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A review by rupertowen
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin
informative
slow-paced
2.0
This thesis by Charles Darwin is a curio for me. It begins quite casually observing emotions relating to humans and animals, especially dogs, cats, horses, and monkeys. It then focusses on humankind as the premise for the rest of the observation. Darwin references heavily on other works and adds smatterings of his own family experiences, as well as accounts from friends in distant places.
It's written more from a kind of early David Attenborough style, blending the personal with the scientific but not backed up with much experiential scientific theory. It is extensive in its approach and he covers a great deal of emotions, the detail of describing these is certainly comprehensive, and well worth the read from a purely cursory anthropological point of view.
Darwin is no psychologist but he does attempt to reason such actions and expressions to the best of his knowledge and ability at the time. There are a few amusing anecdotes, one I particularly enjoyed was the image of Darwin retching while attempting to clean skeletons which were not sufficiently macerated.
The book is of its time, so if you are sensitive to archaic lexicon used to describe peoples, you may have to put that sensitivity aside. As mentioned in the beginning of my review, this book remains for me a curio of science rather than a compendium of sound knowledge.
It's written more from a kind of early David Attenborough style, blending the personal with the scientific but not backed up with much experiential scientific theory. It is extensive in its approach and he covers a great deal of emotions, the detail of describing these is certainly comprehensive, and well worth the read from a purely cursory anthropological point of view.
Darwin is no psychologist but he does attempt to reason such actions and expressions to the best of his knowledge and ability at the time. There are a few amusing anecdotes, one I particularly enjoyed was the image of Darwin retching while attempting to clean skeletons which were not sufficiently macerated.
The book is of its time, so if you are sensitive to archaic lexicon used to describe peoples, you may have to put that sensitivity aside. As mentioned in the beginning of my review, this book remains for me a curio of science rather than a compendium of sound knowledge.