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The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures Hardcover – Deckle Edge, February 6, 2018

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 467 ratings

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From one of our preeminent neuroscientists: a landmark reflection that spans the biological and social sciences, offering a new way of understanding the origins of life, feeling, and culture.
 
The Strange Order of Things is a pathbreaking investigation into homeostasis, the condition of that regulates human physiology within the range that makes possible not only the survival but also the flourishing of life. Antonio Damasio makes clear that we descend biologically, psychologically, and even socially from a long lineage that begins with single living cells; that our minds and cultures are linked by an invisible thread to the ways and means of ancient unicellular life and other primitive life-forms; and that inherent in our very chemistry is a powerful force, a striving toward life maintenance that governs life in all its guises, including the development of genes that help regulate and transmit life.In The Strange Order of Things, Damasio gives us a new way of comprehending the world and our place in it.
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The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures

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"These pages make enthralling reading....It is indispensable for any psychoanalyst—and not only for psychoanalysts, of course. Damasio is the closest thing we have in the post-truth era to a great public intellectual."—Mark Solms, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association

“Nietzsche would have given four cheers for this intricately argued book, which is at once scientifically rigorous and humanely accommodating, and, so far as this reviewer can judge, revolutionary….From Plato onwards, western philosophy has favoured mind over “mere” body, so that by the time we get to Descartes, the human has become hardly more than a brain stuck atop a stick, like a child’s hobbyhorse. This is the conception of humanness that Damasio wishes to dismantle. For him, as for Nietzsche, what the body feels is every bit as significant as what the mind thinks, and further, both functions are inextricably intertwined....There are echoes here too of William James, that most endearing of philosophers, as when Damasio pauses for a brief, Jamesian consideration of the anomalous fact that for all the hi-tech sophistication of modern life, we still cling to the primitive pleasure and reassurance of the domestic fireplace. And James would have been delighted by Damasio’s “everydayness”, his readiness to acknowledge the fundamental underpinnings of even our highest endeavours....But Damasio, while ever ready to salute his predecessors and peers, is wholly his own man, and 
The Strange Order of Things is a fresh and daring effort to identify the true spring and source of human being – of the being, in fact, of all living things – namely feeling.”—John Banville, The Guardian

“A radical revision of how we understand mind, feeling, consciousness, and the construction of cultures…. Damasio draws a visionary link between biology and social science in a fascinating investigation of homeostasis—the delicate balance that underpins our physical existence, ensures our survival, and defines our flourishing. At the heart of his inquiry is his lifelong interest in the nature of human affect—why we feel what we feel, how we use emotions to construct selfhood, what makes our intentions and our feelings so frequently contradictory, how the body and the mind conspire in the inception of emotional reality. What emerges is not an arsenal of certitudes and answers but a celebration of curiosity and a reminder that intelligent, informed speculation is how we expand the territory of knowledge by moving the boundary of the knowable further into the unknown.”
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

“Almost a quarter century after
Descartes’ Error, Antonio Damasio has done it again—created a grand exploration of the inextricable relationship between mind, body, and the source of human feelings. Along the way, Damasio takes the reader on an adventure that starts with the single-celled organisms that existed billions of years ago, proceeds through the development of nervous systems and brains, and culminates with the origin of consciousness and human cultures. Thought-provoking and highly original, this book can change the way you look at yourself, and your species.” —Leonard Mlodinow, author of Subliminal

The Strange Order of Things is a foundational book. It provides the concepts, the language, and the knowledge to explain in an integrated framework the interplay between Nature and Culture at the heart of the human condition. Damasio unveils the codes and protocols that make humans human. After a long period of fragmentation of science, he ushers in a paradigm that reunites scientific knowledge, beyond the diversity of its fields of inquiry, around the study of the networks of the mind in communication with the networks of its biological and social existence. This is the beginning of a new scientific revolution.” —Manuel Castells, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley

“In
The Strange Order of Things, Antonio Damasio presents a new vision of what it means to be human. For too long we have thought of ourselves as rational minds inhabiting insentient mechanical bodies. Breaking with this philosophy, Damasio shows how our minds are rooted in feeling, a creation of our nervous system with an evolutionary history going back to ancient unicellular life that enables us to shape distinctively human cultures. Working out what this implies for the arts, the sciences and the human  future, Damasio has given us that rarest of things, a book that can transform how we think—and feel—about ourselves.” —John Gray, author of Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

