Customer Reviews

The Universe Within: A New Science Explores the Human Mind

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was an Econ major until I read this book - I now have an undergraduate degree in cognitive science and a DPhil in neuropsychology. This book turned me on the fun stuff that is the science of the mind. It led me to Douglas Hofstadter, on to Oliver Sacks and a host of other authors and I was so influenced by it that I mentioned Morton Hunt in the dedication to my dissertation. Buy this book if you want to be captivated by what we are beginning to understand about how the mind works - how we think, remember and solve problems and engage in conversation.

Yep it is all of the fun questions that we need answering. And Morton tries to explain how and why. The back cover has a prominent selection that explains the book better than the introduction.

The prewired brain:
Improving your memory:
Do we ever totally forget anything?
How logical are we? Not very. How much does it matter?
Do you "pigeonhole" other people, experiences, events? Is it bad to do so?

Where children's ideas come from:
Solving new problems:
Mind over computer:

There are several illustrations and tests. No breakthrough theories.

Yep it is all of the fun questions that we need answering. In addition, Morton tries to explain how and why. The back cover has a prominent selection that explains the book better than the introduction.

The prewired brain:
Improving your memory:
Do we ever totally forget anything?
How logical are we? Not very.
How much does it matter?
Do you "pigeonhole" other people, experiences, events?
Is it bad to do so?

Where children's ideas come from:
Solving new problems:
Mind over computer:

There are several illustrations and tests. No breakthrough theories.

Yep it is all of the fun questions that we need answering. In addition, Morton tries to explain how and why. The back cover has a prominent selection that explains the book better than the introduction.

The prewired brain:
Improving your memory:
Do we ever totally forget anything?
How logical are we? Not very.
How much does it matter?
Do you "pigeonhole" other people, experiences, events?
Is it bad to do so?

Where children's ideas come from:
Solving new problems:
Mind over computer:

There are several illustrations and tests. No breakthrough theories.

Hunt has done an excelent job in this book in discussing the field called cognitive science.I read this book in 1983 just after I had submitted my dissertation on J M Keynes's logical theory of probability at the University of California,Riverside.I discovered that there was nearly a one-to one onto correspondence between the major conclusions of cognitive science ,with respect to decision making ,reported in Hunt's book and the conclusions and analysis contained in chapter III and Part III of Keynes's 1921 A Treatise on Probability.There are five fundamental conclusions reported by Hunt.First,"Deductive thinking is an information-rearranging process..."while"...inductive thinking is an information-extending process...",(Hunt,p.157).Second,the most important form of reasoning is"...by analogizing from a set of similarities",(Hunt,p.158).Analogical reasoning is plausible reasoning based on degrees of likeness,similarity,and resemblance.It is reasoning based on a qualitative,comparative and/or interval estimate approach to probability that incorporates the mathematical laws of mathematical probability only as a limiting case.It must be pointed out here that Hunt fails to challenge the Tversky-Kahneman error that conflates probabilistic reasoning with the limiting case of mathematical probability laws.These laws are deductive in nature and not inductive(Hunt,p.184).Induction plays THE central role in understanding our world through learning by experience.Third,inductive thinking,while error prone,eventually leads to error correction.Fourth,"induction refers to those processes by which we group similar objects into categories,or recognize patterns that happen in some regular order",(Hunt,p.158).Thus,pattern recognition is fundamental to problem solving,teaching how to solve problems,and scientific discovery.Scientific discovery is the accidental and/or systematic result of pattern recognition applied to new data and/or a new problem.A scientist who makes a fundamental breakthrough "sees" or "intuits"or "perceives" something in the new data or information that his colleagues are unable to recognize.Finally,evolutionary processes have developed the mind's inductive capacity and it is this developed capacity to reason inductively that is the major reason for the supremacy of the human species,both to destroy and to create.I have deducted one star because practically all of these points were made long ago by John Maynard Keynes.Keynes never made the mistake of conflating probabilistic reasoning based on analogy,similarity,and pattern recognition with the purely mathematical laws of mathematical probability.These laws hold as a limiting case.The fact that in many decision situations it "appears" that the decision maker is violating the mathematical laws of probability is explained by the fact that in many such situations the prerequisites needed to apply the mathematical laws of probability are not satisfied.Keynes would never make the claim that most decision makers do not understand the concept of regression to the mean(see Hunt,pp.186-187).Regression to the mean automatically assumes that a unique probability distribution fits the data.The usual assumption is that a normal distribution fits the data.The fact is that in many instances such assumptions are false.