Longlisted for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
A leading neuroscientist offers a history of the evolution of the brain
from unicellular organisms to the complexity of animals and human beings
today
Renowned neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux digs into the natural history of
life on earth to provide a new perspective on the similarities between
us and our ancestors in deep time. This page-turning survey of the whole
of terrestrial evolution sheds new light on how nervous systems evolved
in animals, how the brain developed, and what it means to be human.
In The Deep History of Ourselves, LeDoux argues that the key to
understanding human behavior lies in viewing evolution through the prism
of the first living organisms. By tracking the chain of the evolutionary
timeline he shows how even the earliest single-cell organisms had to
solve the same problems we and our cells have to solve each day. Along
the way, LeDoux explores our place in nature, how the evolution of
nervous systems enhanced the ability of organisms to survive and thrive,
and how the emergence of what we humans understand as consciousness made
our greatest and most horrendous achievements as a species possible.