“Following Oliver Sacks, Antonio Damasio may be the neuroscientist whose popular books have done the most to inform readers about the biological machinery in our heads, how it generates thoughts and emotions, creates a self to cling to, and a sense of transcendence to escape by…[the book] mounts his boldest argument yet for the egalitarian role of the brain.” –Kevin Berger, Nautilus

“Bold and important….Damasio, by unseating the mind from its elevated throne within the brain, delivers an onslaught on one of the core dogmas of conventional neuroscience. In his view, mind is distributed — for instance, to distant anatomical regions such as the peripheral neural networks that control organ function. Thus, different tissues in the body contribute incrementally to the mind’s function. Damasio’s vision offers a new and specific incarnation of the thesis of unified body and mind….Compelling and refreshingly original.” —Nature

“Damasio goes further than convention, calling homeostasis ‘the powerful, unsought, unspoken imperative’ that ensures an organism will both endure and prevail. More subtly, it ensures that life will be regulated within a span that is not merely compatible with survival, but also ‘conducive to flourishing, to a projection of life into the future of an organism or a species’….Breathtaking, thought-provoking, and simply fun. Agree with the author or not, the book is an enjoyable read. It will challenge many of the reader’s assumptions as well as the status quo.” —New York Journal of Books

“Damasio analyzes the continuities and the differences between natural life and human cultures, considered in their artistic, political, ethical and medical dimensions. In this effort the borders of the human do not disappear but are instead shifted, made movable. As a result, his exploration of life”s surprises becomes a stimulating and exhilarating exercise in redefining humanity itself....Damasio’s books are marvels of scientific effervescence, of conceptual invention, and, in the end, of modesty, of that sense of the limits of knowledge that only knowledge is capable of imposing....In Damasio’s thinking, to live consists of projecting yourself into life, shunning vulnerability and death, powered by a foundational force that he names homeostasis, a concept that
The Strange Order of Things perfects and amplifies.” Le Monde

“The originality of the unity proposed by Damasio is that it is rooted on the mechanisms of life itself and in particular on the conditions of its regulation, an ensemble of phenomena generally designated by a single word: homeostasis. This daring approach allows us to tease apart the links between cultures and nature and to deepen as never before the question of how the cultural process can be humanized....The Strange Order of Things bridges two contradictory readings of the elaboration of culture and human behaviors: autonomous cultural phenomena versus the consequences of natural selection conveyed by genes. For Damasio there is no need to choose between them. Damasio also refuses to reduce cultural phenomena to their biological origin, or to explain the ensemble of cultural phenomena in pure scientific terms....Intriguingly, this novel Copernican revolution in no way reduces the specificity of the human, on the contrary....Here is a new, strange and unassailable definition of life.” —Slate (France)

“For this world renowned scientist brain and body are indissociable and produce the mind jointly....Ever since his first book, Damasio has not wavered in his efforts to rehabilitate emotions and feelings within cognitive processes. In
The Strange Order of Things he nails down the effort and goes well beyond....Feelings are agents of homeostasis, the powerful principle behind the regulation of life. The human saga, in the strict sense, owes a lot to a highly developed cerebral cortex, but the essentials of that saga had been germinating long before.” —Les Echos

“[Damasio] exerts a considerable influence on the fashioning of contemporary thought and on all debates concerning neurology. Damasio is one of the great thinkers of our time. A pioneer in his field.” —L'Express

“[Damasio] has introduced something baroque in a science that has been centered in one single organ, the brain.
The Strange Order of Things vibrates with a baroque sensibility. The word baroque has a Portuguese origin and signifies 'irregular pearl'. Human intelligence and its products are irregular pearls and not perfect algorithms....The Strange Order of Things is a biological interpretation of human phenomena, complex human societies included. The book expands on a proposal Damasio made following his first discoveries in the eighties: the brain is only a part of a whole and that whole is the body. Together body and brain engender feelings....Feelings are sentinels for life’s fragility, for the body’s mortality. This is how Damasio installs homeostasis at the origin of all human endeavors. We can not attain any goal without the desire to attain it, in short, without desire itself.” Le Figaro

