Know Thyself: The New Science of Self–Awareness

How our most overlooked ability - self-awareness - offers the key to a more successful future

From the ancient Greeks to Buddhism, our ability to check reality and recalibrate has fascinated philosophers for thousands of years. Yet it is only recently that we've developed the technology to create a rigorous science of self-awareness, what we call metacognition.

Head of the Metacognition Lab at University College London, Stephen Fleming is the world's leading expert in this new field of neuroscience. In Know Thyself he explains both the vast potential of metacognition and why it is that we still so often get it wrong. Based on his own pioneering studies, full of cutting-edge research from computer science, psychology and evolutionary biology, made tangible with powerful real-life examples, Dr Fleming shows how developing metacognition can help us become smarter, make better decisions and lead more effectively.

While AI has been posted as the remedy to human error, its flaw is its lack of self-awareness. In the way a coach can dramatically improve an athlete's performance or a conductor can guide an orchestra through a complicated piece of music, Know Thyself reveals how metacognition offers humanity a crucial edge in our modern world. It is one that might yet turn out to be our saving grace.

Stephen M. Fleming is a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London. He is a Wellcome/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow at the Department of Experimental Psychology and Principal Investigator at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, where he leads the Metacognition Group. He lives in London.