Synopses & Reviews
"In clear, accessible and at times eloquent prose, Damasio is outlining nothing less than a new vision of the human soul, integrating body and mind, thought and feeling, individual survival and altruism, humanity and nature, ethics and evolution." -SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
JOY, SORROW, JEALOUSY, AND AWE-these and other feelings are the stuff of our daily lives. Thought to be too private for science to explain and not essential for understanding cognition, they have largely been ignored. But not by Spinoza, and not by Antonio Damasio. In Looking for Spinoza, Damasio, one of the world's leading neuroscientists, draws on his innovative research and on his experience with neurological patients to examine how feelings and the emotions that underlie them support human survival and enable the spirit's greatest creations. Looking for Spinoza rediscovers a thinker whose work prefigures modern neuroscience, not only in his emphasis on emotions and feelings, but in his refusal to separate mind and body. Together, the scientist and the philosopher help us understand what we're made of, and what we're here for.
"Exceptionally engaging and profoundly gratifying . . . Achieves a unique combination of scientific exposition, historical discovery and deep personal statement regarding the human condition." -NATURE
Antonio Damasio is the Van Allen Distinguished Professor and head of the department of neurology at the University of Iowa Medical Center and is an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. The recipient of numerous awards, he is a member
of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Damasio's books are read and taught in universities worldwide.
CITATION: "Damasio has the rare talent of rendering science intelligible while also being gifted in philosophy, literature and wit."(Margaret Jacob, Los Angeles Times)
CITATION: "In clear, accessible and eloquent prose, Damasio is outlining a new vision of the human soul."(William Kowinski, San Francisco Chronicle)
CITATION: "Looking for Spinoza is exceptionally engaging and profoundly gratifying."(Ray Dolan, Nature)
CITATION: "Compelling."(Scientific American)
Review
"Looking for Spinoza is exceptionally engaging and profoundly gratifying."
Review
"In clear, accessible and eloquent prose, Damasio is outlining a new vision of the human soul."
Review
PRAISE FOR LOOKING FOR SPINOZA
"Clear, accessible and at times eloquent . . . Nothing less than a new vision of the human soul."-San Francisco Chronicle
"Compelling."-Scientific American
"Exceptionally engaging and profoundly gratifying."-Nature
Review
"Damasio has the rare talent of rendering science intelligible while also being gifted in philosophy, literature and wit."
Review
"Compelling."
Synopsis
In the seventeenth century, the philosopher Spinoza examined the role emotion played in human survival and culture. Yet hundreds of years and many significant scientific advances later, the neurobiological roots of joy and sorrow remain a mystery. Today, we spend countless resources doctoring our feelings with alcohol, prescription drugs, health clubs, therapy, vacation retreats, and other sorts of consumption; still, the inner workings of our minds-what feelings are, how they work, and what they mean-are largely an unexplored frontier.
With scientific expertise and literary facility, bestselling author and world famous neuroscientist Antonio Damasio concludes his groundbreaking trilogy in Looking for Spinoza, exploring the cerebral processes that keep us alive and make life worth living.
Synopsis
A clear, accessbile investigation into the philosophical and scientific foundations of human life, from one of the world's leading neuroscientists (San Francisco Chronicle).
Joy, sorrow, jealousy, and awe -- these and other feelings are the stuff of our daily lives. In the seventeenth century, the philosopher Spinoza devoted much of his life's work examining how these emotions supported human survival, yet hundreds of years later the biological roots of what we feel remain a mystery.
Antonio Damasio -- whose earlier books explore rational behavior and the notion of the self -- rediscovers a man whose work ran counter to all the thinking of his day, pairing Spinoza's insights with his own innovative scientific research to help us understand what we're made of, and what we're here for.
Synopsis
"In clear, accessible and at times eloquent prose, Damasio is outlining nothing less than a new vision of the human soul, integrating body and mind, thought and feeling, individual survival and altruism, humanity and nature, ethics and evolution." -SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
JOY, SORROW, JEALOUSY, AND AWE-these and other feelings are the stuff of our daily lives. Thought to be too private for science to explain and not essential for understanding cognition, they have largely been ignored. But not by Spinoza, and not by Antonio Damasio. In Looking for Spinoza, Damasio, one of the world's leading neuroscientists, draws on his innovative research and on his experience with neurological patients to examine how feelings and the emotions that underlie them support human survival and enable the spirit's greatest creations. Looking for Spinoza rediscovers a thinker whose work prefigures modern neuroscience, not only in his emphasis on emotions and feelings, but in his refusal to separate mind and body. Together, the scientist and the philosopher help us understand what we're made of, and what we're here for.
"Exceptionally engaging and profoundly gratifying . . . Achieves a unique combination of scientific exposition, historical discovery and deep personal statement regarding the human condition." -NATURE
Antonio Damasio is the Van Allen Distinguished Professor and head of the department of neurology at the University of Iowa Medical Center and is an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. The recipient of numerous awards, he is a member
of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Damasio's books are read and taught in universities worldwide.
Synopsis
Advance praise for Looking for Spinoza:
"This is the boldest, the most satisfying, and the most personal of Antonio Damasio's books, presenting dazzling insights into the nature of emotion and feeling."
