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The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures by António R. Damásio
missaolermais's review against another edition
2.0
Repete o 1º capitulo, pelo resto do livro todo... Conceito interessante, mas perdido no meio da repetição.
rosabrancaa's review against another edition
5.0
Adoro como o Damásio explica tudo de forma tão fácil e inteligível. Como eu não hei-de gostar de um autor que diz com toda a convicção que o segredo da Humanidade top é se definitivamente conjugarmos as áreas do saber da Psicologia, da Biologia e da Filosofia.
Um crente inacreditável do papel da Educação,e das Artes naquilo que é o objectivo último da Humanidade, a promoção da vida e o seu fomentar em qualidade no futuro. Wow.
Loved this book. <3
Um crente inacreditável do papel da Educação,e das Artes naquilo que é o objectivo último da Humanidade, a promoção da vida e o seu fomentar em qualidade no futuro. Wow.
Loved this book. <3
readinglife's review against another edition
2.0
Demasiada homeostasia para mim...
Apesar de ter tirado nota de algumas passagens interessantes parece mesmo que li 300 páginas apenas a falar de várias formas do mesmo conceito... homeostasia
Apesar de ter tirado nota de algumas passagens interessantes parece mesmo que li 300 páginas apenas a falar de várias formas do mesmo conceito... homeostasia
hilaritas's review
4.0
The first half of this book is really splendid, as Damasio demolishes the Enlightenment enthronement of reason in favor of a recentering of feelings in thought and decisional processes. It can seem at times almost plodding or overly simplistic, but it's because he is carefully feeling his way to a full account of human motivation from first principles.
Damasio's overarching thesis is that homeostasis is the purpose of all biology. His concept of homeostasis is a broader one than simply maintaining a steady state: he views homeostasis as a fundamentally dynamic process that is always seeking optimal states of wellbeing for the organism. In this sense, homeodynamics might be the better term. It's functionally synonymous with "flourishing" for Aristotle or just simply "seeking the Good".
At times the concept seems so broad that its explanatory power gets a little lost (especially when trying to trace how homeostasis builds human culture), but Damasio effectively grounds it in concrete talk about feelings as primary component of cognition, and a recognition that cognition does not occur in the brain alone. He does a great job of using neuroscience to knock the legs out from under Cartesian dualism and to acknowledge that a thinking person necessarily means an embodied person: the body and the brain are hopelessly entangled and feelings (and thus thoughts) arise from a complex interplay of those elements across a spectrum.
The second half of the book is a little more aimless. Damasio keeps reiterating his central themes, but it's along a meandering path of Big Thoughts about life, society, culture, AI, beauty, and the moral good. It's not very structured or topical, but Damasio has earned a lot of good faith in what came before, so who am I to begrudge him a platform to chew the fat about his opinions on everything under the sun? At least his musings are mostly good ones, and a fundamental sense of humanity and caring shines through. Not really necessary to the thesis of the book, but it's not going to hurt you to read it. I did think he oversold his opposition to transhumanist hopes for mind uploading; sure, their view of what needs to be uploaded is reductive, but as long as we're wishing for ponies, presumably future scientists can figure out uploading digital translations of the body and our bacterial symbiotes too. It's a minor point in a book that has some big ideas put in a beautifully simple way.
If nothing else, this book is a great reminder that cooperative strategies were already billions of years old by the time humans came on the scene, and we could do worse than to look to our unicellular ancestors for political and social pointers now. It's a nice shot of scientifically-backed optimism for darker days.
Damasio's overarching thesis is that homeostasis is the purpose of all biology. His concept of homeostasis is a broader one than simply maintaining a steady state: he views homeostasis as a fundamentally dynamic process that is always seeking optimal states of wellbeing for the organism. In this sense, homeodynamics might be the better term. It's functionally synonymous with "flourishing" for Aristotle or just simply "seeking the Good".
At times the concept seems so broad that its explanatory power gets a little lost (especially when trying to trace how homeostasis builds human culture), but Damasio effectively grounds it in concrete talk about feelings as primary component of cognition, and a recognition that cognition does not occur in the brain alone. He does a great job of using neuroscience to knock the legs out from under Cartesian dualism and to acknowledge that a thinking person necessarily means an embodied person: the body and the brain are hopelessly entangled and feelings (and thus thoughts) arise from a complex interplay of those elements across a spectrum.
The second half of the book is a little more aimless. Damasio keeps reiterating his central themes, but it's along a meandering path of Big Thoughts about life, society, culture, AI, beauty, and the moral good. It's not very structured or topical, but Damasio has earned a lot of good faith in what came before, so who am I to begrudge him a platform to chew the fat about his opinions on everything under the sun? At least his musings are mostly good ones, and a fundamental sense of humanity and caring shines through. Not really necessary to the thesis of the book, but it's not going to hurt you to read it. I did think he oversold his opposition to transhumanist hopes for mind uploading; sure, their view of what needs to be uploaded is reductive, but as long as we're wishing for ponies, presumably future scientists can figure out uploading digital translations of the body and our bacterial symbiotes too. It's a minor point in a book that has some big ideas put in a beautifully simple way.
If nothing else, this book is a great reminder that cooperative strategies were already billions of years old by the time humans came on the scene, and we could do worse than to look to our unicellular ancestors for political and social pointers now. It's a nice shot of scientifically-backed optimism for darker days.
mmarvin01's review
3.0
While many parts of this book resonated with me, I found it a bit repetitive. The author was clearly in his element when writing about the human experience, but the early chapters about evolution and the later parts of the book regarding the cultural development meandered and lacked convincing examples.
What sticks with me most is the notion that feelings and emotions are not the same thing. Feelings are bodily reactions (to internal or external stimuli) and emotions are the mental experiences relating to the feelings... but this is apparently an aside from Damasio’s other book “Looking for Spinoza”.
What sticks with me most is the notion that feelings and emotions are not the same thing. Feelings are bodily reactions (to internal or external stimuli) and emotions are the mental experiences relating to the feelings... but this is apparently an aside from Damasio’s other book “Looking for Spinoza”.
richardmtl's review
2.0
DNF. I normally love books about the brain and the mind, it's usually fascinating, but I just couldn't get through this book. I made it 1/3 of the way before giving up. His style of writing, the vocabulary used, the sentence structure, the metaphors, everything about it felt so aggressively anti-reader. Or maybe it's just me. In any case, giving it 2 stars for the subject matter, but I am seriously debating removing the rest of his books from my to-read shelf.
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