Excerpts From An Abstract Mind

Life is unpredictable. We are given no map at birth, and yet we wade through the adventure together, learning different things along the way while collecting experiences. Excerpts from an Abstract Mind is a poetry collection about the chance encounters, lessons learned, and ideologies acquired by author Ewana Hines as she plays witness from the sidelines of life. She tells stories about a frightening Ouija board and a caged lion that yearns to be free, but she also delves into philosophy and personal battles. For instance, there are times in this mad life when we must run and other times when we must stand and fight. Ewana enumerates the importance of trying while asking questions and then answering them. The book is a passionate tango between fervent beliefs and carnal flesh. At times, it dances past political correctness on its path toward the priceless treasure of love for self, the Lord, and our fellow human. This journey unfolds through the lenses of poetry and narrative storytelling. Come and see where the abstract mind will go.

L.S.McKay takes his vast experiences and interactions with life, love, nature, people from all walks and interests and brings his ability to look at life from a different angle and express theses angles in his prose and poetry. From childlike insight to deadly paths chosen by some, he works to create an easy, free form of expression with a little bit for everyone. Abstract Mind of a Poet is his first offering to those who have an "open" mind and "desire" to take in "ALL" the world has to offer. Take the time to enter his Abstract Mind and maybe, just maybe, find a piece of yourself.

"Our thoughts depend on knowledge about objects, people, properties, and events. To think about where we left our keys, what we are going to make for dinner, when we last fed the dogs, and how we are going to survive our next visit with our family, we need to know something about locations, keys, cooking, dogs, survival, families, and so on. This book examines how our brains can store and access such general knowledge about the world and our place in it. More specifically, it investigates the neurocognitive mechanisms responsible for encoding our concepts. Sorting objects, events, and experiences into categories enables us to recall and use information that we have gathered over time. Stored information about these categories helps us make decisions, communicate, and respond in an intelligent way to changing circumstances. Our concepts serve as the building blocks for many forms of thinking. We use them to recognize patterns, draw inferences, make decisions, and understand word meanings. Concepts are bodies of knowledge that are quickly accessed in various situations (Machery, 2009; Margolis & Laurence, 1999; Murphy, 2002)"--

If mathematics is the purest form of knowledge, the perfect foundation of all the hard sciences, and a uniquely precise discipline, then how can the human brain, an imperfect and imprecise organ, process mathematical ideas? Is mathematics made up of eternal, universal truths? Or, as some have claimed, could mathematics simply be a human invention, a kind of tool or metaphor? These questions are among the greatest enigmas of science and epistemology, discussed at length by mathematicians, physicians, and philosophers. But, curiously enough, neuroscientists have been absent in the debate, even though it is precisely the field of neuroscience—which studies the brain’s mechanisms for thinking and reasoning—that ought to be at the very center of these discussions. How our Emotions and Bodies are Vital for Abstract Thought explores the unique mechanisms of cooperation between the body, emotions, and the cortex, based on fundamental physical principles. It is these mechanisms that help us to overcome the limitations of our physiology and allow our imperfect, human brains to make transcendent mathematical discoveries. This book is written for anyone who is interested in the nature of abstract thought, including mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, psychologists, and psychiatrists.