Books

Tonight, wearing a fetching and practical uniform, I'll put patients to bed and watch signals while settling into my new books:

In the Blink of an Eye; how vision kick-started the Big Bang of evolution
Andrew Parker

Humanity: An Emotional History
Stuart Walton

The former will I hope discuss the Pre-Cambrian explosion of multicellular, developmentally specialised body types, and this as a substrate for the new phyla that subsequently emerged. Vision and the eye are adaptations frequently cited by the Intelligent Design fraternity as too perfect to have evolved, but in the Blind Watchmaker Dawkins defended vision as an adaptive, saltationally-acquired characteristic.

The latter book will hopefully define how emotion differs from mood. Both are seen as transient psychological states, but emotion has a biological aspect which I feel may have escaped the author. The 'emotions' running as chapter headings are; Fear, Anger, Disgust, Sadness, Jealousy, Contempt, Shame, Embarrassment, Surprise and Happiness. Already I'm taking issue with this, and eliminating jealousy, contempt, sadness and happiness because they're mediated, cognitive *moods* and not visceral, limbic emotions. Shame and Embarrassment are too close to split, too, although I'll allow Guilt as an emotion. The author is less engaged with the biological/neurological aspects of his soi-disant emotions that their historical and cultural associations. May still be a good read, nevertheless.

Disgust is the most interesting emotion, like that felt when cleaning up Her Catness's vomit, producing visceral and physiological nausea. Morning sickness in pregnancy, which involves disgust, may be a emotive/behavioural adaptation to help avoidance of noxious substances at susceptible early stages of foetal development.