MUST-READ BOOKS

Sometimes, we refrain from reading a book just because the author is known as a talented scientist and we are afraid of not being familiar enough with the topic of the book.

Well, Antonio Damasio is one of the most talented neuroscientist of our times; however, his books are written to be understood outside the academy; this book in particular, can help you comprehend yourself and the world around in an entirely different way:

“Human beings have distinguished themselves from all other beings by creating a spectacular collection of objects, practices, and ideas, collectively known as cultures. The collection includes the arts, philosophical inquiry, moral systems and religious beliefs, justice, governance, economic institutions, and technology and science”.

[…]

“Language, sociality, knowledge, and reason are the inventors and executors of these complicated processes. But feelings get to motivate them and stay on to check the results… Cultural activity began and remains deeply embedded in feeling. The favourable and unfavourable interplay of feeling and reason must be acknowledged if we are to understand the conflicts and contradictions of the human condition”.

As said by John Gray, Emeritus Professor of The London School of Economics:

“In The Strange Order of Things Antonio Damasio has given us that rarest of things, a book that can transform how we think –and feel–about ourselves.”