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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher |
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KNOW THYSELF
The Science of Self-Awareness
The surprising science of the human mind's greatest power: introspection.
It happens to everyone: You are asked a question -- even something you know well, such as the name of a longtime colleague -- and can't answer. The information is stuck on the tip of your tongue. It's an experience so frustrating that it seems like it must be a brain malfunction. In fact, it's actually a hallmark of our greatest power: self-awareness.
In Know Thyself, Fleming shows that those frustrating moments of knowledge just beyond our grasp aren't some kind of design flaw in our minds. Surprisingly, they are actually examples of our brain's greatest power. Scientists and philosophers call it metacognition, but you might just call it the ability to think about our own minds. Self-awareness shapes our intelligence, memory, and conscious experience. It's integral to how we teach and learn. We use it every time we weigh difficult questions, such as assessing how we'd respond in a crisis. It enables us to answer questions as straightforward as what skills we need to practice or what facts we need to study to do better on a test. And it is the reason we can wonder about issues as big as what we should do with our lives.
Stephen Fleming is a cognitive neuroscientist and the director of the Metacognition Group at University College London and is a leading expert on the topic. Metacognition--the ability to be self-aware - defines us. It is the trait that sets us apart from other animals and even the most powerful AIs, and is the root of our greatest mental abilities. As the first book devoted to the subject, Know Thyself is poised to become essential reading not only for teachers and neuroscientists but for anyone who wants to understand how we think.
Stephen M. Fleming is a Sir Henry Dale Wellcome Trust/Royal Society fellow at the department of experimental psychology and principal investigator at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, University College London, where he leads the Metacognition Group. He lives in London.
In Know Thyself, Fleming shows that those frustrating moments of knowledge just beyond our grasp aren't some kind of design flaw in our minds. Surprisingly, they are actually examples of our brain's greatest power. Scientists and philosophers call it metacognition, but you might just call it the ability to think about our own minds. Self-awareness shapes our intelligence, memory, and conscious experience. It's integral to how we teach and learn. We use it every time we weigh difficult questions, such as assessing how we'd respond in a crisis. It enables us to answer questions as straightforward as what skills we need to practice or what facts we need to study to do better on a test. And it is the reason we can wonder about issues as big as what we should do with our lives.
Stephen Fleming is a cognitive neuroscientist and the director of the Metacognition Group at University College London and is a leading expert on the topic. Metacognition--the ability to be self-aware - defines us. It is the trait that sets us apart from other animals and even the most powerful AIs, and is the root of our greatest mental abilities. As the first book devoted to the subject, Know Thyself is poised to become essential reading not only for teachers and neuroscientists but for anyone who wants to understand how we think.
Stephen M. Fleming is a Sir Henry Dale Wellcome Trust/Royal Society fellow at the department of experimental psychology and principal investigator at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, University College London, where he leads the Metacognition Group. He lives in London.
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Book
Published 2021-04-27 by Basic Books |