Oxford Companion to the Mind - Richard L. Gregory

An octopus can learn to recognize the difference between a square and circle by sight, but not the difference between a cube and a sphere by touch. Why is this? You can learn the answer from this book in the section on "Invertebrate Learning" and if it's the sort of question you like having answers to this book will reward you many times, because it's full of odd and illuminating information on all aspects of brains and behavior, whether human, octopus, or beetle. What it isn't, on the other hand, is particularly full of information, odd, illuminating, or otherwise, on the mind, and perhaps that's as it should be, because minds ...  Read the complete review

Oxford Companion to the Mind - Richard L. Gregory (Ed) Most Oxford Companion/Guide books I've encountered are pretty user-friendly and have something to offer those with all levels of expertise in a subject. Not this one. I'm not sure what the publishers were trying to achieve here, but this book is a real hotchpotch of the interesting, the obscure, the useful, the pretenious writings of mad professors and the down to earth! Basically, this is a compendium of more than 1000 A-Z entries ranging from brief statements to substantial essays on just about everything to do with the human brain. It includes the philosophies of some of the major thinkers ...  Read the complete review