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Specialists from various disciplines come together in this fascinating and informative panorama to explore how individual humans are interrelated through the human societies in which we share existence.

The contributors to this compilation lay out details of the factors that hold us together through ideas, patterns and relationships.  This goes beyond philosophy, citing very practical details of how the human nervous system works and how ideas are developed and communicated.  They explore how our minds are connected to other minds.

This very readable volume covers the interconnections between these forces, topics or focuses:
Social Nature
Science and Religion
Politics and States
Mind-Body Unity, Psychic identity, others and God/Other
Self-Other Boundaries
Language - How We Make and Communicate Meaning
Neurobiology - mirror neurons, how we integrate new experiences and information into old
Private and Social experiences of God as an invisible force

Here are some insights or claims we find in the book:
Invisible social forces are always at work in the ambiguity of a situation, the diffusion of responsibility in our various interactions with others
Loneliness has a specific structure and adaptive function, and affects metabolism negatively
"Significant actions by another person can quickly produce complementary motor responses."
"Perhaps language is less symbolic and more direct than scientists have thought."
Care for the sick and weak is at odds with the principle of natural selection

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OBJ

Reviewed on Amazon 26 November 2012
Reviewed on Thoughts and Resources 4 January 2014

Orville Boyd Jenkins, EdD, PhD
Copyright © 2014 Orville Boyd Jenkins
Permission granted for free download and transmission for personal or educational use.  Please give credit and link back.  Other rights reserved.

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