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

Damasio (Self Comes to Mind), director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, continues his quest for a theory of human consciousness, here linking feelings and culture with homeostasis and evolution. His ideas are exciting, yet his explanations tend to be abstract, as when he writes that “the constructions that inhabit our minds can well be imagined as ephemeral musical performances, played by several hidden orchestras.” Attempting to explain “the biological underpinnings of the human cultural mind,” Damasio begins with the Cambrian unicellular organism and shows how the mapping of internal and external images led to the development of nervous systems, which in turn laid the groundwork for verbal language, consciousness, subjectivity, and feeling. Damasio posits that feelings in humans “arose from a series of gradual, body-related processes... accumulated and maintained over evolution.” He then explores the biological roots of culture, particularly the role homeostasis played in generating behavioral strategies. Damasio extends his thinking on homeostasis to the shaping of moral codes and the emergence of religious and political systems, and even to the internet and what he dubs “the current crisis of the human condition.” Wide in scope, though occasionally difficult to follow, Damasio’s book contains moments of genius but feels like a work in progress. (Feb.)