Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique - Hardcover

Gazzaniga, Michael S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060892889 ISBN 13: 9780060892883

Publisher: Ecco, 2008

Synopsis

One of the world's leading neuroscientists explores how best to understand the human condition by examining the biological, psychological, and highly social nature of our species within the social context of our lives.

What happened along the evolutionary trail that made humans so unique? In his widely accessible style, Michael Gazzaniga looks to a broad range of studies to pinpoint the change that made us thinking, sentient humans, different from our predecessors.

Neuroscience has been fixated on the life of the psychological self for the past fifty years, focusing on the brain systems underlying language, memory, emotion, and perception. What it has not done is consider the stark reality that most of the time we humans are thinking about social processes, comparing ourselves to and estimating the intentions of others. In Human, Gazzaniga explores a number of related issues, including what makes human brains unique, the importance of language and art in defining the human condition, the nature of human consciousness, and even artificial intelligence.

About this title

About the Author

Michael S. Gazzaniga is internationally recognized in the field of neuroscience and a pioneer in cognitive research. He is the director of the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of many popular science books, including Who’s in Charge? (Ecco, 2011). He has six children and lives in California with his wife.

From the Back Cover

One of the world's leading neuroscientists explores how best to understand the human condition by examining the biological, psychological, and highly social nature of our species within the social context of our lives.

What happened along the evolutionary trail that made humans so unique? In his widely accessible style, Michael Gazzaniga looks to a broad range of studies to pinpoint the change that made us thinking, sentient humans, different from our predecessors.

Neuroscience has been fixated on the life of the psychological self for the past fifty years, focusing on the brain systems underlying language, memory, emotion, and perception. What it has not done is consider the stark reality that most of the time we humans are thinking about social processes, comparing ourselves to and estimating the intentions of others. In Human, Gazzaniga explores a number of related issues, including what makes human brains unique, the importance of language and art in defining the human condition, the nature of human consciousness, and even artificial intelligence.

Reviews

Starred Review. As wide-ranging as it is deep, and as entertaining as it is informative, the latest offering from UC–Santa Barbara neuroscientist Gazzaniga (The Ethical Brain) will please a diverse array of readers. He is adept at aiding even the scientifically unsophisticated to grasp his arguments about what separates humans from other animals. His main premise is that human brains are not only proportionately larger than those of other primates but have a number of distinct structures, which he explores along with evolutionary explanations for their existence. For instance, a direct outgrowth of the size and structure of the human brain, along with their origins in the complexity of human social groups, was the development of language, self-awareness and ethics. (Gazzaniga offers some surprising comments on the evolution of religion and its relation to morals.) Throughout, Gazzaniga addresses the nature of consciousness, and by comparing the intellectual capabilities of a host of animals (chimps, dogs, birds and rats, among others) with those of human babies, children and adults, he shows what we all share as well as what humans alone possess. (July)
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Thinking through human characteristics, and deciding whether they are in fact distinctly human, is the aim of this popular work about neuroscience. Gazzaniga is a prime name in the field, and in jaunty, colloquial language, he mediates the research of neurobiologists as well as evolutionary and cognitive psychologists. Opening with a run through the gross anatomy of the brain and concluding that, yes, ours really is a bigger, more complex noggin than that of any other species, Gazzaniga asks: “Would a chimp make a good date?” Meaning: Are we justified in imputing humanlike thought to animals such as chimps or dogs? No, is Gazzaniga’s general conclusion. They fail tests for theory-of-mind, the ability to act on the knowledge that other creatures have their own thoughts. Humans innately acquire that skill—as Gazzaniga demonstrates through descriptions of cognitive studies of children—so what’s it for, he asks? He finds answers in the universal proclivity to talk, mostly about other people. From gossip to morals to art, Gazzaniga pays scientific compliments to what makes us human. --Gilbert Taylor

Edition details

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060892889
• ISBN 13: 9780060892883
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 464