The Emotional Mind: The Affective Roots of Culture and Cognition (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780674980556)

Tracing the leading role of emotions in the evolution of the mind, a philosopher and a psychologist pair up to reveal how thought and culture owe less to our faculty for reason than to our capacity to feel.

Many accounts of the human mind concentrate on the brain's computational power. Yet, in evolutionary terms, rational cognition emerged only the day before yesterday. For nearly 200 million years before humans developed a capacity to reason, the emotional centers of the brain were hard at work. If we want to properly understand the evolution of the mind, we must explore this more primal capability that we share with other animals: the power to feel.

Emotions saturate every thought and perception with the weight of feelings. The Emotional Mind reveals that many of the distinctive behaviors and social structures of our species are best discerned through the lens of emotions. Even the roots of so much that makes us uniquely human--art, mythology, religion--can be traced to feelings of caring, longing, fear, loneliness, awe, rage, lust, playfulness, and more.

From prehistoric cave art to the songs of Hank Williams, Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel explore how the evolution of the emotional mind stimulated our species' cultural expression in all its rich variety. Bringing together insights and data from philosophy, biology, anthropology, neuroscience, and psychology, The Emotional Mind offers a new paradigm for understanding what it is that makes us so unique.

Author: Stephen T. Asma, Rami Gabriel
ISBN-10: 0674980557
ISBN-13: 9780674980556
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Language: English
Published: 04/15/2019
Pages: 448
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.60lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.40w x 1.40d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 11/01/2019