Review by New York Times Review
IN 1859 Charles Darwin gave the world a theory of life. A century later, evolutionary biologists started thinking seriously about its implications for human behavior. Richard Dawkins's "The Selfish Gene" (1976) brought the resulting insights to the general public. Souls were gone, and free will too. The master manipulators were the genes. Bodies were reduced to mere lumbering robots, and even the inner lives of our species became just one more consequence of natural selection in a materialist world. The new view quickly came to predominate, but on its own it gave too stark an account of behavior. Melvin Konner's "The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit" (1982, with subsequent revisions) showed how interesting the science becomes when enriched by the wet details of genes, neurons and hormones. Konner's erstwhile student Robert M. Sapolsky has now followed the same path. Sapolsky has produced a quirky, opinionated and magisterial synthesis of psychology and neurobiology that integrates this complex subject more accessibly and completely than ever. Much of "Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst," written by a man who disingenuously declares himself "eggheady, meek and amorphously pacifistic," is the textbook you will regret never having had in college. The science comes with hipster humor. Sapolsky writes of Jane Goodall blowing off"everyone's socks in the 1960s by reporting the nowiconic fact that chimps make tools. . . . Great, next the zoologists will report that Rafiki persuaded Simba to become the Lion King." He summarizes a chapter called "Us Versus Them" with "Give the right of way to people driving cars with the 'Mean people suck' bumper sticker, and remind everyone that we're all in it together against Lord Voldemort and the House Slytherin." He berates us for choosing leaders using "implicit, automatic factors more suitable to 5-year-olds deciding who should captain their boat on a voyage with the Teletubbies to Candyland." Explaining why someone who sees a movie containing physically disgusting images becomes morally judgmental unless she washed her hands first, he imagines evolution as tinkerer: "Hmm, extreme negative affect elicited by violations of shared behavioral norms. Let's see. . . . Who has any pertinent experience? I know, the insula! It does extreme negative sensory stimuli - that's like, all that it does - so let's expand its portfolio to include this moral disgust business. That'll work. Hand me a shoehorn and some duct tape." This is not your mother's professor. Of course many people would have no idea what an "insula" is, but Sapolsky eases readers gently into the complexities of the brain by ceding most of "Behave" to the fundamentals of neurobiology. We begin in the first second before a behavior is produced, our guide taking us confidently into the amygdala, the dopaminergic system and the frontal cortex. We continue the tour with events that occur minutes, hours, days, months and years ago, finally stretching back thousands of generations to the level where Darwinian processes explain why the systems that produce behavior evolved in their particular, haphazard way. By the time the book returns from these expanding horizons it has given readers the opportunity to feel astonishingly comfortable with a rich slew of fascinating neurobiology basics. Dutiful core themes permeate the learning. Sapolsky rebukes the sociobiologists of the 1970s for their excessive focus on genes. He hammers home the message that nerves, hormones, genes, developmental experiences and evolutionary pressures must necessarily all be understood, and that none of the relationships between such factors and any behavior is straightforward. He summarizes crisply why calling the low-activity variant of the MAO-A gene a "warrior gene" is nonsensical: "Yikes, this is complicated." Behavioral biology is indeed complex, but Sapolsky simplifies the topic with a beautifully organized and well-stocked store of knowledge. He has such a light tone, so imperious a command of data and such a rich fund of anecdotes that we are swept swiftly along to the last third of the book. At that point Sapolsky shifts gears by turning to a question that has nudged him throughout his career. What does all this knowledge tell us about the prospects for a more empathic, less violent world? Here he echoes many a behavioral biologist's ambition. If physics can take us to the moon, genetics give us the Green Revolution and medicine conquer polio, can neurobiology help us all get along? Sapolsky sees grounds for optimism. His hopes are admirable but they flatter to deceive. HE STARTS SAFELY ENOUGH. He warns against misleading metaphors: Selfish genes do not mean selfish individuals. He exposes determinist ideas as false: Behavioral tendencies are strongly shaped by experience. He reviews evidence that societies vary