The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as TruthsMichael Shermer
Times Books, May 2011
ISBN: 978-0805091250
Bestselling author Michael Shermer's comprehensive and provocative theory on how beliefs are born, formed, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished
Michael Shermer, the editor of Skeptic magazine, is a great proponent of logic, reason and clear thinking. He is a professional skeptic, and a science writer. In his book, The Believing Brain, he attempts to debunk some standard hogwash, and to offer the public some tools for rational thought.
The Believing Brain systematically moves through a large number of the more persistent myths of our age, and while it spends quite a bit of time exploring the strangeness and the details of such ideas, it also spends quite a bit exploring why such beliefs are ultimately false, why people choose to believe such things, and how we can avoid such errors in our own thoughts.
The Believing Brain systematically moves through a large number of the more persistent myths of our age, and while it spends quite a bit of time exploring the strangeness and the details of such ideas, it also spends quite a bit exploring why such beliefs are ultimately false, why people choose to believe such things, and how we can avoid such errors in our own thoughts.
Shermer then gets into ways we can mislead ourselves. We tend to underestimate the extent to which our theories, equipment, and observations color our interpretations of our results. We sometimes exaggerate the importance of anecdotes, rumors, boldness, and heresy. We often underestimate the power of enormous amounts of evidence. And we can make a variety of logical errors. We see some interesting examples, including an analysis of some claims of extrasensory perception.
The strength of this book is Shermer's display of reasoning skills to defend the importance of reasoning itself. He defends and celebrates the scientific method by presenting his thesis, examining the data, and deriving the only reasonable conclusions possible, all the while being careful to emphasize that the scientific method requires him to accept the possibility that the weird believers might be correct and he might be mistaken. Shermer is a very bright, articulate, experienced, and educated person, so it would have been easy for him to demolish the weird believers with ridicule. He deliberately does not do so, because, after all, he is defending logic and reason.
There is the implication here that we do change our beliefs over time despite the primary idea behind the book being that we first construct beliefs and then reinforce them as time goes by. There's just something about reading Shermer that is unique, inviting, and very educational. This book is the culmination of 30 years of his research and we are all in his debt. It is timely and well written. He makes his points well. This book not only met my high expectations it exceeded it, I couldn't put it down. Thought-provoking, enlightening and a joy to read.
MICHAEL SHERMER is the author of The Believing Brain, Why People Believe Weird Things, The Science of Good and Evil, The Mind Of The Market, Why Darwin Matters, Science Friction, How We Believe and other books on the evolution of human beliefs and behavior. He is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, the editor of Skeptic.com, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and an adjunct professor at Claremont Graduate University. He lives in Southern California.
There is the implication here that we do change our beliefs over time despite the primary idea behind the book being that we first construct beliefs and then reinforce them as time goes by. There's just something about reading Shermer that is unique, inviting, and very educational. This book is the culmination of 30 years of his research and we are all in his debt. It is timely and well written. He makes his points well. This book not only met my high expectations it exceeded it, I couldn't put it down. Thought-provoking, enlightening and a joy to read.
MICHAEL SHERMER is the author of The Believing Brain, Why People Believe Weird Things, The Science of Good and Evil, The Mind Of The Market, Why Darwin Matters, Science Friction, How We Believe and other books on the evolution of human beliefs and behavior. He is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, the editor of Skeptic.com, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and an adjunct professor at Claremont Graduate University. He lives in Southern California.
ISBN: 978-0805091250; ISBN10: 0805091254; Imprint: Times Books; On Sale: 5/24/11; Format: Hardcover; Pages: 400; $28.00
