Human Nature: Fact and Fiction brings together a collection of inspiring, thought-provoking and original perspectives on human nature by ten leading writers, scientists and academics.
What do we mean by "human nature"? Is there a genetically determined core of humanity that unites us all as members of a single species? Or is the thing we call human nature a social construct? And how do we explain the mystery of human creativity? Do great writers have an intuitive grasp of what makes human beings tick, or are they merely the mouthpiece of contemporary culture?
It has been claimed that "the greatest enterprise of the mind has always been and always will be the attempted linkage of the sciences and humanities" (Edward O. Wilson). This groundbreaking book marks the beginning of a new dialogue between the two. Rather than focusing on the division between them, it shows that the sciences and humanities have much to learn from each other. Points of disagreement remain. Yet there is in this volume a genuine attempt to bridge the gulf that has traditionally separated the sciences and humanities and to reach a better understanding of what it means to be human.
Table of Contents:
Contributors
Foreword, AC Grayling
Acknowledgements
Introduction, Robin Headlam-Wells and Johnjoe McFadden
Part I: Is human nature written in our genes or in our books?
1. The biology of fiction, Steven Pinker
2. Literature, science and human nature, Ian McEwan
Part II: Can science and literature collaborate to define human nature?
3. Literature and evolution, Joseph Carroll
4. Human nature: one for all and all for one?, Gabriel Dover
Part III: What has biology got to do with the imagination?
5. The biology of the imagination: how the brain can both play with truth and survive a predator, Simon Baron Cohen
6. Biology and imagination: The role of culture, Catherine Belsey
7. The limits of imagination, Rita Carter
Part IV: Do we need a theory of human nature to tell us how to act?
8. Human nature or human difference?, Ania Loomba
9. What science can and cannot tell us about human nature, Kenan Malik
10. The cat, the chisel, and the grave, Philip Pullman
About the Author :
Robin Headlam Wells is Emeritus Professor of Renaissance Literature at Roehampton University, London. His publications include Elizabethan Mythologies (Cambridge University Press, 1994), Shakespeare on Masculinity (Cambridge University Press, 2000), and Shakespeare's Humanism (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Johnjoe McFadden is Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Surrey.
Review :
'Full of illuminating and stimulating insights ... it is precisely the purpose, and value, of this endlessly stimulating volume that it instigate a much-needed debate.' Institute of Ideas - Culture Wars website
'The book is thought-provoking, cloying, rewarding, and irritating in turn, as scientists intersperse insight into, and ham-fisted respect for the significance of literature to human self-understanding, and as novelists and literary theorists exploit scientific ideas for literary adaptation. The editors juxtapose papers by scientific and literary experts so as to highlight both the contrasts and similarities in views between the two cultures.' Australian Review of Public Affairs, 'Scientific and Literary Musings on Who or What we Are', Susan Dodds, 28/08/2006
To follow
"... the book contains many sensitive and sensible little essays."
A little book that packs a lot of punch. (T)his book provides some genuinely new thought, incorporating evloution, culture, imagination, literature and genes. A heady mix. However where the real interest lies is in determining where these multiple perpectives align...being more anaylsis than synthesis, Human Nature allows its readers to find this golden section for themselves - a point that makes this book really stand out from the crowd.
(A) fascinating collection of essays. The result of a 2004 smposium that tried ti bridge the putative chasm between the science and the arts, Human Nature offers some intriguing insights.
