Verlagsinfo: "One of our great behavioral scientists the bestselling author of Behave plumbs
the depths of the science and philosophy of decision-making to mount a devastating case against
free will an argument with profound consequences Robert Sapolsky's Behave his now classic
account of why humans do good and why they do bad pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We
may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry
at the base of human behavior but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Now in Determined
Sapolsky takes his argument all the way mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way
delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self
telling our biology what to do. Determined offers a marvelous synthesis of what we know about
how consciousness works-the tight weave between reason and emotion and between stimulus and
response in the moment and over a life. One by one Sapolsky tackles all the major arguments
for free will and takes them out cutting a path through the thickets of chaos and complexity
science and quantum physics as well as touching ground on some of the wilder shores of
philosophy. He shows us that the history of medicine is in no small part the history of
learning that fewer and fewer things are somebody's "fault" for example for centuries we
thought seizures were a sign of demonic possession. Yet as he acknowledges it's very hard
and at times impossible to uncouple from our zeal to judge others and to judge ourselves.
Sapolsky applies the new understanding of life beyond free will to some of our most essential
questions around punishment morality and living well together. By the end Sapolsky argues
that while living our daily lives recognizing that we have no free will is going to be
monumentally difficult doing so is not going to result in anarchy pointlessness and
existential malaise. Instead it will make for a much more humane world"