in their nature and frequency of violence. He explains a series of mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation and morality. He tells how the First World War included a Christmas truce. This is worthy, reassuring stuffmaintained in fine professorial style and serving to remind us that darkness is not inevitable. But his positive thinking is not derived from brain research, nor are his prescriptions. Sapolsky proposes 10 strategies for reducing violence, all reasonable but none that justify the notion that science is the basis for societal advances toward less violence and higher morality. Promote trade and cultural diffusion. Use religion wisely. Note that punishment can sustain cooperation. Remember that humans can reconcile, just as animals can. Take advantage of the fact that it is hard to kill people you can see. Sapolsky's list offers no practical recipes beyond implying that once we understand that we are all creatures of flesh and blood we should all be more forgiving of each other. His omission is understandable. We are far from solving the problem. In this section Sapolsky becomes a partisan critic, including presenting a skeptical view about the supposed long-term decline of human violence claimed by Steven Pinker in "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined." Sapolsky asserts that Pinker's calculations include elementary errors, and that low rates of violence among contemporary hunter-gatherers mean that warfare did not predate agriculture. His arguments here are unbalanced. He fails to note that data on hunter-gatherer violence is relevant only where they are neighbored by other hunter-gatherers, rather than by militarily superior farmers. But he seems to feel that if he is to maintain his positive stance he must credit the human species with an evolutionary legacy of nonviolence. So violence has to come mainly from influences that are too recent to have had major evolutionary impacts, such as agriculture (which began some 10,000 years ago), the root of a whole lot of bad things including the dogs of war: "One of the all-time human blunders, up there with, say, the New Coke debacle and the Edsel." The irony is that such concerns are unnecessary. A peace-loving researcher does not have to believe that ancient humans were less violent than we are, or that a better society depends on the lessons of brain science. History leaves no doubt about the cultural capacity for improvement, regardless of neurobiological insights. When Sapolsky discusses the impact of brain science on our attitude to parenting, he gets the relationship exactly right. "It shouldn't require molecular genetics or neuroendocrinology factoids," he writes, "to prove that . . . it profoundly matters to provide childhoods filled with good health and safety, love and nurturance and opportunity." Nor should it require neurobiology factoids to prove that we can make society increasingly moral. Still, if people find inspiration from them, as Sapolsky writes, "more power to these factoids." If it took an unrealistic connection between science and society to motivate Sapolsky to write "Behave," that is a small price. His book offers a wild and mindopening ride into a better understanding of just where our behavior comes from. Darwin would have been thrilled.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* In the chasm between Hitler and Gandhi, Sapolsky finds not the high moral drama of the soul choosing good or evil but rather down-to-earth biology. When interrogated with scientific tools, that biology accounts for a surprising range of harmful and hurtful human acts. Sapolsky limns a long causative chain linking all sorts of behaviors to the neurology of the brain, the hormones in the blood, the DNA in the genes, and the evolutionary history of the species. But no reader should expect this scientific probing into human behavior to yield precise formulas. Again and again, the reader confronts vexing complications: even the formative influence of genes depends on the environment in surprisingly complex ways. The perplexing uncertainties in human behavior sometimes come into clearer focus when scientists reflect on animal studies (particularly those involving the primates that are Sapolsky's specialty). But the stunning uniqueness of the human species renders animal studies irrelevant for explaining the best and worst of human impulses. No genetic or animal study gives Sapolsky access to the mystery of religious faith, nor resolves for him the conundrum of free will. But tumbling short of omniscience hardly prevents Sapolsky from delivering a remarkably encyclopedic survey of the sciences illuminating human conduct.