-- Oliver Sacks, author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Uncle
Tungsten
"This is an enticingly original work that offers page after page of startling insights about the workings of the mind. It creates in its entirety that rarest of effects: the quality of revelation."
--William Styron, author of Sophie's Choice and Darkness Visible
"Damasio, one of the leading thinkers about the function of the human brain, has done it again! He has written a remarkable book about the biological underpinnings of feelings and their ramifications for human behavior. We could not ask for a better guide to take us through this domain."
--Eric R. Kandel, Nobel Laureate, Columbia University
"In Looking for Spinoza, Damasio, one of the world's foremost neurologists, addresses some of the most difficult questions concerning brain and mind, in the context of a deep and wide grasp of art, music and, philosophy. This book is a huge and most impressive accomplishment."
--David Hubel, Nobel Laureate, Harvard University
"A brilliant intellectual exercise but also a meditation, on how to reach happiness and a better life. A rare and almost unique attempt to examine the most recent neurobiological knowledge about emotions and feelings in the framework of Spinoza's thinking."
-- Jean-Pierre Changeux, Collège de France and Institut Pasteur
"A brilliant and fortifying book. Looking for Spinoza offers us more than a riveting narrative of intellectual affiliation, and more than a scientifically refined regard for what it means to be human; it offers a new frontier for genuinely informed hope.
--Peter Sacks, Harvard University
"An extraordinary book-beautifully written and deeply, incisively, creating connections across time and space."
--Peter Brook, Theater and Film Director
Synopsis
The last in a trilogy of books that investigates the philosophical and scientific foundations of human life and#160;
Joy, sorrow, jealousy, and aweand#8212;these and other feelings are the stuff of our daily lives. In the seventeenth century, the philosopher Spinoza devoted much of his life's work examining how these emotions supported human survival, yet hundreds of years later the biological roots of what we feel remain a mystery. Leading neuroscientist Antonio Damasioand#8212;whose earlier books explore rational behavior and the notion of the selfand#8212;rediscovers a man whose work ran counter to all the thinking of his day, pairing Spinoza's insights with his own innovative scientific research to help us understand what we're made of, and what we're here for.
About the Author
Antonio R. Damasio is the Van Allen Professor and head of the department of neurology at the University of Iowa Medical Center and is an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute in San Diego. DESCARTES' ERROR was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and has been translated into twenty-three languages. His most recent book, THE FEELING OF WHAT HAPPENS, was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, a Library Journal Best Book of the Year, and has eighteen foreign editions. He lives in Iowa City and Chicago.
Table of Contents
Contents
CHAPTER 1 Enter Feelings
Enter Feelings
The Hague
Looking for Spinoza
Beware
In the Paviljoensgracht
CHAPTER 2 Of Appetites and Emotions
Trust Shakespeare
Emotions Precede Feelings
A Nesting Principle
More on the Emotion-Related Reactions: From Simple Homeostatic Regulation to Emotions-Proper
The Emotions of Simple Organisms
The Emotions-Proper
A Hypothesis in the Form of a Definition
The Brain Machinery of Emotion
Triggering and Executing Emotions
Out of the Blue
The Brain Stem Switch
Out-of-the-Blue Laughter
Laughter and Some More Crying
From the Active Body to the Mind
CHAPTER 3 Feelings
What Feelings Are
Is There More to Feelings than the Perception of Body State?
Feelings Are Interactive Perceptions
Mixing Memory with Desire: An Aside
Feelings in the Brain: New Evidence
A Comment on Related Evidence
Some More Corroborating Evidence
The Substrate of Feelings
Who Can Have Feelings?
Body States versus Body Maps
Actual Body States and Simulated Body States
Natural Analgesia
Empathy
Hallucinating the Body
The Chemicals of Feeling
Varieties of Drug-Induced Felicity
Enter the Naysayers
More Naysayers
CHAPTER 4 Ever Since Feelings
Of Joy and Sorrow
Feelings and Social Behavior
Inside a Decision-Making Mechanism
What the Mechanism Accomplishes
The Breakdown of a Normal Mechanism
Damage to Prefrontal Cortex in the Very Young
What If the World?
Neurobiology and Ethical Behaviors
Homeostasis and the Governance of Social Life
The Foundation of Virtue
What Are Feelings For?
CHAPTER 5 Body, Brain, and Mind
Body and Mind
The Hague, December 2, 1999
The Invisible Body
Losing the Body and Losing the Mind
The Assembly of Body Images
A Qualification
The Construction of Reality
Seeing Things
About the Origins of the Mind
Body, Mind, and Spinoza
Closing with Dr. Tulp
CHAPTER 6 A Visit to Spinoza
Rijnsburg, July 6, 2000
The Age
The Hague, 1670
Amsterdam, 1632
Ideas and Events
The Uriel da Costa Affair
Jewish Persecution and the Marrano Tradition
Excommunication
The Legacy
Beyond the Enlightenment
The Hague, 1677
The Library
Spinoza in My Mind
CHAPTER 7 Who's There?
The Contented Life
Spinoza's Solution
The Effectiveness of a Solution
Spinozism
Happy Endings?
Appendices
Notes
Glossary
Acknowledgments
Index
Copyright and#169; 2003 by Antonio Damasio
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