The Strange Order of Things

Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures

By: Antonio Damasio

Narrated by: Steve West, Antonio Damasio

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 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.

©2018 Antonio Damasio (P)2018 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"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.... 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.... This is the beginning of a new scientific revolution."(Manuel Castells, emeritus professor of sociology, University of California, Berkeley)

"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)

Great read with unexpected turns

I chose the book because I’m interested in neuroscience and had read Damasio before. I did not expect to read a book on the future of human society which is in fact my major interest. It was a nice surprise. Well informed with some adventurous speculations but opens up the dialogue into the future we’re building. I highly recommend it. These days it’s easy to fall pray of the folly of “we have the knowledge and resources to tweak everything to build an abundant digital future”, this book brings us back to earth and continuous to inquire into what are the best steps to take to evolve. It does not necessarily acknowledge that we are in fact the architects of our own evolution and yet stretches the need to create the large social architecture needed. In conclusion just read it!

Interesting neuroscience, muddled social science

First, this book is well written; the author has a gift for expressing scientific ideas eloquently. As long as he sticks to biology and neuroscience, his writing is interesting and illuminating.

But Demasio's foray into social science is muddled and ill-informed. He tries to show that culture is rooted in feeling, which in turn is a biological adaptation that plays a crucial role in homeostasis -- the processes that keep the variables necessary for sustaining life within acceptable bounds. But in his hands the concept of culture -- already rather murky -- becomes positively turbid. He seems to conflate the informal notion of culture (the arts and "high culture") with the anthropological concept that has become one of the pillars of contemporary social science. And he had me howling with incredulity when he asserted that social insects have culture. That smashes the concept of culture to smithereens. Culture, by any modern definition, consists of shared learning. The complex social behaviors of ants and bees are genetically programmed, not learned. How can a man who is obviously so erudite be so ignorant of one of the core concepts he writes about?

He also asserts that social science largely ignores the concept of homeostasis, though he makes a passing and dismissive reference to Talcott Parson. Homeostasis has a long history in social science and it is a core concept in functionalism and its various cousins, such as cultural ecology (though it hasn't always gone by that name). What he is proposing sounds a lot like Malinowski's psychological functionalism, an idea introduced nearly a century ago.

It seems to me that if you write a book about a subject, you should learn at least a little about it beforehand.

Mr Damasio is always an educational delight

Every time I close a book by Mr. Damasio, I am reminded of both how little I know, and yet how incredible it is that I know the things I do.

His books are a bit difficult for a casual read, and so it usually takes me a couple of read-throughs (or listens) for me to grasp the full jist of their content. But that actually only enhances my enjoyment, because I am better able to make connections that I did not the first time.

THIS IS A MUST READ!

This is a hugely important book and one worth reading. Why? Because Damasio has joined the ranks of scientists such as Nick Lane (mentioned in the book) and Jeremy England (not mentioned) who are giving the "modern" synthesis of evolution a much needed update. This update replaces the gene centered theory with a theory centered on thermodynamics. As Damasio outlined in this book, there are 2 approaches scientists are taking when trying to understand the origins of life:

1. Genes first, championed by Dawkins and the like, which suggests genes came first and replicated.

2. Metabolism first, which suggests metabolism predated genes and in fact gave rise to genes. This dethrones the selfish gene (finally!) and paints a more accurate picture of the evolution of every species as yet another way for an organism to capture and circulate energy. Unlike genes first, metabolism first can account for the energy needed to create the molecules of life. Deep hydrothermal vents, which of course do not have genes, provide an acidic environment in which all that H+ acted like a battery, allowing bonds to be broken and made, thus making the molecules of life. RNA world and other gene centered theories simply cannot account for the energy needed to put these molecules and cells together so that evolution of living organisms can get a foothold. Damasio thanks Martin and Lane (and Russell) for their work on this front, as do I because it was paradigm shifting.

Damasio makes his arguments for metabolism first by focusing on the evolution of emotions. I cannot say I was a fan of the second half of the book, which offered a lot of philosophical musings I had heard many, many times before. But the first half of the book was truly exceptional. Damasio argued that feelings have shaped our culture and those feelings have arisen from homeostatic processes that can be traced back to single cells. If anyone can make this argument, it's Damasio's, whose research dominated my neuroscience textbooks. I cannot recall one professor at Penn who was not in awe of his excellent work over the many decades he has been studying the brain. Damasio argued that emotions themselves were a product of the very first hoeostatic processes at work *while* assembling genes at the hydrothermal vents, pre-dating genes. Thus, the evolution of emotions arises from those processes and not from genes. Genes themselves arise from homeostatic processes and not the other way around because homeostatic processes developed before the creation of genes. Homeostatic processes have been passed down through every generation. Genes were merely a way to help these processes occur inside organisms. At the end of the day, homeostatic processes arise because of the second law of thermodynamics. They are a thermodynamic process. Genes were created to aid this process. This process was not created to aid the passing down of genes. The passing down of genes certainly continues to help this process occur in each species, but the gene is a helper, not the star of the show.

