Friday, April 19, 2019

Discovering How Your Subconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior

By Maria Fox


Applied and behavioral psychologists have known for quite some time that behavior can be shaped by personal experiences and the environment. While this is the case, a new book by Leonard Mlodinow, Subliminal: How Your Subconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior claims that behavior is most often ruled by the subconscious aspects of the mind. In the book, the author uses a combination of math, physics and scientific fact to prove this to be the case.

Mlodinow has been recognized for a number of groundbreaking discoveries in math and physics. In addition, the author has a passion for making scientific fact and science available to the general public. With five books on the New York Times list of best sellers including two which were co-authored with Stephen Hawking and Deepak Chopra, Mlodinow has already become one of the most successful authors and physicists in history.

In addition to these publications, the author's work can also be found in a number of periodicals, newspapers, journals and webzines. Mlodinow has also lectured at universities and other locations around the world. More recently, Mlodinow has appeared on several talk shows on cable, radio, satellite and television including an appearance on ABC's Nightline in which the physicist debated spiritual guru Deepak Chopra.

Although Leonard's parents were both Holocaust survivors, the couple did not meet and marry until 1948 in New York. After which, Leonard was born in 1954. Still, as Leonard's father was in a concentration camp, and mother in a labor camp, life was not was always for Leonard as a child.

Having initially attended college at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, Leonard dropped out in 1972 and traveled to Israel on a work kibbutz. While in Israel, Mlodinow found great interest in the field of physics. The young student and worker became enthralled with this new interest, most likely due to the fact that books by renowned physicist and author Leonard Feyman were the only books available in the English language at the library.

Later, Leonard returned to Brandeis adding physics to what was already a double major in math and chemistry. Finally graduating in 1976, Mlodinow went on to acquire a Ph. D in theoretical physics from the University of California Berkeley. The doctoral thesis which Leonard presented included work with Nikos Papanicolaou on developing a new method for solving problems in infinite dimensions, then calculated corrections as the two also proved that humans only live in a three dimensional world.

Upon leaving Berkeley, Mlodinow obtained a faculty position at California Institute of Technology. While still at Caltech, Mlodinow became a Research Fellow in theoretical physics. In fact, this fellowship most likely led Leonard to Germany where a second fellowship was awarded from the the Max-Planck-Institute for Physics and Astrophysics.

After returning home, the physicist and author returned to the faculty at California Institute of Technology teaching math and physics. After which, Mlodinow continued writing books while teaching until 2013, when the author left the institute to write full time. Since that time, Leonard has released two other books, The Upright Thinkers in 2015 and Elastic in 2018, while continuing to lecture, travel and write on a regular basis.




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