This book presents a concise history of the scientific discovery of the mind. Although people have speculated about the nature and functioning of their minds for thousands of years, it was only about 200 years ago that they replaced the philosophical armchair with the laboratory and began to investigate the mind scientifically.

Surprisingly, the work of one of the founders of scientific psychology, Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), has been largely forgotten, despite its relevance to current psych...

Floating cradles, water wolves, a finger in the dike: what do stories about their struggle with the water tell us about the Dutch? For centuries the Dutch have battled with water. Time after time they managed to tame the water wolf, but they have had to deal at least as often with devastating floods. There was the Saint Elizabeth’s Day Flood of 1421, for example, and the North Sea flood of 1953. In the cultural representation of such catastrophic events, vulnerability and pride go hand in h...