The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness - Hardcover

Damasio, Antonio R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151003696 ISBN 13: 9780151003693

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999

Synopsis

A new theory of consciousness and the construction of identity focuses on the body's reaction to its world, postulating that a complex relationship between body, emotion, and mind is required to configure the self. 40,000 first printing. Tour.

About this title

Review

As you read this, at some level you're aware that you're reading, thanks to a standard human feature commonly referred to as consciousness. What is it--a spiritual phenomenon, an evolutionary tool, a neurological side effect? The best scientists love to tackle big, meaningful questions like this and neuroscientist Antonio Damasio jumps right in with The Feeling of What Happens, a poetic examination of interior life through lenses of research, medical cases, philosophical analysis and unashamed introspection. Damasio's perspective is, fortunately, becoming increasingly common in the scientific community; despite all the protestations of old-guard behaviourists, subjective consciousness is a plain fact to most of us and the demand for new methods of inquiry is finally being met.

These new methods are not without rigour, though. Damasio and his colleagues examine patients with disruptions and interruptions in consciousness and take deep insights from these tragic lives while offering greater comfort and meaning to the sufferers. His thesis, that our sense of self arises from our need to map relations between self and others, is firmly rooted in medical and evolutionary research but stands up well to self-examination. His examples from the weird world of neurology are unsettling yet deeply humanizing--real people with serious problems spring to life in the pages but they are never reduced to their deficits. The Feeling of What Happens captures the spirit of discovery as it plunges deeper than ever into the darkest waters yet. --Rob Lightner, Amazon.com

Review

"One of the best brain stories of the decade...A must read book for anyone wanting a neurologist's perspective on one of the great unsolved mysteries." The New York Times
"Stunning...Unashamedly grapples with these issues, and in the process provides the first truly compelling neurobiological account of the self." Nature
"Both Descartes' Error and The Feeling of What Happens are essential reading. They are ground-breaking classics of psychology and neuroscience. These are books to buy, keep and ponder upon." Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine
"A tour de force of intuition, investigation and integration." Sunday Times (London)
"What makes his views so noteworthy is that they're grounded not in theoretical musings but in years of clinical research." Time
"This is not casual reading, but eventually anyone can master it; it will change your experience of yourself." The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice
"A landmark in the interdisciplinary project of consciousness research." Scientific American
"Damasio is just the one to show you how fascinating you really are." The Bloomsbury Review
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"Antonio Damasio has done it again! Writing for the layman as well as the scientist, he constructs a compelling solution to the problem of consciousness." Victoria Fromkin, UCLA
"This is an extraordinary book. I know of nothing like it." Jerome Kagan, Harvard University
"There is no simpler way to say this: read the book to learn who you are." Jorie Graham, Poet and Pulitzer Prize Winner
"Everyone will be talking about it; everyone will have to read it." Patricia and Paul Churchland, UCSD
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Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0151003696
• ISBN 13: 9780151003693
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 386