Robert M. Sapolsky is the author of several works of nonfiction, including A Primate’s Memoir, The Trouble with Testosterone, and Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. He is a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation genius grant. He lives in San Francisco.
Why do we do the things we do?
More than a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky’s genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky’s storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person’s reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.
And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. A behavior occurs–whether an example of humans at our best, worst, or somewhere in between. What went on in a person’s brain a second before the behavior happened? Then Sapolsky pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell caused the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones acted hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli that triggered the nervous system? By now he has increased our field of vision so that we are thinking about neurobiology and the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology in trying to explain what happened.
Sapolsky keeps going: How was that behavior influenced by structural changes in the nervous system over the preceding months, by that person’s adolescence, childhood, fetal life, and then back to his or her genetic makeup? Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than one individual. How did culture shape that individual’s group, what ecological factors millennia old formed that culture? And on and on, back to evolutionary factors millions of years old.
The result is one of the most dazzling tours d’horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do…for good and for ill. Sapolsky builds on this understanding to wrestle with some of our deepest and thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, morality and free will, and war and peace. Wise, humane, often very funny, Behave is a towering achievement, powerfully humanizing, and downright heroic in its own right.
發表於2024-05-17
Behave 2024 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載
這本書比起作者的前一本科普書《斑馬為什麼不得胃潰瘍》(下文簡稱《斑馬》)在閱讀體驗上可能差瞭10篇我寫的科普文章。所以,四捨五入約等於還好,作為本書作者(下文簡稱偶像)的腦殘粉,我……還是給瞭5星。 我在寫《斑馬為什麼不會得潰瘍》書評中寫道“自由意誌這個大坑,...
評分這本書比起作者的前一本科普書《斑馬為什麼不得胃潰瘍》(下文簡稱《斑馬》)在閱讀體驗上可能差瞭10篇我寫的科普文章。所以,四捨五入約等於還好,作為本書作者(下文簡稱偶像)的腦殘粉,我……還是給瞭5星。 我在寫《斑馬為什麼不會得潰瘍》書評中寫道“自由意誌這個大坑,...
評分 評分圖書標籤: 心理學 認知科學 腦科學 行為學 神經科學 科普 Psychology Science
實在讀不完,屬於動物行為學,腦神經學,生物學集大成者,告訴我們判斷行為要考慮多方麵,如腦硬件,文化等,人的行為是腦硬件基礎下的産物,但硬件的變化原因多種多樣。Rk
評分雖然讀起來並不輕鬆(超大部頭),但是還是由衷為作者的努力感到敬佩,從各個層麵解析瞭人類的行為來源(神經生物學、激素、記憶、發育、環境,等等等等),組織的角度也很新奇——立馬展現的,需要時間的,母胎帶來的,進化産生的。可以收著慢慢看!
評分作者用科學解告訴我們:當你解釋某個行為背後的動因時,要非常謹慎,不要輕易評判。而且要意識到,其中的每一個環節都有變化的可能。
評分整閤瞭很多有意思的方麵,然而太冗長瞭。
評分開槍前一秒。 我們的行為是各種因素聯閤作用的果。
Behave 2024 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載