Anna Dela Cruz's blog

Introduction

Anna Dela Cruz

Biology in Society

November 24, 2009

Anna Dela Cruz

Biology in Society

November 3, 2009

Senior Seminar in Biology and Society
September 29, 2009
Anna Dela Cruz

Dissociative Identity Disorder: Sense of Self, Social Stigmatization, and the Question of Definition
the three faces of eve

    Fredrick Turner’s book Beauty: The Value of Values offers a part philosophical, part anthropological, and part scientific understanding of beauty. To him the way humans perceive beauty is natural because beauty to us has a biological basis via culture. With the expansion of our brain came an expanded understanding of the world around us. This expansion is also responsible for our current interpretations of beauty.

Revered psychoanalyst and authoritative thinker of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Sigmund Freud, said that the “most complicated achievements of thought are possible without the assistance of consciousness”. One aspect of Freud’s work in unlocking the secrets of the human mind dealt with the cognitive unconscious—cognitive mental processes that influence behavior without the need for active awareness. Examples of the cognitive unconscious at work include automatic behaviors such as biting one’s nails or shaking one’s leg during long periods of sitting still. In addition to habits, recent research suggests that the unconscious mind also has bearing over decision-making and in some cases, is better than conscious thinking.

Imagine you are age sixty-five. You are supposed to be relishing your golden years when suddenly, out of nowhere, you suffer a debilitating stroke. Rather than surrender to the illness and become a prison of your own body you decide to rebel. Even though you have severely limited mobility and little coordination, you force yourself to accomplish mundane tasks such as sweeping a porch. Slowly but surely you regain a firm grasp on your faculties. You are even able to return to teaching for another five years. Each day you up the ante on physical challenges and by the age of seventy-three, you are able to fulfill another test—climb the mountains of Colombia.