Szymon was the leader of the anti-Nazi underground in Częstochowa. At night, resistance members made secret sorties from the Jewish ghetto – to replenish food supplies or for sabotage. So it was that night. A tunnel was dug under the fence. Shimon was trailing and held the barbed wire while his comrades crawled. When he climbed himself, naturally, he got stuck. Time passed by seconds. Nearby, a truck with a bribed driver was already purring, and friends had already jumped into the back. It was not – Shimon pulled, leaving a tuft of clothes, and probably would have had time to catch up with the car. But something stopped him. Not fear – he got into trouble and worse. Some animal instinct told him to freeze, lie down. The next second, SS men jumped out from around the corner and shot the truck.
“If Shimon had not been delayed by his primitive animal reaction, he would have been killed along with the others. If this had happened, I would not have written this book: ten years later, Simon, at that time, already a refugee Simon, who lived in Chicago, had a second son, me. So Leonard Mlodinov begins one of the chapters of his book, devoted, among other things, to intuition – supposedly inexplicable “sense”. In fact, there are fewer and fewer miracles that science cannot explain. So in the case of Shimon, there was no intervention from above. He was probably saved by the experience of the underground worker and keen hearing – the Nazis somehow gave themselves away, but everything happened so quickly that the brain reacted before it had time to catalog the information received.
A descendant of Shimon, who survived the German occupation and the Buchenwald concentration camp, became in America a colleague of Sheldon Cooper, the protagonist of the sitcom The Big Bang Theory. Mlodinov is also a theoretical physicist (albeit a specialist in quantum theory, not string theory) and also works at the prestigious California Institute of Technology (Caltech). True, a wide audience knows Mlodinov not by discoveries, but thanks to popular science bestsellers. He co-wrote two of them with the great Stephen Hawking – The Highest Design and The Shortest History of Time.
At the same time, the interests of Mlodinov as a writer are often far from his interests as a researcher. New 300-page volume “Emotionality. How Feelings Shape Our Thinking” (by the way, very promptly translated into Russian) and is completely devoted to emotions – and this is the traditional fiefdom of psychology, which the same Sheldon Cooper does not even consider to be a science. The purist, however, can rest easy on Caltech’s reputation. Mlodinov’s “emotionality” is a highly respectable scientific pop, which relies not only on experimental psychology, but actively uses the achievements of a relatively young discipline – affective neuroscience. Today, scientists have the technical ability to see “emotions”, even cause them – with the help of various stimulations.
The “emotional revolution” did away with the outdated notion that feelings are counterproductive. After all, as it was believed until recently: there is a mind that is rational, but there are emotions and needs of the body that interfere with the mind in every possible way. We inherited this disposition from the ancient Greeks. Plato fixed it in the form of a charioteer, forced to drive a chariot harnessed by two horses – black and white. The traditional theory of emotion (a decisive contribution to which was made by Charles Darwin – and it is still influential) finds the same conflict in the brain. Only instead of horses and a coachman, there are three levels: the reptilian brain (primitive instincts), the limbic layer (emotions) and, finally, the neocortex, the most complex layer that is associated with rational thinking.
In reality, of course, it’s not like that. First, emotions cannot be localized in any one part of the brain – the whole organism is involved in their occurrence. Secondly, emotions do not interfere with rationality – on the contrary, they are not enemies, but accomplices. Our thinking is by nature emotional, and this factor has played a significant role in the survival of us as a species. Disgust (yes, this is also an emotion) saved us from low-quality food. Anxiety helped to avoid trouble. And anger, on the contrary, forced to solve problems. To this day, emotions guide our thinking. While mistakes are inevitable, statistically we are more likely to win than not. But, as always, there are nuances.
Biological evolution has stopped, and social evolution is moving forward – and not all “skills” are useful to us. For example, a person is still driven by almost reflex reactions. A spouse’s bad habits, like an uncapped tube of toothpaste, cause an outburst of rage that is incomparable to them. General body tone (scientifically referred to as “nuclear affect”) influences our decisions. It has been proven that the parole commission is more negative towards prisoners before lunch than after it. We are defined by both genetics and upbringing (gentle parents activate the “right” DNA genes, bad parents activate bad predispositions). We are controlled even by the microorganisms living inside. In the course of the experiment, bacteria from a “brave” mouse were transplanted into the intestines of a “cautious” one – and they turned him into a daredevil!
In the best traditions of Mlodinov, “Emotionality” is informative and democratic, and irony often turns into sarcasm. And a black comedy – like in the chapter about how scientists were looking for a center of pleasure: simply by poking electrodes at random, and into the brains of not only mice, but also people. In one experiment in the early 1970s. a prostitute (!) was even called to the laboratory to measure the indicators.
Of the unusual, this is the author’s most personal book. Father, mother, son, friends constantly appear on its pages. Mlodinov does not hide the fact that interest in the topic of emotions arose from the desire to better understand loved ones. And having done away with the educational program, in the final chapter he moves on to recipes that are useful for any reader: how to manage emotions and become happier. In short, you need to live consciously and make friends with yourself.