This Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking
edited by John Brockman
http://www.amazon.com/This-Will-Make-You-Smarter/dp/0062109391
This book consist of an anthology of short essays by 151 of our time’s biggest thinkers on subjects as diverse as the power of networks, cognitive humility, the paradoxes of daydreaming, information flow, collective intelligence, and a dizzying, mind-expanding range in between. Together, they construct a powerful toolkit of meta-cognition — a new way to think about thinking itself.
With the participation of many experts such as:
D. Kahneman, D Goleman, Martin Seligman, VS Ramachadrian, R. Sapolsky, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Brian Eno among many others; about possible scientific concepts that can be used to improve cognition and expand the human outlook for change.
Brockman prefaces the essays with an important definition that captures the dimensionality of “science”:
The matter behind this book links with what Neuroscientist David Eagleman, author of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain explores; the concept of “the umwelt” coined by biologist Jakob von Uexküll in 1909 — the idea that different animals in the same ecosystem pick up on different elements of their environment and thus live in different micro-realities based on the subset of the world they’re able to detect. Eagleman stresses the importance of recognizing our own umwelt — our unawareness of the limits of our awareness:
But most of the essays in the book are about metacognition. They consist of thinking about how we think. These researchers are giving us tools for thinking. It sounds utilitarian and it is. But tucked in the nooks and crannies of this book there are insights about the intimate world, about the realms of emotion and spirit. There are insights about what sort of creatures we are.
edited by John Brockman
http://www.amazon.com/This-Will-Make-You-Smarter/dp/0062109391
This book consist of an anthology of short essays by 151 of our time’s biggest thinkers on subjects as diverse as the power of networks, cognitive humility, the paradoxes of daydreaming, information flow, collective intelligence, and a dizzying, mind-expanding range in between. Together, they construct a powerful toolkit of meta-cognition — a new way to think about thinking itself.
With the participation of many experts such as:
D. Kahneman, D Goleman, Martin Seligman, VS Ramachadrian, R. Sapolsky, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Brian Eno among many others; about possible scientific concepts that can be used to improve cognition and expand the human outlook for change.
Brockman prefaces the essays with an important definition that captures the dimensionality of “science”:
Here, the term ‘scientific’ is to be understood in a broad sense — as the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about anything, whether it be human behavior, corporate behavior, the fate of the planet, or the future of the universe. A ‘scientific concept’ may come from philosophy, logic, economics, jurisprudence, or any other analytic enterprises, as long as it is a rigorous tool that can be summed up succinctly but has broad application to understanding the world.”
The matter behind this book links with what Neuroscientist David Eagleman, author of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain explores; the concept of “the umwelt” coined by biologist Jakob von Uexküll in 1909 — the idea that different animals in the same ecosystem pick up on different elements of their environment and thus live in different micro-realities based on the subset of the world they’re able to detect. Eagleman stresses the importance of recognizing our own umwelt — our unawareness of the limits of our awareness:
I think it would be useful if the concept of the umwelt were embedded in the public lexicon. It neatly captures the idea of limited knowledge, of unobtainable information, and of unimagined possibilities. Consider the criticisms of policy, the assertions of dogma, the declarations of fact that you hear every day — and just imagine if all of these could be infused with the proper intellectual humility that comes from appreciating the amount unseen.”
But most of the essays in the book are about metacognition. They consist of thinking about how we think. These researchers are giving us tools for thinking. It sounds utilitarian and it is. But tucked in the nooks and crannies of this book there are insights about the intimate world, about the realms of emotion and spirit. There are insights about what sort of creatures we are.