Understanding Human Life: A Methodological and Interdisciplinary Approach

✍ Scribed by Daniel Courgeau

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2022
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 269
• Series: Methodos Series, 19
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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 astrology―an accepted practice in ancient civilizations, but now classified among the pseudosciences―with astronomy, a full-fledged science since Galileo’s 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.

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Contents
List of Figures and Map
List of Tables
Chapter 1: Understanding and Misunderstanding Human Life
1.1 Varieties of Understanding or Misunderstanding
1.2 A Multi-perspective Methodological View
1.3 Book Outline
References
Part I: How Certain Approaches May Lead to Misunderstanding Human Life
Chapter 2: Predestination Versus Human Liberty
2.1 Diversity of Predestinations in the World
2.2 The Origins of Eugenics
2.3 The Notion of Freedom
2.3.1 Freedom in Ancient Civilizations
2.3.2 Freedom in the Monotheistic Religions
2.3.3 Philosophical and Political Freedom
2.4 Conclusion
References
Chapter 3: Astronomy and Astrology: Once Indistinguishable, Now Clearly Separate
3.1 Astronomy and Astrology in Antiquity
3.1.1 Astronomy and Astrology in Mesopotamia
3.1.2 Hellenistic Astronomy and Astrology
3.2 Astronomy Ascendant, Astrology Discredited
3.3 Statistics and Astrology in the Current Period
3.4 Why Is the Belief in Astrology Still So Strong?
3.5 Conclusion
References
Chapter 4: Eugenics and the Theory of Inheritability
4.1 Galton Establishes Eugenics
4.2 Development of Eugenics in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
4.3 A New Face for Eugenics
4.4 Conclusion
4.5 Annex: Definitions and Genetic Terminology
References
Chapter 5: Why and How to Restrict Freedom
5.1 Axioms Used to Predict the Future or Establish a True Science
5.1.1 Principles and Axioms for Astrology and Astronomy
5.1.2 Principles and Axioms for Eugenics and Mendelism
5.2 Reasons to Believe in the Prediction of the Future
5.2.1 Why and How Should One Continue to Believe in Divination?
5.2.2 Why and How Should One Still Believe in Eugenics in Its Present Forms?
5.3 Human Freedom
References
Part II: What Can One Capture of a Human Life, and How?
Chapter 6: Imaginary Life Stories to Forge and Nourish Our Mind
6.1 Imaginary Life Stories
6.2 The Epic of Gilgamesh
6.3 Sophocles´ Tragedy: Oedipus Tyrannus
6.4 Romances About the Life of Henri de Joyeuse
6.5 What Role Will These Imaginary Life Stories Play in Our Own Life?
References
Chapter 7: Real Life Stories to Celebrate or to Study Humans
7.1 Life Stories to Celebrate Humans
7.1.1 Life Stories in Antiquity
7.1.2 From the Edict of Milan to the Early Twentieth Century
7.1.3 From the Twentieth to the Twenty-First Century
7.1.4 Life Stories to Study Humankind
7.2 Conclusions
References
Chapter 8: Autobiographical Memory and Its Critics
8.1 Psychology and Verification of Remembrances
8.2 From the Freudian Unconscious to the Neurosciences
8.3 Conclusions
References
Chapter 9: Mechanisms, Systems, Autonomy, Hermeneutics, and Understanding Human Life
9.1 How Demographic Theories Consider Human Life
9.1.1 From the Origin of Population Science to the Nineteenth Century
9.1.2 The Industrial Revolution in the Nineteenth Century: The Ascendancy of Economics
9.1.3 The Demographic Revolution in the Twentieth Century: The Comeback of Demography
9.1.4 Three Contemporary Theories
9.2 How Can We Explain the Complexity of Memory and the Human Brain: From Artificial Intelligence to Neuroscience
9.2.1 The Limits of Artificial Intelligence
9.2.2 The Contribution of Neuroscience to Explaining Memory
9.3 Can Autonomy Theory Be Associated with Hermeneutics?
9.4 How Can We Associate System Biology, Mechanisms, and Autonomy?
References
Name Index
Subject Index