Know Thyself

The seconds tick by as the Jeopardy music plays. You know the category like the back of your hand! So why can't you get the answer? Worse: You know you know it, and yet it remains just out of your mind's grasp. And once Alex Trebek reveals the response,it clicks into place. You were right: you had known the answer! So how could you know you knew, but not remember? Why would our magnificent brains be built to do something so, well, stupid? In Know Thyself, Steve Fleming shows that those frustrating moments of knowledge just beyond our grasp aren't some kind of design flaw in our minds. Surprisingly, they are actually examples of our brain's greatest power. Scientists and philosophers call it metacognition, but you might just call it the ability to thinkabout our own minds. It enables us to fuse together our intellects, our memories, and our consciousness in ways that our nearest competitors for brainiest resident of Earth--our computers and our animal brethren--can't come close to matching. Metacognition enables us to answer questions as straightforward as what skills we need to practice or what facts we need to study to do better on a test. And it is the reason we can wonder about issues as big as what we should do with our lives. At least as far backas Socrates, philosophers have encouraged us to know ourselves. In Know Thyself, Fleming reveals both the science of how we do it and why it matters--and crucially, how we can do it better. Like Range and Grit before it, Know Thyself shows us not simply a powerful new aspect of the science of human nature, but shows us how we can put it to use for ourselves--