“This disturbing book shakes our conceptions of the mechanisms behind life, mind and culture. The author brings them together in a single perspective centered on homeostasis … It is incredibly, formidably, refreshing....This is a memorable book. A strange and ambitious book, which draws on multiple disciplines and moves across time and space to give us, very simply, a new definition of life.” 
—Revue Medicale Suisse

"Damasio takes his reader on an intellectual journey he has made himself, one of discovery, surprise, and insight. He explains his points thoroughly but does not simplify what is complicated. He is handy with a metaphor and avoids unnecessary jargon. In a world in which specialization has become so refined that the discourse of a given discipline often becomes wholly unintelligible to those outside it, Antonio Damasio conveys his thoughts with clarity and grace and summons the works of composers and writers and philosophers. When I reached the end of The Strange Order of Things, I recalled the closing words of William James’s Psychology: The Briefer Course when he tells readers that “the darkness” is “great” and urges them not to “forget that the natural-science assumptions with which we started are provisional and revisable things.”Siri Hustvedt, Los Angeles Review of Books

"In what must by any standard be rated a ground-breaking shift in the way we understand ourselves, Damasio has shown that our lives, our cultures and our very selves are outgrowths of feeling, the origins of which are in humble micro-organisms that lived billions of years ago." John Gray, Literary Review

About the Author

ANTONIO DAMASIO is University Professor; David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Philosophy; and director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. Awards he has received include the Prince of Asturias Prize in Science and Technology, the Grawemeyer Award, the Honda Prize, and the Pessoa and Signoret prizes. In 2017 he received the Freud Medal from the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences. Damasio is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. He is the author of Descartes’ Error, The Feeling of What Happens, Looking for Spinoza and Self Comes to Mind, all of which have been published in translation and are taught in universities throughout the world.

www.antoniodamasio.com

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pantheon (February 6, 2018)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0307908755
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0307908759
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.4 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.6 x 1.16 x 9.53 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 467 ratings

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4.4 out of 5 stars
467 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book thought-provoking and interesting. They describe it as a wonderful, enjoyable read that provides intellectual stimulation. Readers praise the author's clear writing style and pacing as alacrity and riveting.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

29 customers mention "Thought provoking"27 positive2 negative

Customers find the book thought-provoking and interesting. They say it contains insightful assertions and provides intellectual stimulation. The scope is clear, and the author describes a wonderful way to understand how our mind arises from biology.

"...say whether he's on the right track, but as a reader, his thesis is quite provocative and stimulating, plus the comprehensive sweep of his narrative..." Read more

"The book makes several highly original & insightful assertions, but the core thesis is :..." Read more

"...Well informed by biological science, the book gives needed space for commentary and reflection that puts the science in perspective at it pertains..." Read more

"Concise and clearly structured view on the role of affect in human behavior in the first two parts of the book...." Read more

27 customers mention "Readability"23 positive4 negative

Customers find the book readable and interesting. They say it deepens their understanding of what happens to us. The writing is good and the book summarizes the author's work in an accessible format.

"...but given the complexity of some of the ideas he covers, the writing is quite good...." Read more

"...In this book, Damasio appeals to a wide audience, writing with flair as well as erudition, in an engaging and minimally technical style...." Read more

"in my humble opinion, this book is interesting to read and provides good amount of intellectual stimulation, but it's very squishy and it's mostly..." Read more

"...Consciousness. Feeling. Emotion. These are loaded words, and everyone has their own commonsense understanding of what they mean...." Read more

7 customers mention "Pacing"7 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging and well-written. They describe the author as brilliant, clear, and modest. The book makes original and insightful assertions.

"The book makes several highly original & insightful assertions, but the core thesis is :..." Read more

"...It is so absorbing, so masterfully put together that it is riveting. What a mind !!!..." Read more

"This author writes with great honesty and alacrity. Goes to great length to explicate the nuances. Great reading. Thoroughly enjoyed it...." Read more

"Fascinating. Damasio is brilliant, an excellent writer (in just one of many languages at his command), and revolutionary in his approach to..." Read more

