From Bacteria to Bach and Back

How did we come to have minds? For centuries, psychologists, poets, and philosophers have struggled to explain how the human mind developed its unrivaled ability to create, imagine, and think. According to Daniel C. Dennett, a crucial shift in the evolution of consciousness occurred when humans developed culture and learned to share memes, or ways of doing things not based in genetic instinct, such as mastering fire, planting seeds, and creating individual words. Memes evolved through competition, largely unaided by human comprehension. It is this second process of natural selection that gave our minds the power to comprehend the world and our place in it. A supremely enjoyable, intoxicating work (Nature) and a valuable and typically lucid synthesis of his worldview (New York Review of Books), From Bacteria to Bach and Back will delight and entertain anyone eager to make sense of how their mind works and how it came about.