Liars, Lovers, and Heroes: What the New Brain Science Reveals About How We Become Who We Are

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Harper Collins, 2003 M09 23 - 352 pages

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.

From inside the book

Contents

of Emotions
88
Crowd
189
Rethinking What Makes Us Smart
216
The Search for Happiness
252
Copyright

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Page 153 - It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our , dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.
Page 144 - The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has. created more massive and more colossal productive forces, than have all preceding generations together.
Page 121 - What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Page 228 - Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products to meet the various demands of life.
Page 154 - There can be no doubt that a tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection.
Page 228 - Ordinarily, the teacher, if asked whether his eighth-grade pupils could add at the rate of 65 combinations per minute with an accuracy of 94 per cent, could not answer the question; nor would he know how to go about finding out. He needs a measuring scale that will serve him in measuring his product as well as the scale of feet and inches serves in measuring the product of the steel plant.
Page 9 - All hypotheses attempting to establish a biological basis of social behavior "tend to provide a genetic justification of the status quo and of existing privileges for certain groups according to class, race, or sex.
Page 327 - And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers.

About the author (2003)

Steven R. Quartz, Ph.D., is director of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology and an associate professor in the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Computation and Neural Systems Program. He was a fellow of the Sloan Center for Theoretical Neurobiology at the Salk Institute and a recipient of the National Science Foundation's CAREER award, its most prestigious award for young faculty. He lives in Topanga, California.

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