An eye-opening exploration of the intersection between philosophy and science and a fascinating peek into our innermost...
The human mind is capable of astonishing feats, but does it hold the power to alleviate pain, or even cure disease, simply through suggestibility?
The placebo effect, in which an inert substance relieves symptoms simply because the patient thinks it’s an active pill, is among the most fascinating subjects in medicine. The importance of the placebo effect is so integral to clinical trials that no pharmaceutical study is permitted unless it compares the results of medicated subjects with those of a placebo group. In his compelling book, Discover contributing editor Vance, whose writing has appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times, Scientific American, and elsewhere, chronicles his travels around the world and through history to detail the unexpected ways our lives and outlooks are affected by similar forms of suggestibility. Raised as a Christian Scientist, the author grew up in a community that believed God’s healing power alone could cure any ailment. In an enthralling anecdote, he relives his recovery from Legionnaires’ disease as a toddler and how the turning point of his near-death experience was his mother’s abandonment of fear and trust in God. This is not to say that Vance is advocating religion in lieu of antibiotics—far from it—but in this and many other first-person narratives, he challenges traditional views on the effect of expectation, or suggestibility, on the physical body. He shows that modern neuroscience supports this line of inquiry. Brain chemistry has long been known to affect mood, regulate pain, and even affect gastrointestinal health, and cutting-edge techniques to map brain activity provide new insight. As the author frequently points out, if scientists are able to apply clinical data to the age-old mind-body problem, it may be possible to personalize medicine to an extent never before dreamed of.
An eye-opening exploration of the intersection between philosophy and science and a fascinating peek into our innermost selves.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4262-1789-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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