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Title
Understanding human life : a methodological and interdisciplinary approach / Daniel Courgeau.
ISBN
9783031161438 (electronic bk.)
3031161432 (electronic bk.)
3031161424
9783031161421
Publication Details
Cham, Switzerland : Springer, 2022.
Language
English
Description
1 online resource
Item Number
10.1007/978-3-031-16143-8 doi
Call Number
HB849.4
Dewey Decimal Classification
304.6
Summary
This book addresses the challenge of understanding human life. It compares our life experience with the attempts to grasp it by astrologers, eugenicists, psychologists, neuroscientists, social scientists, and philosophers. The main opposition among these specialties lies between understanding and misunderstanding. The book also addresses the central methodological difficulty of capturing a human life. It is first examined how certain approaches may lead to a misunderstanding of human life. The book contrasts the example of astrologyan accepted practice in ancient civilizations, but now classified among the pseudoscienceswith astronomy, a full-fledged science since Galileos time. Another, more recent approach regards human life as predetermined by genes: the methods used by eugenicists, and later by political regimes under the name of hereditarianism, came to compete with genetics. A broader analysis shows how astrology and eugenicism are not truly scientific approaches. Next, the book looks at the ways of capturing an imaginary or real human life story. A comprehensive approach will try to fully understand their complexity, while a more explanatory approach considers only certain specific phenomena of human life. For example, demography studies only births, deaths, and migration. Another crucial factor in the collection of life histories is memory and its transmission. Psychology and psychoanalysis have developed different schools to try to explain them. The book concludes with a detailed discussion of the concepts and tools that have been proposed in more recent times for understanding the various aspects of life stories: mechanisms, systems, hermeneutics, and autonomy.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
Source of Description
Online resource; title from PDF title page (SpringerLink, viewed November 28, 2022).
Series
Methodos series ; v. 19.
Available in Other Form
Print version: 9783031161421
Chapter 1. Understanding and misunderstanding human life
Part I: How certain approaches may lead to misunderstanding human life
Chapter 2. Predestination versus human liberty
Chapter 3. Astronomy and astrology: once indistinguishable, now clearly separate
Chapter 4. Eugenics and the theory of inheritability
Chapter 5. Why and how to restrict freedom
Part II: What can one capture of a human life, and how?
Chapter 6. Imaginary life stories to forge and nourish our minds
Chapter 7. Real-life stories to study or celebrate humans
Chapter 8. Autobiographical memory and its critics
Chapter 9. Mechanisms, systems, autonomy, hermeneutics and understanding human life.
