Descartes’ Error
Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
A neurologist shows that emotion is not the enemy of reason but a requirement for sound decisions, overturning Descartes' split of mind and body.
Antonio Damasio, a neurologist, builds his case from patients whose capacity to feel was damaged by brain injury. Stripped of emotion, they could still reason in the abstract yet made ruinous choices in ordinary life. From this he argues that feeling and thinking are not rivals but partners, and that Descartes was wrong to sever mind from body. The book helped move emotion to the centre of how we understand the brain.
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