Out of Our Minds: What We Think and How We Came to Think It

ISBN-13: 9781786077851 / Angielski / Miękka / 2020 / 480 str.

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

Opis

An extraordinary journey through the history of human imagination, from the dawn of civilisation to the present day

'Immensely learned and ambitious...seam-bursting eclecticism and polymathic brio... This is by any standards a significant book and its author deserves high praise.' Literary Review To imagine - to see that which is not there - is the startling ability that has fuelled human development and innovation through the centuries. As a species we stand alone in our remarkable capacity to refashion the world after the pictures in our minds.Traversing the realms of science, politics, religion, culture, philosophy and history, Felipe Fernández-Armesto reveals the thrilling and disquieting tales of our imaginative leaps. Through groundbreaking insights in cognitive science, he explores how and why we have ideas in the first place, providing a tantalising glimpse into who we are and what we might yet accomplish. Fernández-Armesto shows that bad ideas are often more influential than good ones; that the oldest recoverable thoughts include some of the best; that ideas of Western origin often issued from exchanges with the wider world; and that the pace of innovative thinking is under threat.

Recenzje

'Immensely learned and ambitious...seam-bursting eclecticism and polymathic brio...This is by any standards a significant book and its author deserves high praise.'

Literary Review

O autorze

Felipe Fernández-Armesto is the editor of The Oxford Illustrated History of the World . Author of many critically acclaimed books, including the award-winning Pathfinders and Food: A History, h e occupies the William P. Reynolds Chair in History at the University of Notre Dame.