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Author: Steven R. Quartz
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 9780060001490
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356
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Book Description
This book combines cutting-edge findings in neuroscience with examples from history and the headlines to introduce the new science of cultural biology, born of advances in brain imaging, computer modeling, and genetics. Doctors Quartz and Sejnowski show how both our noblest and darkest traits are rooted in brain systems so ancient that we share them with insects. They then demystify the dynamic engagement between brain and world that makes us something far beyond the sum of our parts. The authors show how our humanity unfolds in precise stages as brain and world engage on increasingly complex levels. Their discussion embraces shaping forces as ancient as climate change over millennia and events as recent as the terrorism and heroism of September 11, and offers intriguing answers to some of our most enduring questions, including why we live together, love, kill -- and sometimes lay down our lives for others.
Author: Steven R. Quartz
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 9780060001490
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book combines cutting-edge findings in neuroscience with examples from history and the headlines to introduce the new science of cultural biology, born of advances in brain imaging, computer modeling, and genetics. Doctors Quartz and Sejnowski show how both our noblest and darkest traits are rooted in brain systems so ancient that we share them with insects. They then demystify the dynamic engagement between brain and world that makes us something far beyond the sum of our parts. The authors show how our humanity unfolds in precise stages as brain and world engage on increasingly complex levels. Their discussion embraces shaping forces as ancient as climate change over millennia and events as recent as the terrorism and heroism of September 11, and offers intriguing answers to some of our most enduring questions, including why we live together, love, kill -- and sometimes lay down our lives for others.
Author: Riane Eisler
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019093574X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 377
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Book Description
Nurturing Our Humanity offers a new perspective on our personal and social options in today's world, showing how we can build societies that support our great human capacities for consciousness, caring, and creativity. It brings together findings--largely overlooked--from the natural and social sciences debunking the popular idea that we are hard-wired for selfishness, war, rape, and greed. Its groundbreaking new approach reveals connections between disturbing trends like climate change denial and regressions to strongman rule. Moving past right vs. left, religious vs. secular, Eastern vs. Western, and other familiar categories that do not include our formative parent-child and gender relations, it looks at where societies fall on the partnership-domination scale. On one end is the domination system that ranks man over man, man over woman, race over race, and man over nature. On the other end is the more peaceful, egalitarian, gender-balanced, and sustainable partnership system. Nurturing Our Humanity explores how behaviors, values, and socio-economic institutions develop differently in these two environments, documents how this impacts nothing less than how our brains develop, examines cultures from this new perspective (including societies that for millennia oriented toward partnership), and proposes actions supporting the contemporary movement in this more life-sustaining and enhancing direction. It shows how through today's ever more fearful, frenzied, and greed-driven technologies of destruction and exploitation, the domination system may lead us to an evolutionary dead end. A more equitable and sustainable way of life is biologically possible and culturally attainable: we can change our course.
Author: Leslie Paul Thiele
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139458965
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 261
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Book Description
The Heart of Judgment explores the nature, historical significance, and continuing relevance of practical wisdom. Primarily a work in moral and political thought, it also relies extensively on research in cognitive neuroscience to confirm and extend our understanding of the faculty of judgment. Ever since the ancient Greeks first discussed practical wisdom, the faculty of judgment has been an important topic for philosophers and political theorists. It remains one of the virtues most demanded of our public officials. The greater the liberties and responsibilities accorded to citizens in democratic regimes, the more the health and welfare of society rest upon their exercise of good judgment. While giving full credit to the roles played by reason and deliberation in good judgment, the book underlines the central importance of intuition, emotion, and worldly experience.
Author: Steven Quartz
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429944188
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
“This engrossing history merges evolutionary biology and economics to explain our spending habits” and show how coolness is at the heart of consumerism (Mental Floss). We live in a world of conspicuous consumption, where the things we buy not only satisfy our needs, but also communicate our values, identities, and aspirations. In Cool, Steven Quartz and Anette Asp bring together groundbreaking findings in neuroscience, economics, and evolutionary biology to show how our concepts of “cool”—be it designer jeans, smartphones, or craft beer—help drive the global economy. Cool puts forth a provocative theory of consumerism based on our brain’s innate status-seeking and “social calculator”. The authors highlight the underlying processes that guide our often-unconscious decision making. They also pull back the curtain on “choice architects” who design store interiors, as well as “coolhunters” who scour Berlin and Tokyo for the latest trends. Quartz and Asp follow the evolution of “cool consumption” from the mid-twentieth century through the emergence of the Internet in the 1990s, finally unpacking the social motivations behind today’s hip, ethical consumption. Taking us from Norman Mailer to normcore, Cool is surprising at every turn, and will forever change the way you think about money, status, and your next purchase.
Author: James Case
Publisher: Hill and Wang
ISBN: 1429923091
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 372
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Book Description
The Mathematical Theory of Games Sheds Light On A Wide Range of Competitive Activities What do chess-playing computer programs, biological evolution, competitive sports, gambling, alternative voting systems, public auctions, corporate globalization, and class warfare have in common? All are manifestations of a new paradigm in scientific thinking, which James Case calls "the emerging science of competition." Drawing in part on the pioneering work of mathematicians such as John von Neumann, John Nash (of A Beautiful Mind fame), and Robert Axelrod, Case explores the common game-theoretical strands that tie these seemingly unrelated fields together, showing how each can be better understood in the shared light of the others. Not since James Gleick's bestselling book Chaos brought widespread public attention to the new sciences of chaos and complexity has a general-interest science book served such an eye-opening purpose. Competition will appeal to a wide range of readers, from policy wonks and futurologists to former jocks and other ordinary citizens seeking to make sense of a host of novel—and frequently controversial—issues.
