On deep history and the brain / Daniel Lord Smail.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Smail, Daniel Lord.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

History--Philosophy.

History.

Physical Description:

xiv, 271 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2008]

Summary:

When does history begin? What characterizes it? This brilliant and beautifully written book dissolves the logic of a beginning based on writing, civilization, or historical consciousness and offers a model for a history that escapes the continuing grip of the Judeo-Christian time frame. 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.

Contents:

Introduction: Toward Reunion in History 1

1 The Grip of Sacred History 12

2 Resistance 40

3 Between Darwin and Lamarck 74

4 The New Neurohistory 112

5 Civilization and Psychotropy 157

Epilogue: Looking Ahead 190.

Notes:

"A Caravan book"--T.p. verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-246) and index.

ISBN:

9780520252899

0520252896

OCLC:

86110101