Summer Reading from the EDGE Archive

[Summer Reading from the Archive]( MIRROR NEURONS AND IMITATION LEARNING AS THE DRIVING FORCE BEHIND THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD IN HUMAN EVOLUTION By V.S. Ramachandran [May 2000] The discovery of mirror neurons in the frontal lobes of monkeys, and their potential relevance to human brain evolution—which I speculate on in this essay—is the single most important "unreported" (or at least, unpublicized) story of the decade. I predict that mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: they will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments. [ [Read...]( ] --------------------------------------------------------------- IS SHAME NECESSARY? By Jennifer Jacquet [July 2011] Balancing group and self-interest has never been easy, yet human societies display a high level of cooperation. To attain that level, specialized traits had to evolve, including such emotions as shame. [ [Read...]( ] --------------------------------------------------------------- PHILOSOPHY IN THE FLESH A Conversation with George Lakoff [March 1999] We are neural beings. Our brains take their input from the rest of our bodies. What our bodies are like and how they function in the world thus structures the very concepts we can use to think. We cannot think just anything—only what our embodied brains permit. [ [Read...]( ] --------------------------------------------------------------- A THEORY OF ROUGHNESS A Conversation with Benoit Mandelbrot [December 2004] A recent, important turn in my life occurred when I realized that something that I have long been stating in footnotes should be put on the marquee. I have engaged myself, without realizing it, in undertaking a theory of roughness. Think of color, pitch, heaviness, and hotness. Each is the topic of a branch of physics. Chemistry is filled with acids, sugars, and alcohols; all are concepts derived from sensory perceptions. Roughness is just as important as all those other raw sensations, but was not studied for its own sake. [ [Read...]( ] [EDGE.ORG]( Copyright (c) 2021 by Edge Foundation, Inc., 260 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10001. All Rights Reserved. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](