Present Books In Pursuance Of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
| Original Title: | Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst |
| ISBN: | 1594205078 (ISBN13: 9781594205071) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science & Technology (2017), Wellcome Book Prize Nominee for Longlist (2018), PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing Nominee for Shortlist (2018), Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Science & Technology (2017) |
Robert M. Sapolsky
Hardcover | Pages: 790 pages Rating: 4.41 | 8987 Users | 1163 Reviews
Itemize Epithetical Books Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
| Title | : | Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst |
| Author | : | Robert M. Sapolsky |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 790 pages |
| Published | : | May 2nd 2017 by Penguin Press |
| Categories | : | Science. Nonfiction. Psychology. Biology. Neuroscience |
Narration Toward Books Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Why do we do the things we do?More than a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky's genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.
And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. A behavior occurs--whether an example of humans at our best, worst, or somewhere in between. What went on in a person's brain a second before the behavior happened? Then Sapolsky pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell caused the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones acted hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli that triggered the nervous system? By now he has increased our field of vision so that we are thinking about neurobiology and the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology in trying to explain what happened.
Sapolsky keeps going: How was that behavior influenced by structural changes in the nervous system over the preceding months, by that person's adolescence, childhood, fetal life, and then back to his or her genetic makeup? Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than one individual. How did culture shape that individual's group, what ecological factors millennia old formed that culture? And on and on, back to evolutionary factors millions of years old.
The result is one of the most dazzling tours d'horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do...for good and for ill. Sapolsky builds on this understanding to wrestle with some of our deepest and thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, morality and free will, and war and peace. Wise, humane, often very funny, Behave is a towering achievement, powerfully humanizing, and downright heroic in its own right.
Rating Epithetical Books Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Ratings: 4.41 From 8987 Users | 1163 ReviewsDiscuss Epithetical Books Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
This is an outstanding and monumental synthesis on the causes of behavior by a talented researcher and teacher. He excels in making the science of the brain and behavior accessible to a wide audience without oversimplification. The goal is to provide a handle on how to account for the origins of the most admirable and most despicable of human actions, i.e. the roots of empathy and altruism on the one hand and violence, war, and genocide on the other. Sapolskys accomplishment yields an expansionSapolsky might become one of my new favorite authors. In this work, he surveys the literature on Brains, Genetics, Culture, and puts together a detailed picture of what makes us tick. He takes in a large chunk of the human condition and lays out much of the known science around it. Be it gender, race, politics, development, violence of all sorts, personality, deviance and conformity, Social Dominance and Authoritarianism, Hierarchy, Ethnicity, differences between liberals and conservatives,
In the shortest possible summary, let me start by saying that Behave is a stupendous book, and among the best science books I have read. While it is a book of science, and very detailed in parts at that it is still highly recommended reading for everybody. After all, who is not curious about why we behave the way we do. This book is certainly a tribute to the remarkable progress science has made in understanding our brain and our behaviours. However, be warned that it is a big book, which has a
Wow. This is brilliant, mind-clearing work by Stanford Professor and MacArthur "genius" Fellow Robert Sapolsky. Not only does he present the latest data in fields of neuroscience and psychology, but his presentation of several issues of human behavior from the levels of neurobiology, sensory and stimulus perception, changes in hormone levels, developmental changes in physiology, evolutionary changes over the course of millions of years, as well as cultural and psychological changes from the
This book delves into what makes us do what we do: hormones, genes, environment. Unsurprisingly the conclusion is that you can't point a single factor - be it gene or hormone, without taking into account what is happening in the environment. How you react to the influence of oxytocin or testosterone is entirely dependent on the setting. Likewise with genes. There isn't any one gene for aggression that strongly points to individuals being more aggressive - although being a man definitely means
Whatever your discipline of study, this book has some degree of relevance, considering as it does human biology. I wish to convey that this book is aspirational for everyone, even the author himself. He readily admits to gaps in his/our knowledge about human biology, but he tries, in this mighty interdisciplinary work synthesizing a lifetime of observation and thought, the current state of knowledge and points to areas for further study.Dont be intimidated by its size or erudition. The author is
Sapolsky explores the causes of human behavior at every level. Although he throws in some zingers and catchy vernacular, this is a serious work that can read like a textbook. He divides the book in two parts. The first deals with everything that affects behavior: The brain, neurons, neurotransmitters, hormones; environmental factors particularly in adolescence, childhood, and the womb; culture, genes and epigenetics. The second half shows how all these factors combine to affect us as individuals
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