Why We Feel: The Science of Human Emotion [Hardcover]

Victor S. Johnston (Author)

Book Description

Series: Helix Books | Publication Date: April 8, 1999

Why do we think some people are beautiful? Why do orgasms feel good? Why do we get angry? Anxious? In this intriguing book, biopsychologist Victor Johnston explores the origins of human emotions. Drawing on computer science, neurobiology, and evolutionary psychology, he shows us that emotions are not some strange accident of nature, but are instead the basis of learning and reasoning, and help us to adapt to a complex, rapidly changing environment. In the process, he offers a radical new view of reality: What we see, hear, smell, feel—even what we consider beautiful—is not an accurate representation of the world around us; rather, our feelings are illusions, shaped by millions of years of evolution. In clear and colorful prose, Johnston helps us navigate the intimate relationship between our private conscious feelings and our biological survival—and tells us what this means for human creativity, innovation, and free will.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

How did feelings evolve? How do they develop within us? What is their function, their use to us? How does our nervous system implement them?

These four questions, posed in somewhat different form by the Nobel Prize-winning biologist Niko Tinbergen, propel psychologist Victor Johnston's well-crafted examination of human emotions. Drawing on recent advances in psychology, biology, and the cognitive sciences, he looks into such matters as the role of the emotions in psychological well-being ("the failure to develop an early emotional bond with a single caretaker leads to slow development, withdrawal, depression, and a variety of later developing social problems") and the adaptive advantages--or, at times, disadvantages--of such deep-seated inner feelings as envy and joy. Where earlier scientists were much given to exploring the emotions as responses to external stimuli, Johnston shows that "input from the external world is really not necessary for conscious experiences to occur," as experiments in dreams, sensory deprivation, and hallucinations have shown. Instead, he considers the rich inner world of the emotions as a problem of evolutionary theory, a matter of adaptation and response that favors the survival of genes. Johnston's overview of the science of emotions makes for consistently interesting reading, and it points the way to further research. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

The world, according to Johnston, professor of psychobiology at New Mexico State University, is dramatically different from the way in which any of us experience it. In fact, he argues, the world is a dark, silent, tasteless, odorless and colorless place. We create all that we sense: the brilliant color of a sunset, the mouthwatering sweetness of a peach, the acrid odor of rotten eggs. All of our sensual abilities, indeed our ability to feel any emotions, are best envisioned as emergent properties of the neural processes in our brain. Sugar, for example, is neither inherently sweet nor satisfying. Rather, we believe it so because over evolutionary time those most drawn to the energy in sugar were the ones most likely to survive and successfully reproduce. Johnston does an impressive job of explaining how millions of years of evolution are capable of yielding complex behaviors. He demonstrates that computers are capable of learning and developing preferences. Arguing by analogy, he concludes that human reasoning and likes and dislikes are outgrowths of the evolutionary process by which neural networks deal with rapidly changing environments. Johnston concludes his challenging book by discussing the implications this sort of evolutionary worldview has on the concept of free will.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (April 8, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 073820109X
• ISBN-13: 978-0738201092
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,070,342 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly thought provoking, entertaining and well written., May 2, 2002

By 

Jeff K. "jeff4314" (Fremont, CA.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Why We Feel (Helix Books) (Paperback)

Wow. I am what could be described as a "slacker" with "some college", but I enjoy reading books about science, particularly those that aim to explain why things are the way they are...I picked up "Why we Feel" because it seemed like an interesting topic. As a matter of fact, the guy at the counter read the tile and commented "That's a good question!". I feel that this is a book everybody should read. It gives so much insight into who we are that I feel truly thankful that I read it. Feelings. What would life be without them? As the author argues, there would be no point to life at all.

This book goes a long way to answering questions like why do some things feel good and others feel bad? I would sum it up thus: There is, in reality, no point for life to exist. So, emotions are nature's way of motivating us to keep on living! When you do something that will increase your chances of reproducing, you feel good. This includes falling in love, having sex, gaining resources such as food or shelter, etc. As an example on how a negative emotion helps you live, consider if you were a cave man and you found a bone with a particular size and shape that allowed you to beat up your enemies and kill animals for food. If you lost this tool one day, you would feel deep sadness. This negative feeling would be nature punishing you for losing a valuable resource that increases your chances for survival. The author explains how emotions evolved, and other concepts such as why we consider certain characteristics as "beautiful" and certain tastes as good are really just nature's way of steering us towards what we need to reproduce.

The book is short and completely free of fluff or egotistical rambling. The author writes extremely well and keeps a nice constant pace throughout. I read this book in two sittings and will re-read it many times I'm sure. As a non-scientist I found it slightly dense at times, but it's short and interesting enough to re-read. I recommend this book to anyone who is curious about why things are the way they are. If you want to learn about life, not just Human life, but your dog and animals as well, this is a wonderful book. You'll never look at yourself or other people the same way again after being exposed to what modern science has to say about the origin and purpose of human emotions. I will definately buy his next book, if there is one.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Virtual Reality, November 28, 1999

By 

JRK (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Why We Feel: The Science of Human Emotion (Hardcover)

Johnston is extremely convincing in his explanation of how pleasant and unpleasant sensations evolved. For example, he explains that the pleasant sensation of "sweetness" is not a property of sugar molecules, but an illusion of the brain that emerged through natural selection because sugar is a great source of energy. Using persuasive reasoning he explains such things as why rotten eggs smell bad, why tissue damage causes the illusion of pain, and why we feel complex emotions such as love and sadness. This book is a great read that may just challenge your entire view of reality.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sugar isn't really sweet, ripe strawberries aren't red., August 13, 2001

By 

Earl Dennis (San Francisco, California United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Why We Feel (Helix Books) (Paperback)

The 1st chapter in this book is entitled 'The Grand Illusion.' This is not some pessimistic assessment of the human condition, like we've all been fooling ourselves for naught all the long; this is merely the same caveat that the likes of the ancient Buhddists, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (himself often accused of pessimism), and modern science writer Torr Norretranders have also elucidated: namely, we're sort of idealistic in how we process what we perceive to be the external (and internal) world. It's not so very egregious that we're like a bunch of asylum escapees, hallucinating some vastly inaccurate version of a reality we can never hope to know, it's just that neither are we ice cold observers of an objectively understandable interaction between our organismal selves and reality. It's a subtle distinction but one well worth knowing. Dr. Johnston does such a good job of delineating this concept that I had to rate this book the maximum of 5 stars. It is even more germane that he does so in the context of evolutionary psychology by stating that we, evolved primates that we are, did not nor did we need to evolve an ability to perceive and understand reality directly; that would have been nice and all, but what we did, and by virtue of it having happened, what we needed to accomplish was some means by which to survive and leave offspring in the field (remember, the way things are is no endorsement of any normative value for or against). Not only do we perceive and process reality in very creative ways, but we also color the heck out of it to squeeze the maximum utility out of it, hence, sugar (high quality nutrient) is sweet and good, and sharp teeth and gutteral growling sounds (the theme of not a few scary, supernatural movies) are bad, nay, downright evil! Thus, by the very acts of perceiving and cognizing, do we add and embellish hedonic tone to our experience. In general, this book is a good cummulative grouping of modern cognitive science research findings sans the fluff. It's too bad Daniel Dennett has already claimed the title "Consciousness Explained" and Steven Pinker "How the Mind Works." Either title would have suited Dr. Johnston's work very well.