On deep history and the brain / Daniel Lord Smail.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Smail, Daniel Lord.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

History--Philosophy.

History.

Philosophy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (287 p.)

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, Calif. ; London : University of California Press, c2008.

Language Note:

English

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 best-selling 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:

Front matter

Contents

Preface

Introduction: Toward Reunion in History

1. The Grip of Sacred History

2. Resistance

3. Between Darwin and Lamarck

4. The New Neurohistory

5. Civilization and Psychotropy

Epilogue: Looking Ahead

Notes

Bibliography of Works Cited

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN:

9786612359347

9781282359345

1282359347

9780520934160

0520934164

9781435603981

1435603982

OCLC:

615011472