Editorial Review:

Widely praised for his innovative scientific thinking and elegant writing, Antonio Damasio achieves a new understanding of consciousness by asking-and answering-profound questions: How is it that we know what we know? How is it that our conscious and private minds have a sense of self? A gifted medical clinician with decades of caring for patients with brain damage, a great scientific thinker, and an extraordinary writer, Damasio offers a new understanding of the biological roots of consciousness and its role in survival. Damasio's work on feeling and emotion forever joins our minds and bodies, offering an arrestingly original way of understanding what it is to be human. After reading Damasio's landmark, Descartes' Error, Jonas Salk wrote, "You will never again look at yourself or another without wondering what goes on behind the eyes that so meet." As to The Feeling of What Happens, the New York Times wrote, "Unlike any other book here, it will change your experience of yourself."

As you read this, at some level you're aware that you're reading, thanks to a standard human feature commonly referred to as consciousness. What is it--a spiritual phenomenon, an evolutionary tool, a neurological side effect? The best scientists love to tackle big, meaningful questions like this, and neuroscientist Antonio Damasio jumps right in with The Feeling of What Happens, a poetic examination of interior life through lenses of research, medical cases, philosophical analysis, and unashamed introspection. Damasio's perspective is, fortunately, becoming increasingly common in the scientific community; despite all the protestations of old-guard behaviorists, subjective consciousness is a plain fact to most of us and the demand for new methods of inquiry is finally being met.

These new methods are not without rigor, though. Damasio and his colleagues examine patients with disruptions and interruptions in consciousness and take deep insights from these tragic lives while offering greater comfort and meaning to the sufferers. His thesis, that our sense of self arises from our need to map relations between self and others, is firmly rooted in medical and evolutionary research but stands up well to self-examination. His examples from the weird world of neurology are unsettling yet deeply humanizing--real people with serious problems spring to life in the pages, but they are never reduced to their deficits. The Feeling of What Happens captures the spirit of discovery as it plunges deeper than ever into the darkest waters yet. --Rob Lightner

Customer Reviews:

Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0

Neither a clear writer nor a clear thinker:

I have just finished reading this book with a great sense of relief. I wish I could agree with all the complimentary things that other reviewers have written about it, but I find I can't. I am convinced that Damasio is an insightful neurologist, and his personal observations and extensive knowledge of patients with neurological conditions is valuable. However, he is neither a clear thinker nor a clear writer. He goes in for the poetic and artistic, and while his language may sound great, more than half the... more info

Poorly Written:

I read Descartes Error and found the author's writing style to be poor. Nevertheless, I figured I would give the author another chance by reading another one of his books. Unfortunately, I found this second book to be poorly written as well. The author is obviously passionate and knowledgeable about his subject of study - and I find no fault in his knowledge of the subject matter. But he is simply a very poor communicator!! His train of thought is meandering and rambling. So many of his points could have... more info

A seminal work:

I very seldom come across a book that is so groundbreaking in its content as to make me determined to fully understand what the author is trying to convey (even if it means rereading it three times!) Damasio's The Feeling of What Happens is an astonishing achievement and I believe that the science of consciousness has been vastly enriched with this contribution.
It may help you to know, however, that this is by no means light reading. Even with my medical background, I struggled to keep up, especially... more info

An engaging discussion of consciousness:

I found this book to be an engaging exploration of consciousness and the different parameters that define consciousness. The author spends a lot of time explaining how consciousness is defined in relationship to the relationship the person has to the world, but also in regard to biological systems, linguistics, etc. He also does an excellent job of distinguishing where emotions fit into consciousness.
On the other hand, his writing style is dense and sometimes hard to get through. I had to carefully... more info

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