Format:
1 Online-Ressource (480 p.)
Edition:
Issued also in print
ISBN:
9780520974364
Content:
To imagine-to see what is not there-is the startling ability that has fueled human development and innovation through the centuries. As a species we stand alone in our remarkable capacity to refashion the world after the picture 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-from the first Homo sapiens to the present day. Through groundbreaking insights in cognitive science, Fernández-Armesto explores how and why we have ideas in the first place, providing a tantalizing glimpse into who we are and what we might yet accomplish. Unearthing historical evidence, he begins by reconstructing the thoughts of our Paleolithic ancestors to reveal the subtlety and profundity of the thinking of early humans. A masterful paean to the human imagination from a wonderfully elegant thinker, Out of Our Minds 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
Note:
Frontmatter
,
Contents
,
Preface
,
Chapter 1. Mind Out of Matter: The Mainspring of Ideas
,
Chapter 2. Gathering Thoughts: Thinking Before Agriculture
,
Chapter 3. Settled Minds: 'Civilized' Thinking
,
Chapter 4. The Great Sages: The First Named Thinkers
,
Chapter 5. Thinking Faiths: Ideas in a Religious Age
,
Chapter 6. Return to the Future: Thinking Through Plague and Cold
,
Chapter 7. Global Enlightenments: Joined-Up Thinking in a Joined-Up World
,
Chapter 8. The Climacteric of Progress: Nineteenth-Century Certainties
,
Chapter 9. The Revenge of Chaos: Unstitching Certainty
,
Chapter 10. The Age of Uncertainty: Twentieth-Century Hesitancies
,
Prospect: The End of Ideas
,
Notes
,
Index
,
Issued also in print
,
In English
Additional Edition:
ISBN 9780520331075
Additional Edition:
Erscheint auch als print ISBN 9780520331075
Language:
English
DOI:
10.1525/9780520974364