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Sapolsky (Monkeyluv), professor of biology at Stanford, looks at human behavior from myriad interrelated perspectives, endeavoring to explain humans' strange and often contradictory behavior. He predominantly focuses on exploring "the biology of violence, aggression, and competition" through the lenses of neuroscience, anthropology, psychology, genetics, evolutionary biology, political science, and communication theory. Sapolsky takes complex ideas from the scientific literature, including his own research, and attempts to balance the pros and cons of every conclusion. He weaves science storytelling with humor to keep readers engaged while advancing his main point about the complexity and interconnectedness of all aspects of behavior. For Sapolsky, context is everything. For example, in discussing genetics he urges readers to "repeat the mantra: don't ask what a gene does; ask what it does in a particular context." Understanding such complexity can potentially lead toward a more just and peaceful society, Sapolsky says. He recognizes that this ambition may "seem hopeless" but argues that it is essential. Finally, he contends and demonstrates that "you don't have to choose between being scientific and being compassionate." Sapolsky's big ideas deserve a wide audience and will likely shape thinking for some time. Agent: Katinka Matson, Brockman Inc. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Sapolsky (biology, neurology & neurological sciences, & neurosurgery, Stanford Univ.; A Primate's Memoir) takes a far-reaching look at the biological underpinnings of violence and related human behaviors and their antitheses such as altruism and compassion. Sapolsky examines individual acts of harm or help, starting on the level of neurobiology the moment the event occurs. He then takes a step back, focusing on the preceding minutes, days, and lifetime to explore the role of hormones, genes, memories, upbringing, environment, genes, culture, and evolution. When sociobiology and psychology are so intertwined and multifactorial, the effects are nuanced and context dependent. Each piece presents a partial explanation, with no bit of biology offering complete causality. The latter chapters then consider practical implications as applied in the realms of morality, criminal justice, politics, and war and peace. The author does an excellent job of bringing together the expansive literature of thousands of fascinating studies with clarity and humor, though some readers may choose to skim the extensive discussions of brain regions. Appendixes give primers on neuroscience, endocrinology, and proteins that provide background for some of the early chapters. VERDICT A tour-de-force survey of what is known about why we behave the way we do, for students of human interaction in any discipline. [Prepub Alert, 11/21/16.]-Wade M. Lee, Univ. of Toledo Lib. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A wide-ranging, learned survey of all the making-us-tick things that, for better or worse, define us as human.Do bacteria have moral understanding? Do fleas have emotions? Such questions are meaningful, especially when, as MacArthur Fellow Sapolsky (Biology and Neurology/Stanford Univ.; Monkeyluv: and Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals, 2005, etc.) writes, it is possible to describe some of the actions of E. coli as altruistic. A distinguished primatologist, the author works broadly in the life and social sciences to examine human behavior, manifestations of which, he writes, belong to the nervous system and to sensory stimuliand all of which make for a "big sprawling mess of a subject." Thus, this fittingly long book, which opens with the problem of defining termsaggression, sympathy, even loveand proceeds by exploring every nook and cranny. Some of our behavior is purely mechanical, with payoffs in dopamine, that "invidious, rapidly habituating reward." Other aspects are located at the intersection of nature and nurture, as with the plummeting U.S. crime rate in the 1990s, attributable in part to accessible abortionfor, as Sapolsky notes, nothing is quite so sure to lead to a life of crime as "being born to a mother who, if she could, would have chosen that you not be." As the narrative progresses, it ascends into headier realms, examining problems both biologically and philosophically. Can there be a science of morality? If so, how is it best addressed? The answers are as thorny as the questions: "If harm to the person who is the means is unintentional or if the intentionality is really convoluted and indirect, I'm a utilitarian consequentialist, and if the intentionality is right in front of my nose, I'm a deontologist." Those answers may not satisfy strict sociobiologists on one hand or Heideggerians on the other, but they're unfailingly provocative, as is Sapolsky's closing observation that whenever we talk of human nature or natures, we're talking about averages in a world of endless variation. An exemplary work of popular science, challenging but accessible. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
