From Bacteria to Bach and Back
The Evolution of Minds
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Narrated by:
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Tom Perkins
About this listen
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.
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Consciousness is our gateway to experience: it enables us to recognize Van Gogh’s starry skies, be enraptured by Beethoven’s Fifth, and stand in awe of a snowcapped mountain. Yet consciousness is subjective, personal, and famously difficult to examine: philosophers have for centuries declared this mental entity so mysterious as to be impenetrable to science. In The Ravenous Brain, neuroscientist Daniel Bor departs sharply from this historical view, and proposes a new model for how consciousness works.
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Effectively demystifies consciousness
- By Gary on 11-18-12
By: Daniel Bor
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The Landscape of History
- How Historians Map the Past
- By: John Lewis Gaddis
- Narrated by: Jack Chekijian
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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What is history, and why should we study it? Is there such a thing as historical truth? Is history a science? One of the most accomplished historians at work today, John Lewis Gaddis, answers these and other questions in this short, witty, and humane book. The Landscape of History provides a searching look at the historian's craft as well as a strong argument for why a historical consciousness should matter to us today.
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Excellent Book!
- By Billy on 09-15-18
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The Intelligent Web
- Search, Smart Algorithms, and Big Data
- By: Gautam Shroff
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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As we use the Web for social networking, shopping, and news, we leave a personal trail. These days, linger over a Web page selling lamps, and they will turn up at the advertising margins as you move around the Internet, reminding you, tempting you to make that purchase. Search engines such as Google can now look deep into the data on the Web to pull out instances of the words you are looking for. And there are pages that collect and assess information to give you a snapshot of changing political opinion.
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Great book for learning about Deep learning
- By Darkpassenger on 04-16-15
By: Gautam Shroff
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Know This
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- By: John Brockman
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- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
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Scientific developments radically alter our understanding of the world. Whether it's technology, climate change, health research, or the latest revelations of neuroscience, physics, or psychology, science has, as Edge editor John Brockman says, "become a big story, if not the big story". In that spirit this new addition to Edge.org's fascinating series asks a powerful and provocative question: What do you consider the most interesting and important recent scientific news?
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Pete and Repeat and Re-repeat
- By Daniel L on 02-25-18
By: John Brockman
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Too Big To Know
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- By: David Weinberger
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We used to know how to know. We got our answers from books or experts. We'd nail down the facts and move on. But in the Internet age, knowledge has moved onto networks. There's more knowledge than ever, of course, but it's different. Topics have no boundaries, and nobody agrees on anything.Yet this is the greatest time in history to be a knowledge seeker - if you know how.
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Good to know ...
- By John B. Fisher on 01-24-12
By: David Weinberger
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About Behaviorism
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About Behaviorism is about the controversial philosophy known as behaviorism, written by its leading exponent.
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Refreshing and concise
- By Autumn and Sam on 07-30-22
By: B.F. Skinner
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Thinking Machines
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- By: Luke Dormehl
- Narrated by: Gus Brown
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
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When most of us think about artificial intelligence, our minds go straight to cyborgs, robots, and sci-fi thrillers where machines take over the world. But the truth is that artificial intelligence is already among us. It exists in our smartphones, fitness trackers, and refrigerators that tell us when the milk will expire. In some ways the future people dreamed of at the World's Fair in the 1960s is already here. We're teaching our machines how to think like humans, and they're learning at an incredible rate.
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Mostly platitudes with no depth
- By Gary on 03-24-17
By: Luke Dormehl
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The Big Picture
- On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself
- By: Sean Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean Carroll
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
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Already internationally acclaimed for his elegant, lucid writing on the most challenging notions in modern physics, Sean Carroll is emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation as he brings his extraordinary intellect to bear not only on the Higgs boson and extra dimensions but now also on our deepest personal questions. Where are we? Who are we? Are our emotions, our beliefs, and our hopes and dreams ultimately meaningless out there in the void?
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ABSOLUTE MUST READ!
- By serine on 05-12-16
By: Sean Carroll
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Mind in Motion
- How Action Shapes Thought
- By: Barbara Tversky
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
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In Mind in Motion, psychologist Barbara Tversky shows that spatial cognition isn't just a peripheral aspect of thought, but its very foundation, enabling us to draw meaning from our bodies and their actions in the world. Our actions in real space get turned into mental actions on thought, often spouting spontaneously from our bodies as gestures. Spatial thinking underlies creating and using maps, assembling furniture, devising football strategies, designing airports, understanding the flow of people, traffic, water, and ideas.
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Physically difficult to listen to
- By Claire Hay on 11-08-19
By: Barbara Tversky
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Creation
- How Science Is Reinventing Life Itself
- By: Adam Rutherford
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
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What is life? Humans have been asking this question for thousands of years. But as technology has advanced and our understanding of biology has deepened, the answer has evolved. For decades, scientists have been exploring the limits of nature by modifying and manipulating DNA, cells, and whole organisms to create new ones that could never have previously existed on their own.
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The Goldilocks book on what is life
- By Gary on 07-11-13
By: Adam Rutherford
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Loved it, but some philosophy background needed.
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The Landscape of History
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What is history, and why should we study it? Is there such a thing as historical truth? Is history a science? One of the most accomplished historians at work today, John Lewis Gaddis, answers these and other questions in this short, witty, and humane book. The Landscape of History provides a searching look at the historian's craft as well as a strong argument for why a historical consciousness should matter to us today.
