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Beyond Human Nature: How Culture and Experience Shape Our Lives (Hardback)
Short Description for Beyond Human NatureExamines various aspects of our behaviour, looking at everything from our intellects and emotions, to love and sex, morality and even madness. This title shows that the vast diversity of our behaviour is not engrained.
Full description- Publisher: ALLEN LANE
- Published: 26 January 2012
- Format: Hardback 416 pages
- See: Full bibliographic data
- Categories: Philosophy Of Mind
- ISBN 13: 9780713998177 ISBN 10: 0713998172
- Sales rank: 59,522
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Full description for Beyond Human Nature
In this provocative, revelatory tour de force, Jesse Prinz reveals how the cultures we live in - not biology - determine how we think and feel. He examines all aspects of our behaviour, looking at everything from our intellects and emotions, to love and sex, morality and even madness. This book seeks to go beyond traditional debates of nature and nurture. He is not interested in finding universal laws but, rather, in understanding, explaining and celebrating our differences. Why do people raised in Western countries tend to see the trees before the forest, while people from East Asia see the forest before the trees? Why, in South East Asia, is there a common form of mental illness, unheard of in the West, in which people go into a trancelike state after being startled? Compared to Northerners, why are people in the American South more than twice as likely to kill someone over an argument? And, above all, just how malleable are we? Prinz shows that the vast diversity of our behaviour is not engrained. He picks up where biological explanations leave off. He tells us the human story.
