new book on “neurohistory”: ‘On Deep History and the Brain’ by Daniel Lord Smail
Written on October 30, 2007
On Deep History and the Brain
From the book description: “Daniel Lord Smail argues that, in the wake of the decade of the brain and the bestselling historical work of scientists like Jared Diamond, the time has come for fundamentally new ways of thinking about our past. He shows how recent work in evolution and paleohistory makes it possible to join the deep past with the recent past and abandon, once and for all, the idea of prehistory. Making an enormous literature accessible to the general reader, he lays out a bold new case for bringing neuroscience and neurobiology into the realm of history.”
I have only had recently the opportunity to read the book (I saw it al Helsinki’s Academic Bookshop). I think the approach adopted is very realistic and besides well argued. It is time we realize more and more that to interpret any aspect of the human picture without putting biology (neurobiology) in the forefront is a source of misconceptions. To be sure biology like any other scientific endeavor is a cultural matter, but scientific culture is enlightening if only because the notion of intentionality is removed from the overall picture and culture without intentionality is after all what we call science.