Customer Reviews

The Origin of Emotions, Version 1.0

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

I looked at the author's website after seeing a grand, full-page advertisment for the book in the New York Times. The website allows you to see what the author writes in his book chapters. He asserts things like "a mother only loves their child for 33 months". Many other assertions are just as preposterous.

Looking a little more carefully into its publication, one sees that it is self-published. Not to say that there aren't good self-published books out there, but when a major premise is that "only men feel jealousy" one can see why a more serious publisher would have steered away.

To state the obvious, this book has a bold title. A true discussion of the origin of emotions would be fascinating, and would help us to answer age-old questions about creation v evolution, genetic predisposition, and the essence of personality -- what some religions would call the essence of a person's spirit. I would expect any author(s) who wrote such a book to be thoroughly credentialed in some combination of psychology, neurology, anthropology, and/or theology, and i would expect the book itself to be replete with citations, cross-references, footnotes, and a comprehensive bibliography.

This book scores a zero on all of the above.

To begin with, Mark Devon claims to be Harvard educated, but a quick Google search reveals no research papers, dissertations or other credentials. So, just who is this guy?

After you ready the first few pages, you might think that a better question to ask is, "Who does this guy THINK he is?" He quickly drops on the reader such completely unsubstantiated bombshells as "Only men feel jealousy" and "Only women feel infatuation and heartbreak." No citations or resources listed -- the author is simply telling us this.

So much for scientific methodology.

I think that what Devon is trying to do is create a work along the lines of Eric Hoffer's "True Believer," which is basically a series of thoughtful and thought-provoking aphorisms about mass movements in human society. Hoffer's work, however, is better researched, more interesting, less presumptuous, and less abrasive.

It is interesting that Devon has subtitled this book, "Version 1.0." Perhaps subsequent upgrades will fix some of the bugs and better explain "the origin of emotions." I won't be waiting for them.

Devon is right -- emotions are human adaptations. But this is not a new discovery he came up with. Cosmides and Tooby founded an entire new field called evolutionary psychology, based on the idea that psychological adaptations are formed the way physical adaptations are. They've written many scholarly articles, and many books are available on the topic. Many popular books on this subject contain silly errors or a bit of the author's ego, but this one it out there. Way out there. Here's the thing -- this is a scientific field, but Devon is utterly unpracticed in it. His conclusions are logically based on his premises, but his premises are utterly unfounded. Just because his overarching premise is true -- emotions are adaptations -- doesn't mean all his little pet ideas have any basis in reality at all. What is the proof, for example, that human beings start over with a new partner for each child? In fact, there is quite a bit of evidence to the contrary. Most men do not want to couple with a woman with children from another man -- the idea that at 33 months a child no longer needs resources from two parents is simply laughable. To suggest they need no parents at all and the mother can simply go on with a new man and produce a new child is in the realm of the absurd.

This has to be a self publshed book. No publisher in their right mind would bother to waste the paper it is printed on. Other than the title which holds out hope of an interesting discussion the remainder of the 189 pages are unsupported conclusions with little reason and no evidence. The only redemming use for this book would be to use it in a class for critical thinking as an example of a total lack of any such ability.

I agree with a previous comment. This book deserves a special zero star catagory.

[Sorry, here's a less hastily typed revision of the review i posted earlier. I'm posting it elsewhere as well because that's just how sick this fellow makes me.]

I pursued a random context-sensitive advertisement to the author's website, as the subject of Devon's book holds great

interest for me. As I read the online sample, I was first disappointed that the work clearly lacked any empirical methodology, and then I was utterly appalled by the irresponsibility, megalomania, and sheer hatred informing this book.

I am sorry to say that all negative reviews of this book are understated.

The science of behavior is a noble pursuit and I'm viscerally sick to see this Devon fellow using the terminology that

earnest researchers have developed in his personal campaign of hatred against mankind, pompously deluded that he has subsumed all of human behavior into a structure of his own making that just happens to vindicate the more questionable workings of his own damaged mind. What's disturbing is not merely that he has such desires --which is normal-- but that he doesn't recognize the difference between proving his omniscience and publishing a treatise consisting of unsourced, untested claims that happen to controvert, diminish or delimit those feelings which are specifically precious, noble, or more closely associated with the fairer sex, while exonerating jealousy and using such concepts as 'rank' as though they were scientifically metrical.

May we suppose he has had fun standing across from a mother and telling her "It is a scientific fact that maternal love stops at 33 months." Or that he has enjoyed telling a woman who loves him "It is a scientific fact that women do not love".

Do you suppose he had fun freehand-drawing the pretty, purely rhetorical graphs in his book?

'the Origin of Emotions' is in the first place too grandiose a title for any honest psychologist to choose, (perhaps flattering itself by referring to a book of a similar title by the brilliant and DILIGENT Charles Darwin).

This is a travesty and the possiblity seriously concerns me that children should stumble upon such a volume and think it fascinating --because to them, it would very well be.

This book is absolute drivel. The author makes several assertions that do not fit with contemporary theory and research on the nature of emotions. Several of his assertions are simply ridiculous, as another review mentioned, and none are backed up by citations of any sort. If you are interested in a Harvard MBA's ideosyncratic ideas about emotions, buy this book. If you are interested in learning something useful about emotions, however, look into something written by the scores of academic psychologists who have spend their lives studying the subject scientifically.

This book gives a good example on how a scientific work should NOT be written. Assuming things, putting them as facts and then not proving or explaining them is like pure speculation. There is no scientific background given and the reader is left in the dark. What evolutionary biology is about and what serious researchers are stiving for is compeltely being disrespected by this kind of writing. There are people who are putting their heart into this kind of work, but Mr. Devon cannot even write a fluent understandable text. What a shame to all the serious work!

What horrible drivel. At first I thought this was a joke and in the end my first thought was my last - a poor joke. However I see that people are actually spending their money. Do not buy this book.

I read the first 65 pages posted on the author's website. It is not serious research. The claims in the book are unreasonable, unsupported, and undocumented. There are no surveys, studies, or methodology presented in the book supporting its conclusions - no empirical data at all. The conclusions are farfetched and are ridiculous to anyone who is a loving parent or spouse.

A few assertions from this book:
-men only love a woman for 42 months
-you are always doing what is best for the species
-you stop feeling revenge when you retaliate
-only women feel infatuation and heartbreak
-Rich children rarely feel pride
-Maternal love lasts 33 months

If that doesn't sound incredibly ridiculous, this may be the book for you!

If you are interested in reading some real cutting-edge scientific thinking on emotions, Marvin Minsky's "The Emotion Machine" (0743276639) is outstanding!