From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds

by Daniel C. Dennett Narrated by Tom Perkins

Overview

What is human consciousness and how is it possible? This question fascinates thinking people from poets and painters to physicists, psychologists, and philosophers. From Bacteria to Bach and Back is Daniel C. Dennett's brilliant answer, extending perspectives from his earlier work in surprising directions, exploring the deep interactions of evolution, brains, and human culture. Part philosophical whodunit, part bold scientific conjecture, this landmark work enlarges themes that have sustained Dennett's legendary career at the forefront of philosophical thought. In his inimitable style?laced with wit and arresting thought experiments?Dennett shows how culture enables reflection by installing a bounty of thinking tools, or memes, in our brains. Language, itself composed of memes, turbocharged this interplay. The result, a mind that can comprehend the questions it poses, emerges from a process of cultural evolution.



An agenda-setting book for a new generation of philosophers and other researchers, From Bacteria to Bach and Back will delight and entertain anyone who hopes to understand human creativity in all its wondrous applications.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"[The] best scientific-philosophical approach to understanding how consciousness evolved…A wonderful book that will shape and drive thinking for years to come."— Shane O’Mara Times Higher Education

"Dennett is always good company…He writes with wit and elegance."— Thomas Nagel New York Review of Books

"This is a book to read and relish and then read again."— Michael S. Gazzaniga Wall Street Journal

"Readers will find their minds enriched with many powerful thinking tools."— Economist

"If you have not encountered [Dennett’s] work, you surely should…very few contemporary thinkers have supplied us with so many ‘thinking tools.’…Dennett’s book is astonishingly rich and will introduce you to most of the key ideas in the terrain he strides energetically across."— Adam Zeman Standpoint

"A subtle and

interesting argument."— Stephen Rose Guardian

"Encyclopedic knowledge of both the history of and the latest thinking in philosophy, evolutionary biology, psychology, and computer science."— Christopher Beha Harper's

"Brave and bracing."— Oliver Moody The Times

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171332730
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	02/07/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

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