Description
Author David J. Linden
Publisher Harvard University Press
format paperback first edition
Condition like new
Summary
In The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God, neuroscientist David J. Linden delivers a bold and illuminating exploration of the human brain’s development—not through design, but through a chaotic evolutionary process. Rather than a sleek machine, the brain is more like an amalgam of clunky add-ons layered atop a primitive structure. Linden pulls back the curtain on how this haphazard construction has produced not only the miracle of consciousness but also our capacity for emotion, memory, spirituality, and even delusion.
With wit and clarity, Linden explains how the brain’s very inefficiencies are what make us human. He bridges biology and the human condition, exploring how the brain's peculiar evolution gives rise to love, religious belief, and complex thought—features not engineered, but stumbled upon. Engaging for readers of science, psychology, and philosophy alike, this first edition paperback is an accessible yet intellectually rigorous look at what it really means to have a “mind.”