Paul presents an in-depth examination of how personalities are formed by biological, social, and emotional factors.

"This book is only for people who like joy, absurdity, passion, genius, dry wit, youthful folly, amusing historical arcana, or telescopes." —Rivka Galchen, author of Little Labors and American Innovations In 1666, an astronomer makes a prediction shared by no one else in the world: at the stroke of noon on June 30 of that year, a solar eclipse will cast all of Europe into total darkness for four seconds. This astronomer is rumored to be using the longest telescope ever built, but he is also known to be blind—and not only blind, but incapable of sight, both his eyes having been plucked out some time before under mysterious circumstances. Is he mad? Or does he, despite this impairment, have an insight denied the other scholars of his day? These questions intrigue the young Gottfried Leibniz—not yet the world-renowned polymath who would go on to discover calculus, but a nineteen-year-old whose faith in reason is shaky at best. Leibniz sets off to investigate the astronomer’s claim, and over the three hours remaining before the eclipse occurs—or fails to occur—the astronomer tells the scholar the haunting and hilarious story behind his strange prediction: a tale that ends up encompassing kings and princes, family squabbles, obsessive pursuits, insanity, philosophy, art, loss, and the horrors of war. Written with a tip of the hat to the works of Thomas Bernhard and Franz Kafka, The Organs of Sense stands as a towering comic fable: a story about the nature of perception, and the ways the heart of a loved one can prove as unfathomable as the stars.

A noted anthropologist explains how our sense of ethics has changed over the course of human evolution. By the author of Hierarchy of the Forest.

From one of the world’s leading neuroscientists: a succinct, illuminating, wholly engaging investigation of how biology, neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence have given us the tools to unlock the mysteries of human consciousness “One thrilling insight after another ... Damasio has succeeded brilliantly in narrowing the gap between body and mind.” —The New York Times Book Review In recent decades, many philosophers and cognitive scientists have declared the problem of consciousness unsolvable, but Antonio Damasio is convinced that recent findings across multiple scientific disciplines have given us a way to understand consciousness and its significance for human life. In the forty-eight brief chapters of Feeling & Knowing, and in writing that remains faithful to our intuitive sense of what feeling and experiencing are about, Damasio helps us understand why being conscious is not the same as sensing, why nervous systems are essential for the development of feelings, and why feeling opens the way to consciousness writ large. He combines the latest discoveries in various sciences with philosophy and discusses his original research, which has transformed our understanding of the brain and human behavior. Here is an indispensable guide to understand­ing how we experience the world within and around us and find our place in the universe.

Tyler Burge's study investigates the most primitive ways in which individuals represent the physical world. By reflecting on the science of perception and related psychological and biological sciences, Burge outlines the constitutive conditions for perceiving the physical world, thus locating the origins of representational mind.

The children of immigrants continue a journey begun by their parents. Born or raised in the United States, this second generation now stands over 20 million strong. In this insightful new book, immigration scholars Renee Luthra, Thomas Soehl, and Roger Waldinger provide a fresh understanding the making of the second generation, bringing both their origins and destinations into view. Using surveys of second generation immigrant adults in New York and Los Angeles, Origins and Destinations explains why second generation experiences differ across national origin groups and why immigrant offspring with the same national background often follow different trajectories. Inter-group disparities stem from contexts of both emigration and immigration. Origin countries differ in value orientations: immigrant parents transmit lessons learned in varying contexts of emigration to children raised in the U.S. A system of migration control sifts immigrants by legal status, generating a context of immigration that favors some groups over others. Both contexts matter: schooling is higher among immigrant children from more secular societies (South Korea) than among those from more religious countries (the Philippines). When immigrant groups enter the U.S. migration system through a welcoming door, as opposed to one that makes authorized status difficult to achieve, education propels immigrant children to better jobs. Diversity is also evident among immigrant offspring whose parents stem from the same place. Immigrant children grow up with homeland connections, which can both hurt and harm: immigrant offspring get less schooling when a parent lives abroad, but more schooling if parents in the U.S. send money to relatives living abroad. Though all immigrants enter the U.S. as non-citizens, some instantly enjoy legal status, while others spend years in the shadows. Children born abroad, but raised in the U.S. are all everyday Americans, but only some have become de jure Americans, a difference yielding across-the-board positive effects, even among those who started out in the same country. Disentangling the sources of diversity among today’s population of immigrant offspring, Origins and Destinations provides a compelling new framework for understanding the second generation that is transforming America.