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Excellent Book!
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What listeners say about From Bacteria to Bach and Back
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Aleia Kim
- 08-02-17
Showboats writing style, then muses on the mind
This book was a struggle to finish, since Dennet seemed to me to talk himself in circles gratuitously, if only to wind up (too late) at a pretty way of summarizing an argument that could be presented far more concisely.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Spike
- 05-05-17
A Brilliant, Entré to Philosophy of Mind
Would you listen to From Bacteria to Bach and Back again? Why?
No, as brilliant and intriguing as this book is, I could not get past the 2nd chapter listening to the exaggerated, overly modulated voice of Tom Perkins.
What did you like best about this story?
It is erudite without artifice and convincing in its conclusions. In spite of the poor narration, the ideas are both engaging and important, perhaps the most important book I've read in decades (and as a philosopher, I read a lot of supposedly important books).
Did Tom Perkins do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?
N/A.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
"Blow Your Mind" [over the picture of a soap-bubble being blown]
Any additional comments?
I thought enough of Dennett's book that even though I came to find the narrator's imitation of an unhappy primary school teacher intensely unpleasant, I bought a copy of the book rather than just put it in the electronic wastebin.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Cliente Amazon
- 07-27-20
Bellissimo.
Libro vasto e profondo, sottile e solido. E' una pietra tombale sull'dea predarwiniana che la mente umana sia un fenomeno eccezionale del mondo, è un inno al gradualismo e al naturalismo.
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- joshua yates
- 07-08-17
good science, bad philosophy.
Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
personally, i did not see this as time well spent. Even though there were plenty of reasonable theories, and interesting possibilities, that is exactly what they are...possibilities. i thought it would be more philosophically based from rhe audio sample. I don't like to read more ways in which natural selection can be explained, and don't need an explanation to understand the process, i think it could be possible already so all the speculation bores me in a way. it is already answered by saying we can never know, whether believing in a "God" or a natural explanation, nobody was there, so origins is not a realm for science. it cannot be observed regardless of how much you learn from reverse engineering, likewise there is no way to discover concrete proof that God exist, so this book doesn't do anything for me. even with all the possibilities lining up, the possibility of ID or not doesn't change. This book has nothing to convince me of except something someone thinks is very possibly possible.
Would you ever listen to anything by Daniel C. Dennett again?
sure, i guess so.
What about Tom Perkins’s performance did you like?
yes he did fine narrating.
If this book were a movie would you go see it?
nope.
Any additional comments?
This is good evidence to show how scientist do not think well philosophically. The author started off sounding very open minded, and although he did lead into it very softly, it became clear pretty quickly what side he was one. He tries showing his good reasoning leading to the final path he's following, but you can find good reasons for any side of anything that make perfect sense, thats why it has no place in philosophy, but scientist never have quite been able to grasp that for some reason. In short, he may think he is being open and reasonable, but it is mind blowing that someone cannot become neutral for long enough to look book at what they are stating and see the pages and pages of things that are pure speculation on the way things came to be. using widely accepted science of unknowns to build your new found explanation of another unknown.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 02-27-21
D.Dennett Builds Conscious Competence!
D.Dennett delivers more beautiful Dennettisms to aid in conceptualizing the evolution of consciousness. Thought provoking in his insight and grasp of diverse fields.
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- David J. Zugman
- 03-11-17
Consciousness explained and expanded
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Daniel Dennett has an amazing brain and is a wordsmith of the 1st rank. It is astounding how much of Consciousness Explained's foresight is brought to fruition. Anyone thinking of artificial intelligence and what it might mean for society would do well to read this book. And anybody not thinking of it should.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
1001 words is worth more than a picture. Great line, though his best remains, I think, "he's fighting a strawman and the strawman is winning."
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6 people found this helpful
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- Todd Woollen
- 09-03-19
Dennett takes us on a hike
I saw a review of this book that noted many digressions. I think that there were none. Ground that needed to be covered to explain his ideas was covered carefully and quickly. He explained in the beginning of the book why he has found this the best path after decades in this mental landscape. He summarized why each turn was necessary in the end. Great narrator in addition to an intellectually rewarding trip. I will read it again.
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- James Messelbeck
- 05-03-24
Overuse of memes to define memes
Stories from scholars for
Way to ponderous to enjoy
AI discussion unsurprisingly out of date
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- Philippe
- 05-05-24
Thought provoking book
The author has strong opinions on a variety of topics, that is thought provoking but it needs an intense scrutiny to check the validity of the facts he claims to be true
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- wbiro
- 02-10-17
Good Noise
Your attention will only catch 10% - maybe it is the rambling speculative nature of the content (though he has a broad grasp of science, so they are at least informed), or the drifting-away tone of the narration, so the question is, is it worth listening to again (and again and again) to try and decipher what he is saying, and the answer is partly (there are some good notions), but mainly no, because the core problem of the book is that it is philosophically clueless (which the reader can vaguely sense), so it is off target in the relevance department, which will cause the reader to tune it out, since most of it is fundamentally garbage. (to clear the garbage up, and to read something that has relevance, read the Philosophy of Broader Survival instead).
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20 people found this helpful