As organisms continued to gain complexity, their homeostatic processes in turn became more complex as well. For example, when organisms evolved nerves, their homeostatic processes were regulated via these nerves. As the nerves (brains) became more and more complex, so too did the homeostatic processes that govern those nerve networks. As a result, we all have internal drives. (I cannot think of another scientists who has done more to study internal drives. See Damasio's work on impulse, galvanic skin response, etc to learn more about internal drives and associated brain regions). The internal drives common to population of humans served as the drivers for the very development of civilization. Consider bacteria and criminal justice. Bacteria do not even have nerves; and yet, they engage in punishing non cooperators. It's easy to imagine how this developed into a criminal justice system (flawed or not) in organisms with more complex bodies (namely brains). Other examples are provided about the evolution of punishment, creation, and other aspects of human existence that have helped build all of the civilizations from the beginning of recorded history.

Damasio suggested we take the "static" part out of homeostatic processes because they are anything but static. Rather, they are homeodynamic because these internal states are always active, striving to help the organism maintain the optimal state. Being in that state requires constant internal work that requires a lot of cooperation between cells, organs, hormones, etc -- a very dynamic process. His discussion on this type of cooperation inside organisms was very pointed at the Dawkins minded scientists who still subscribe to the conflict only, selfish gene paradigm. In the end, it is homeostasis and not genes that drive organisms to survive, thrive, and live on throughout the generations. It is this drive that has led to the cultural practices that appear to help global progress that has resulted in longer lives, on average, and will continue to focus on better sustaining the life process.

Damasio could not refrain from talking about the transhumanists who believe they can make an AI that preserves the brains of humans. He suggested they forgot about the fact that the brain had to work with the many microbes (and their homeostatic processes) and other cells inside the body. He, imo, is short sighted in this regard. I can imagine that eventually transhumanists will simply come to understand what role microbes and other cells, and their homeostatic processes, play in governing the brain and body and they will simply incorporate that into their AI. Seems shortsighted to be so confident in ruling that out. Instead, it would have been better to simply list the challenges to current models of AI. For example, being clear that they will need to take the role of microbes into account. That is something missing from Kurzweil's arguments. So it adds to the discussion. Ruling out the possibility that they can incorporate microbes seems far less helpful.

If for no other reason, you should read this book to understand, in great and fantastic detail, the evolution of our senses. Just brilliant.

One last note: Damasio mentioned the work of John Torday, whose work I love. He called him a kindred spirit but barely gave the reader an idea of what Torday's work entails. I highly recommend reading his academic articles on evolution and homeostasis.
#tagsgiving #sweepstakes #evolution

Very poor narration

A very poor narration. It prevented me from following the story. Won't recommend listening. The narrator just spoiled the great story.

Rings true

This is basically a more accessible reiteration of Self Comes to Mind. Still some parts are exquisitely difficult to comprehend, but I believe this is due to the topic of the book. Thankfully, there's a lot less talk about parts of the mind with all the terminology, which further helps understanding.
On the whole, listening to this book was an almost religious experience and the revelations were numerous and deep. I wish more people could understand The Strange Order of Things.

meandering

the author makes some good points but takes too long to make them. I feel like this could have been a much better long essay or short book.

powerful

a bit dry at times, very few 2 out 3 syllable words, sometimes complex ideas are hidden under short statements BUT this book contains very powerful and solid theories as well as a potential answer to nature vs nurture

What a sad, sad, man

While this book begins with an often very technical analysis of the biology of feelings and emotions - and the most frequent use of the word "homeostasis" I've ever seen in one book - it quickly devolves into what I can only see as an exercise in modern Luddite thought.

The author frequently misrepresents technological advancement, confusing terms and falling back on a near-religious circular reasoning. Humans are better than artificial intelligence because to be human is good and humans are the most human things around.

I also find the logic behind several parts of the book poorly structured - such as the entire reasoning that one needs a physical body in order to come up with morals and ethics and that this is why artificial intelligence will never have morals and ethics beyond what we hard code into them. It's an argument that breaks apart under even gentle probing but, like much of the book, is just taken as fact and never challenged.

More mad science than I expected

About a fourth of the way in, I realized Damasio's views were a little crazy and all-encompassing. I certainly don't mind a bit of Mad Science, and frequently read it on purpose (think 'New Kind of Science' or 'Semantic Biology'). It's a bit rarer to happen on it by accident, and adjusting to the newly clear context took me a bit.

Then, two-thirds through, it became clear that the book was an attempted solution to the Hard Problem of Consciousness - one similar in some ways to Thomas Metzinger's 'Being No One'. Specifically Damasio expands on what Metzinger called the Adaptivity Constraint. Damasio asserts that what makes consciousness compellingly 1st person is mental images of body-based 'feelings', all of which are positive or negative, ie, aimed at or against some state.

One aspect of this which makes the claim unique is the way in which feelings are "in the body". Sadness, even when mentally generated, is provided via the body; a frown, muscle tightness, or even hormone imbalances and unhealthy immune responses can be recruited as vehicles for the representation. This leads to feelings acting as a coordination mechanism - sadness is the body saying, "I'll keep hurting myself if you don't fix this". The same is true for all feelings. Feelings aren't just data or programmed responses; they strengthen or weaken the substrate, the organism itself.

All this is, at least, true. Whether it supports any of the speculations about society and technology is another matter.