#20 in Psychology
How the Mind Works
- 672
- Pages
- about 12 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“How the Mind Works” is a wide-ranging, readable tour of evolutionary psychology, from vision and emotion to the meaning of life. Pinker argues that the mind is a computational system shaped by natural selection, and takes on debates such as difference feminism along the way. Some readers find it hard to get into at first but full of ideas worth returning to. At nearly seven hundred pages, it is a book to take in stages.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
How the Mind Works is a 1997 book by the Canadian-American cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, in which the author attempts to explain some of the human mind's poorly understood functions and quirks in evolutionary terms. Drawing heavily on the paradigm of evolutionary psychology articulated by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, Pinker covers subjects such as vision, emotion, feminism, and "the meaning of life". He argues for both a computational theory of mind and a neo-Darwinist, adaptationist approach to evolution, all of which he sees as the central components of evolutionary psychology. He criticizes difference feminism because he believes scientific research has shown that women and men differ little or not at all in their moral reasoning. The book was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist.
Reading order · Language and Human Nature Tetralogy
Full order & progress →- The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and MindStart hereThe Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and Mind–Not ranked yet
- How the Mind WorksThis book
8.08.0 / 10 - The Blank Slate
8.18.1 / 10 - The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human NatureThe Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature–Not ranked yet
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.0 across 57 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 28% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Psychology average of 7.9. That is how 8.0 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.7 | 6 | 11% |
| Hardcover | 8.0 | 51 | 90% |
Frequently asked
How long is How the Mind Works?
It has 672 pages — longer than 97% of the ranked books in Psychology.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Psychology — with scores between 7.8 and 8.1, closest to this book.
