Biology 202 Book Commentary

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    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.

Sandra Gandarez
Neurobiology and Behavior
Book Commentary
The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul by Francis Crick
 

In her memoir, Girl Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen describes her two-year experience in a mental health facility for young women in the 60s, where she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Interwoven in her narrative of life on a psychiatric ward is a subtle message: being insane isn’t really all that different from being sane.   

The Schopenhauer Cure, by Irvin D. Yalom, follows the last year of therapist Julius Hertzfeld’s life.  At a routine check-up, Julius Hertzfeld is told he has malignant melanoma, and only has approximately a year to live.  Confronted with his own mortality, he decides to evaluate his life’s work.  What has happened to his old patients?  He remembers most of them as successful cases; he felt that he was able to help.  No therapist can help every person; Julius knew that, and remembered a few cases he was not able to crack.

The Creating Brain, the Learning Brain