This book is about how we make choices. Drawing together evidence from 21st
century chemistry to Victorian politics, enlightenment philosophy, Roman drama
and beyond, it is a compelling hunt for the nature of free will.This book is about how we make choices. Drawing together evidence from 21st
century chemistry to Victorian politics, enlightenment philosophy, Roman drama
and beyond, it is a compelling hunt for the nature of free will.Psychiatrist
Chris Nunn elegantly explores the revolutions in medicine, genetics, bioethics
and neuroscience spurred by Julien de la Mettrie's 300-year-old tract Man the
Machine. He finds that though formerly fruitful, this mechanistic view of human
experience has now brought neuroscientists and philosophers to an impasse. He
therefore proposes a powerful replacement metaphor for the workings of the
human brain - 'man the story' - and demonstrates how this original approach
could reconcile the results of cutting-edge brain-imaging with our intuitive
understanding of decision making, responsibility and determinism.
