.

Author : Michael C. Corballis
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400851491
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Recursive Mind written by Michael C. Corballis and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-27 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking theory of what makes the human mind unique The Recursive Mind challenges the commonly held notion that language is what makes us uniquely human. In this compelling book, Michael Corballis argues that what distinguishes us in the animal kingdom is our capacity for recursion: the ability to embed our thoughts within other thoughts. "I think, therefore I am," is an example of recursive thought, because the thinker has inserted himself into his thought. Recursion enables us to conceive of our own minds and the minds of others. It also gives us the power of mental "time travel"—the ability to insert past experiences, or imagined future ones, into present consciousness. Drawing on neuroscience, psychology, animal behavior, anthropology, and archaeology, Corballis demonstrates how these recursive structures led to the emergence of language and speech, which ultimately enabled us to share our thoughts, plan with others, and reshape our environment to better reflect our creative imaginations. He shows how the recursive mind was critical to survival in the harsh conditions of the Pleistocene epoch, and how it evolved to foster social cohesion. He traces how language itself adapted to recursive thinking, first through manual gestures, then later, with the emergence of Homo sapiens, vocally. Toolmaking and manufacture arose, and the application of recursive principles to these activities in turn led to the complexities of human civilization, the extinction of fellow large-brained hominins like the Neandertals, and our species' supremacy over the physical world.

Author : A.C. Damask
Publisher : Elsevier
ISBN 13 : 0323154646
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.42/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Synapse, Neuron, Brain written by A.C. Damask and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2012-12-02 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Synapse, Neuron, Brain, the third and last volume in the series Medical Physics, focuses on neurons and their interactions. Comprised of seven chapters regarding the brain's synapses and nerves, this volume concludes through the presentation of medical physics and its applications. An introductory chapter of this volume provides the necessary basic concepts and theories needed in the understanding of the book. This is followed by a discussion on the brain and its interconnections with the spinal cord. Chapter 3 focuses on the importance of evoked potentials as a diagnostic tool for the sensory organ and the neural processing of the stimuli. Chemical and electrical properties of synapses are also given emphasis. Other topics covered in this volume include the rall theory and neuronal integration; membrane noise at synaptic junctions; and new techniques on brain studies (autoradiography, positron annihilation, and nuclear magnetic resonance). As with the other volumes, this also caters to persons in various disciplines such as medicine, physiology, physics, and biology.

Author : Joel Garreau
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0767915038
Total Pages : 402 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Radical Evolution written by Joel Garreau and published by Crown. This book was released on 2006-05-09 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking us behind the scenes with today’s foremost researchers and pioneers, bestselling author Joel Garreau shows that we are at a turning point in history. At this moment we are engineering the next stage of human evolution. Through advances in genetic, robotic, information, and nanotechnologies, we are altering our minds, our memories, our metabolisms, our personalities, our progeny–and perhaps our very souls. Radical Evolution reveals that the powers of our comic-book superheroes already exist, or are in development in hospitals, labs, and research facilities around the country–from the revved-up reflexes and speed of Spider-Man and Superman, to the enhanced mental acuity and memory capabilities of an advanced species. Over the next fifteen years, Garreau makes clear in this New York Times Book Club premiere selection, these enhancements will become part of our everyday lives. Where will they lead us? To heaven–where technology’s promise to make us smarter, vanquish illness, and extend our lives is the answer to our prayers? Or, as some argue, to hell–where unrestrained technology brings about the ultimate destruction of our species?

Author : Michael C. Corballis
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198024525
Total Pages : 377 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Lopsided Ape written by Michael C. Corballis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1993-06-10 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How great is the evolutionary distance between humans and apes, and what is it that creates that gulf? Philosophers and scientists have debated the question for centuries, but Michael Corballis finds the mystery revealed in our right hands. For humans are the only primates who are predominantly right handed, a sign of the specialization of the left hemisphere of the brain for language. And that specialization, he tells us, makes a massive distance indeed, as he describes what exactly it means to be the lopsided ape. In The Lopsided Ape, Corballis takes us on a fascinating tour of the origins and implications of the specialization of the two halves of the brain--known as laterality--in human evolution. He begins by surveying current views of evolution, ranging from the molecular level--the role of viruses, for instance, in transporting genes between species--to the tremendous implications of such physical changes as walking on two feet. Walking upright freed our ancestors' arms for such things as tool-making and gesturing (a critical part of early language). Corballis argues that the evolution of the brain--and language--was intimately tied up with these changes: The proliferation of objects made by early hominids, in an increasingly artificial environment marked by social cooperation, demanded greater flexibility in communication and even in thinking itself. These evolutionary pressures spurred the development of laterality in the brain. He goes on to look at the structure of language, following the work of Noam Chomsky and others, showing how grammar allows us to create an infinite variety of messages. In examining communication between animals and attempts to teach apes and dolphins language, he demonstrates that only humans have this unlimited ability for expression--an ability that he traces back through hominid evolution. After this engrossing account of what we know about evolution, language, and the human brain, Corballis suggests that the left hemisphere has evolved a Generative Assembling Device, a biological mechanism that allows us to manipulate open-ended forms of representation and provides the basis for mathematics, reasoning, music, art, and play as well as language and manufacture. It is this device, he writes, that truly sets us off from the apes. Both a detailed account of human language and evolution and a convincing argument for a new view of the brain, The Lopsided Ape provides fascinating insight into our origins and the nature of human thought itself.

Author : William H Calvin
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0465066895
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

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Download or read book How Brains Think written by William H Calvin and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-11-25 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you’re good at finding the one right answer to life’s multiple-choice questions, you’re ”smart.” But ”intelligence” is what you need when contemplating the leftovers in the refrigerator, trying to figure out what might go with them; or if you’re trying to speak a sentence that you’ve never spoken before. As Jean Piaget said, intelligence is what you use when you don’t know what to do, when all the standard answers are inadequate. This book tries to fathom how our inner life evolves from one topic to another, as we create and reject alternatives. Ever since Darwin, we’ve known that elegant things can emerge (indeed, self-organize) from ”simpler” beginnings. And, says theoretical neurophysiologist William H. Calvin, the bootstrapping of new ideas works much like the immune response or the evolution of a new animal species—except that the brain can turn the Darwinian crank a lot faster, on the time scale of thought and action. Drawing on anthropology, evolutionary biology, linguistics, and the neurosciences, Calvin also considers how a more intelligent brain developed using slow biological improvements over the last few million years. Long ago, evolving jack-of-all trades versatility was encouraged by abrupt climate changes. Now, evolving intelligence uses a nonbiological track: augmenting human intelligence and building intelligent machines.