The Idea of Things (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781736550908)

We live in a world of myriad things, surrounding us every waking moment. The Idea of Things explores the fine line between our experience of the things in our lives versus their reality, then uses the putty knife of ideation to spackle over any awkward gaps. Plundering the well-stocked pantry of popular neuroscience, The Idea of Things uses humor like an electric can opener to serve up heaping portions of insight into how we encounter things, how the brain creates ideas, how ideas of things shift & morph, and how experience is constantly and inevitably imbued with feeling. The Idea of Things brandishes the ensuing ironies like a veritable chainsaw to cleave forest from trees across dimensions ranging from dreams, to hypnosis, to cream filled fondants, to the very construction of 'self' itself-cobbling it all back together with the cohesive duct tape of cognitive psychology, on flavonoids. The Idea of Things is ultimately a detailed and systematic, yet patently playful and consummately comical overview of how the brain strives to represent the things in our world, while also imbuing things with feeling-and how the ensuing ideas the mind generates about things, swayed by selective attention, shape our everyday experience with its many ironies and subtle shadings. It's mind candy. With extra sprinkles.