Is the Speed of Light Really Good Enough?

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I was thinking about Richard Dawkins' idea of the middle land that we evolved on these plains of Africa in which everything was kind of a middling size, say between ants and mountains. So perception, conceptions of atoms and molecules or galaxies and expanding universes and multiverses. None of this doesn't even make sense intuitively. Science has to work hard to get people to grasp what you're talking about, the speed of light. I can't even conceive of what that must be because I'm used to these kind of middling things. But really, in the real world, it's good enough. It works. Well, it is only adaptive,. Why we want to go beyond essential

The Blind Storyteller is an intellectual journey that draws on philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, cognitive science, and Berent’s own cutting-edge research. It grapples with a host of provocative questions, from why we are so afraid of zombies, to whether dyslexia is “just in our heads,” from what happens to us when we die, to why we are so infatuated with our brains. The end result is a startling new perspective on the age-old nature/nurture debate — and on what it means to be human.

Shermer and Berent discuss: nature/nurture genes/environment biology/culture • language and innate knowledge • what babies are born knowing • how people reason about human nature • dualism • essentialism • theory of mind • the nature of the self • innate beliefs in the soul and afterlife • free will and determinism • how people think about mental illness and disorders • how one’s theory of human nature effects one’s attitudes about nearly everything.

Iris Berent is a Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, Boston, and the Director of the Language and Mind Lab. Berent’s research has examined how the mind works and how we think it does. She is the author of dozens of groundbreaking scientific publications and the recipient of numerous research grants. Her previous book, The Phonological Mind (Cambridge, 2013), was hailed by Steven Pinker as a “brilliant and fascinating analysis of how we produce and interpret sound.”