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271 pages, Paperback
First published April 12, 1977
"إننا نتهم الأرواح الشريرة بأنها السبب في الصرع ؛ لأننا لا نفهم له سبباً آخر, ولو أننا اتهمنا الأرواح الشريرة بكل مرض لا نعرف له سبباً لامتلأ الكون بهذه الأرواح" أبوقراط
"كما أرجو القارئ أن يسامحني على حذف سطور قليلة من الكتاب رأيت أنها ستجعله أكثر صعوبة وأنها لن تضيف شيئاً إلى الموضوع, علاوة على تجاوزها أحيانا لبعض الخطوط الحمراء في ثقافتنا."
"فكل ما شاهدوه في هذا المجال استعارات مشوهة من بعض هذه البرامج العلمية ,تلغي ما عليها من تعليقات ذكية مثيرة للتساؤل البنّاء وتوضع بدلاً منها تعليقات سطحية خفيفة تحتوي على كثير من الأخطاء , وتصب دلواً من الثلج البارد على كل ما كان يمكن أن تثيره هذه البرامج من نشاط عقلي"
"To write a book in a subject so far from one's primary training is at best incautious. But...the temptation was irresistible."
"This book itself is an exercise in pattern recognition, and attempts to understand something of the nature and evolution of human intelligence, using clues from a wide variety of sciences and myths. It is in significant part a right-hemisphere activity; and in the course of writing I was repeatedly awakened in the middle of night or in the early hours of the morning by the mild exhilaration of a new insight. But whether the insights are genuine – and I expect many of them will require substantial revision – depends on how well my left hemisphere has functioned." [italics mine]
"The pervasiveness of dragon myths in the folk legends of many cultures is probably no accident. ... Is it possible that dragons posed a problem for our protohuman ancestors of a few million years ago, and that the terror they evoked and the deaths they caused helped bring about the evolution of human intelligence? Or does the metaphor of the serpent refer to the use of the aggressive and ritualistic reptilian component of our brain in the further evolution of the neocortex? With one exception, the Genesis account of the temptation by a reptile in Eden is the only instance in the Bible of humans understanding the language of animals. When we feared the dragons, were we fearing a part of ourselves? One way or another, there were dragons in Eden."
"Computer graphics are now being extended into the area of play. There is a popular game, sometimes called Pong, which simulates on a television screen a perfectly elastic ball bouncing between two surfaces. Each player is given a dial that permits him to intercept the ball with a movable "racket." Points are scored if the motion of the ball is not intercepted by the racket. The game is very interesting. There is a clear learning experience involved which depends exclusively on Newton's second law for linear motion. As a result of Pong, the player can gain a deep intuitive understanding of the simplest Newtonian physics…"