Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief

Description

Why do so many people believe so many daft things? Why do even 'sensible' people even touch wood, believe in angels and avoid walking under ladders? Professor Lewis Wolpert investigates the nature of belief and its causes. He looks at belief's psychological basis and its possible evolutionary origins in physical cause and effect.

Lewis Wolpert is a distinguished embryologist and an accomplished broadcaster. He is Professor of Biology as Applied to Medicine at University College, London, and has taken part in numerous radio programmes, particularly interviews with other scientists. A CBE and a Fellow of the Royal Society, he was chairman of the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science for four years. He is the author of A Passion for Science and Passionate Minds (with Alison Richards), and The Triumph of the Embryo. For Faber, he has written The Unnatural Nature of Science.

"'Brilliant and persuasive search for the source of our need to believe.' Sunday Times"