For Academics - Goes Deep
4 out of 5 stars
For Academics - Goes Deep
This book is written by a college professor on a college level (or master’s degree level). This is an academic book perhaps to be read in a college course. It goes deep into defining what a feeling or emotion is and the biological basis intertwining with Culture. This book requires a lot of prior content to make sense of it all. If you are a layperson you may not understand all of this. I do not have a degree in psychology or sociology; I can understand this but it takes a lot of mental effort and because I have read a lot of books over the last 30+ years...In the end this went too deep for my personal interest level, it is hard to give a star rating because there’s nothing wrong with the book, it just has to do with how it matches with what you are looking for. I will rate it 4 stars.
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2018
    Professor Damasio takes the concept of homeostasis, a self-regulating process by which biological systems tend to maintain stability while adjusting to conditions that optimize survival, and applies it to both the history of life and the development of culture. The pervasive influence if homeostasis can be seen in the activity of single-celled organisms, the development of nervous systems, and the creativity of human minds. Homeostasis, according to Damasio, had a pivotal role in the development of human culture. Memory, language, imagination, and reasoning, the author states, are leading participants in cultural processes but they "cannot operate without affect (feeling) and consciousness." Homeostasis generates behavioral strategies capable of ensuring life maintenance and flourishing and the flourishing can include cultural creativity.

    Damasio reminds us, again, that humans are not just reasoning creatures but are repositories of feelings, and that feelings (affect) are not necessarily harmful to the reasoning process but can intuitively guide us toward optimal life-enhancing strategies. One might infer (I'm not sure he says it explicitly) that the pleasure-pain principle in human psychology emerges from homeostasis, i.e., we seek pleasure and avoid pain, and what makes us feel good helps our well-being and survival, and what makes us feel bad ordinarily will harm us, perhaps irretrievably. The author does acknowledge that masochism and substance abuse are exceptions to this rule, namely that they provide pleasure but result in "bodily destruction." It also appears that the author takes issues with AI theorists and computational neuroscientists who believe that human beings are, essentially, algorithms, and that in a distant future scenario uploading the digitized version of your brain into a computer will not only provide a kind of immortality but would also provide a kind of consciousness resembling your human state. Damasio argues for an integrated view of body and mind, similar to his emphasis of the importance of feeling and affect, and criticizes the algorithmic view of the mind as ignoring the "substrate" used in the construction of the organism. As he states (p. 201): "The substrate of our life is a particular kind of organized chemistry, a servant of thermodynamics and the imperative of homeostasis......that substrate is essential to explain who we are."

    Psychologists have used the homeostatic model to explain motivations in human behavior, e.g., hunger, but the psychologists tell us (at least the ones I've read) that for non-physiological motives the homeostatic model is not very predictive, particularly for complex behaviors, and behaviors that reflect a need for sensory variation, curiosity, and risk. Of course, Damasio's conception of the pervasive influence of homeostasis appears to be a broader conception than its physiological roots and embraces how we're feeling and not just our pulse and sweating functions. Damasio's ideas seem speculative to me, but well thought out, and capably argued. I don't have the background to say whether he's on the right track, but as a reader, his thesis is quite provocative and stimulating, plus the comprehensive sweep of his narrative, in just 244 pages, was bracing. True, the book is not an easy read, but given the complexity of some of the ideas he covers, the writing is quite good. Damasio has a knack for word and phrase selection in his writing that is both descriptive and highly explanatory.
    21 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2022
    The book makes several highly original & insightful assertions, but the core thesis is :
    Feelings, as a feedback mechanism, have played a key role in our development. In fact, Damasio, says
    What has motivated cultural development is affect.
    The feeling of hunger motivates us to eat. This mind-body concert evolved from pleasure seeking and pain avoidance to anticipating the potential for pain & the potential for pleasure; which drove the invention of new instruments & instigated new practices which we describe as "cultural". Feelings are the key monitors of cultural processes. Whether a practice is preserved or phased out depends on how we feel about it & how well we feel it works or not (more than intellect & reason).

    Feelings contribute in three ways to the cultural process:
    1. as motives of the intellectual creation
    a) by prompting the detection and diagnosis of homeostatic deficiencies;
    b) by identifying desirable states worthy of creative effort;
    2. as monitors of the success or failure of cultural instruments and practices;
    3. as participants in the negotiation of adjustments required by the cultural process over time.

    The strange order comes from the fact that "pre-cultural" behavior , such as behaving socially in cooperation or conflict, has been observed in life forms that have no nervous system. Scientists have discovered that intelligence preceeds nervous systems, brains & minds.

