The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures

Antonio Damasio

Feb 2018 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Antonio Damasio and Steve West

About this audiobook

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.

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. He is the author of numerous scientific articles and the recipient of many awards, including the Prince of Asturias Prize in Science and Technology, the Grawemeyer Award, the Honda Prize, and the Pessoa and Signoret Prizes. Damasio is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. He holds honorary doctorates from several universities and is the author of Descartes' Error, The Feeling of What Happens, Looking for Spinoza, and Self Comes to Mind, all of which have been translated and are taught in universities throughout the world.