Author: Paul Thagard
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691154406
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 293
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Book Description
How brain science answers the most intriguing questions about the meaning of life Why is life worth living? What makes actions right or wrong? What is reality and how do we know it? The Brain and the Meaning of Life draws on research in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to answer some of the most pressing questions about life's nature and value. Paul Thagard argues that evidence requires the abandonment of many traditional ideas about the soul, free will, and immortality, and shows how brain science matters for fundamental issues about reality, morality, and the meaning of life. The ongoing Brain Revolution reveals how love, work, and play provide good reasons for living. Defending the superiority of evidence-based reasoning over religious faith and philosophical thought experiments, Thagard argues that minds are brains and that reality is what science can discover. Brains come to know reality through a combination of perception and reasoning. Just as important, our brains evaluate aspects of reality through emotions that can produce both good and bad decisions. Our cognitive and emotional abilities allow us to understand reality, decide effectively, act morally, and pursue the vital needs of love, work, and play. Wisdom consists of knowing what matters, why it matters, and how to achieve it. The Brain and the Meaning of Life shows how brain science helps to answer questions about the nature of mind and reality, while alleviating anxiety about the difficulty of life in a vast universe. The book integrates decades of multidisciplinary research, but its clear explanations and humor make it accessible to the general reader.
Author: Isabella Sarto-Jackson
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 164889402X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
The human brain has a truly remarkable capacity. It reorganizes itself, flexibly adjusting to fluctuating environmental conditions – a process called neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity provides the basis for wide-ranging learning and memory processes that are particularly profuse during childhood and adolescence. At the same time, the exceptional malleability of the developing brain leaves it highly vulnerable to negative impact from the surroundings. Abusive or neglecting social environments, as well as socioeconomic deprivation and poverty, cause toxic stress and complex traumas that can severely compromise cognitive development, emotional processing, self-perception, and executive brain functions. The neurophysiological changes entailed impair emotional regulation, lead to heightened anxiety, and afflict attachment and the formation of social bonds. Neuroplastic changes following severely adverse experiences are not something that a person grows out of and gets over. These experiences alter the neurobiological and biochemical makeup and cause people to live in an emotionally relabeled world in which the evaluation of any social cue, their behavior, cognition, and state of mind are biased towards the negative. Even more worrying, detrimental neurophysiological consequences are not limited to the traumatized individual but are often transmitted to subsequent generations through a process of social niche construction, thereby creating a vicious cycle. Thus, the making and breaking forces of the brain are epitomized by parents, alloparents, peers, and our socioeconomic niche. This book expounds on the formative role that the social environment plays in healthy brain development, especially during infancy, childhood, and adolescence. Based on scientific findings, the book advocates for bold measures and responsible stewardship to combat child abuse, maltreatment, and child poverty. By bringing together insights from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and social education work, it lays out a fact-based, transdisciplinary endeavor that aims at rising to the societal challenge of providing a rewarding perspective to youth at risk. It will be a valuable resource for academics from social education, pedagogy, cognitive science, neuroscience, as well as professionals in the fields of social work, pedagogy, education, child welfare.
Author: Sarah Cleary
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501378279
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 295
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Book Description
Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2023 The Myth of Harm engages and analyses controversies generated by horror that examines some of the most high-profile media debates around the issue of whether or not horror texts corrupt children. The horror genre has endured a long and controversial success within popular culture. Fraught with accusations pertaining to its alleged ability to harm and corrupt young people and indeed society as a whole, the genre is constantly under pressure to suppress that which has made it so popular to begin with - its ability to frighten and generate discussion about society's darker side. Recognising the circularity of patterns in each generational manifestation of horror censorship, The Myth of Harm draws upon cases such as the Slenderman stabbing and the James Bulger murder amongst many others in order to explore the manner in which horror has been repeatedly cast as a harmful influence upon children at the expense of scrutinising other more complex social issues. Focusing on five major controversies beginning in the 1930's Golden Age of Horror Cinema and ending on a more contemporary note with Cyber-Gothic horror – this book identifies and considers the various myths and false hoods surrounding the genre of horror and question the very motivation behind the proliferation and dissemination of these myths as scapegoats for political and social issues, platforms for “moral entrepreneurs” and tools of hyperbolae for the news industry.
Author: Warren S. Brown
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139510290
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 191
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Book Description
This book explores the implications of recent insights in modern neuroscience for the church's view of spiritual formation. Science suggests that functions of the brain and body in collaboration with social experience, rather than a disembodied soul, provide physical basis for the mental capacities, interpersonal relations, and religious experiences of human beings. The realization that human beings are wholly physical, but with unique mental, relational and spiritual capacities, challenges traditional views of Christian life as defined by the care of souls, a view that leads to inwardness and individuality. Psychology and neuroscience suggest the importance of developmental openness, attachment, imitation and stories as tools in spiritual formation. Accordingly, the idea that care of embodied persons should be fundamentally social and communal sets new priorities for encouraging spiritual growth and building congregations.
Author: Robert Sylwester
Publisher: Corwin Press
ISBN: 1452296979
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 177
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Book Description
Easy-to-understand theories and nontechnical language help educators and parents understand how the teenage brain thinks, feels, learns, and changes on its journey to adulthood.