    Damasio's observation is how brainless bacterium respond to sensory input and how you respond to sensory input is fundamentally the same: Homeostasis -- an instinctual desire for equilibrium.
    All personal feelings about your state of being are agents acting on behalf of homeostasis. After all, feelings like hunger and fear are part of the processes that keep you alive and safe from harm.
    Damasio hypothesizes that it is the unification of external sensory mapping of the world + affective internal mapping of self that gave rise to consciousness.
    Affect -- the influence of emotions on our behaviors and perceptions -- This is how subjectivity evolved & in aggregate, how cultures were created.
    15 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • NA014
    5.0 out of 5 stars a wonderful erudite reading
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 20, 2024
    A must read for anyone who wants to understand culture and the link between biology and cultural being. Thank you Professor Antonio Damasio
  • Luis
    5.0 out of 5 stars a must read
    Reviewed in Belgium on June 22, 2024
    if you are interested in what make us intelligent beans
  • tio gegeca
    5.0 out of 5 stars Mais um livro fantástico
    Reviewed in Brazil on April 17, 2023
    Do Prof que vale a pena ler tudo
  • José Hernández
    5.0 out of 5 stars El extraño orden de las cosas
    Reviewed in Mexico on September 11, 2024
    Luminoso libro del neurobiólogo Damasio.
  • Chillyfinger
    5.0 out of 5 stars What is Life?
    Reviewed in Canada on August 29, 2018
    Damasio tweaks our definition of "life" in subtle but important ways. Arguably, he charts the way to understanding how life can become "conscious" - "self-aware" in a way that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom (and from physics entirely).

    The reader must be alert for the way Damasio re-defines a couple of everyday concepts:

    - Most regard "survival" - especially "survival of the fittest" as the engine behind evolution. Damasio shows that it is "thriving", which he most often refers to as homeostasis. What he's saying is that "life" doesn't just break even, it "tries" to "make a profit". Life wants to grow, expand, take over and (above all) persist.

    - Damasio's use of the term "sensation" can be a bit tricky to appreciate. For him, a "sensation" is what happens in a nervous system as a result of some impact of the world on the organism. It is one step removed from the actual contact. This separation turns out to be key to the way he sees our nervous systems and our precious brains. In particular, it defines our brains (and our minds) as part of the body but in a special relationship to the body. This also puts our "minds" in relationship to themselves via "images", a crucial aspect of consciousness.

    I have only two quibbles with this book.

    It is a hard slog. Damasio never seems to find a sentence that can't be made longer. Be prepared to look up quite a few words. I was glad I had the Kindle version of the book that allows me to do this with a click.

    More importantly, Damasio steps back from what would seem to me to be obvious: human society is "alive" in exactly the way that other life forms are. This has sweeping implications that Damasio rejects for reasons that, to me, seem arbitrary.
    Customer image
    Chillyfinger
    5.0 out of 5 stars What is Life?
    Reviewed in Canada on August 29, 2018
    Damasio tweaks our definition of "life" in subtle but important ways. Arguably, he charts the way to understanding how life can become "conscious" - "self-aware" in a way that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom (and from physics entirely).

    The reader must be alert for the way Damasio re-defines a couple of everyday concepts:

    - Most regard "survival" - especially "survival of the fittest" as the engine behind evolution. Damasio shows that it is "thriving", which he most often refers to as homeostasis. What he's saying is that "life" doesn't just break even, it "tries" to "make a profit". Life wants to grow, expand, take over and (above all) persist.

    - Damasio's use of the term "sensation" can be a bit tricky to appreciate. For him, a "sensation" is what happens in a nervous system as a result of some impact of the world on the organism. It is one step removed from the actual contact. This separation turns out to be key to the way he sees our nervous systems and our precious brains. In particular, it defines our brains (and our minds) as part of the body but in a special relationship to the body. This also puts our "minds" in relationship to themselves via "images", a crucial aspect of consciousness.

    I have only two quibbles with this book.

    It is a hard slog. Damasio never seems to find a sentence that can't be made longer. Be prepared to look up quite a few words. I was glad I had the Kindle version of the book that allows me to do this with a click.

    More importantly, Damasio steps back from what would seem to me to be obvious: human society is "alive" in exactly the way that other life forms are. This has sweeping implications that Damasio rejects for reasons that, to me, seem arbitrary.
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