"For millennia, we have viewed thinking and feeling as fundamentally opposed processes. According to this persistent, age-old belief, to truly live well we must marshal our logical and rational capacities to master our emotions. This perceived dichotomy lies at the heart of our historical pursuits in theology, philosophy, and psychology. But extraordinary advances in psychology and neuroscience, including neuroimaging and other related technologies, have cast doubt upon this traditional conception and led to a revolution in the science of emotions. In Emotion, Leonard Mlodinow takes us on a captivating journey to the frontier of this new field. Here, we discover that a surprising variety of animals experience emotion-even creatures as simple as fruit flies and bees. We ponder the evolutionary purpose of emotion and the role it plays in our brains. We venture into the labs of pioneering scientists, some who have made incredible contributions in neuroscience and others who have flirted with disaster. We enter the high-stakes world of finance and see how emotion affects decision making on the trading room floor. What emerges from our investigations is that we have long fundamentally misunderstood the role of emotions in our lives. Contrary to ancient wisdom, we begin to see that emotions aren't an obstacle to our incredible human ability to reason, but are an integral component of it"-- Provided by publisher.
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