In this provocative, revelatory tour de force , Jesse Prinz reveals how the cultures we live in - not biology - determine how we think and feel. He examines all aspects of our behaviour, looking at everything from our intellects and emotions, to love and sex, morality and even madness. This book seeks to go beyond traditional debates of nature and nurture. He is not interested in finding universal laws but, rather, in understanding, explaining and celebrating our differences. Why do people raised in Western countries tend to see the trees before the forest, while people from East Asia see the forest before the trees? Why, in South East Asia, is there a common form of mental illness, unheard of in the West, in which people go into a trancelike state after being startled? Compared to Northerners, why are people in the American South more than twice as likely to kill someone over an argument? And, above all, just how malleable are we? Prinz shows that the vast diversity of our behaviour is not engrained. He picks up where biological explanations leave off. He tells us the human story. **
Review
“From start to finish this book is a fine, balanced, enormously learned and informative blast on the trumpet of common sense and humane understanding.” - New Statesman
“Challenges the tenets of modern evolutionary psychology.” - Wall Street Journal
“Science writing done right.” - Daily Beast
“Sophisticated but accessible reading for the Pinker/Damasio/Dennett set.” - Library Journal
About the Author
Jesse J. Prinz is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and director of the Committee for Interdisciplinary Science Studies at the City University of New York, Graduate Center. He lives in New York.
Description:
In this provocative, revelatory tour de force , Jesse Prinz reveals how the cultures we live in - not biology - determine how we think and feel. He examines all aspects of our behaviour, looking at everything from our intellects and emotions, to love and sex, morality and even madness. This book seeks to go beyond traditional debates of nature and nurture. He is not interested in finding universal laws but, rather, in understanding, explaining and celebrating our differences. Why do people raised in Western countries tend to see the trees before the forest, while people from East Asia see the forest before the trees? Why, in South East Asia, is there a common form of mental illness, unheard of in the West, in which people go into a trancelike state after being startled? Compared to Northerners, why are people in the American South more than twice as likely to kill someone over an argument? And, above all, just how malleable are we? Prinz shows that the vast diversity of our behaviour is not engrained. He picks up where biological explanations leave off. He tells us the human story. **
Review
“From start to finish this book is a fine, balanced, enormously learned and informative blast on the trumpet of common sense and humane understanding.”
- New Statesman
“Challenges the tenets of modern evolutionary psychology.”
- Wall Street Journal
“Science writing done right.”
- Daily Beast
“Sophisticated but accessible reading for the Pinker/Damasio/Dennett set.”
- Library Journal
About the Author
Jesse J. Prinz is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and director of the Committee for Interdisciplinary Science Studies at the City University of New York, Graduate Center. He lives in New York.