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The Art Instinct
- Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution
- Narrated by: P. J. Ochlan
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
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The Art Instinct
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Publisher's summary
The Art Instinct combines two of the most fascinating and contentious disciplines, art and evolutionary science, in a provocative new work that will revolutionize the way art itself is perceived. Aesthetic taste, argues Denis Dutton, is an evolutionary trait, and is shaped by natural selection. It's not, as almost all contemporary art criticism and academic theory would have it, "socially constructed". The human appreciation for art is innate, and certain artistic values are universal across cultures, such as a preference for landscapes that, like the ancient savannah, feature water and distant trees. If people from Africa to Alaska prefer images that would have appealed to our hominid ancestors, what does that mean for the entire discipline of art history?
Dutton argues, with forceful logic and hard evidence, that art criticism needs to be premised on an understanding of evolution, not on abstract "theory". Sure to provoke discussion in scientific circles and an uproar in the art world, The Art Instinct offers radical new insights into both the nature of art and the workings of the human mind.
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 431
This pioneering account sets out to understand the structure of the human brain - the place where mind meets matter. Until recently, the left hemisphere of our brain has been seen as the "rational" side, the superior partner to the right. But is this distinction true? Drawing on a vast body of experimental research, Iain McGilchrist argues while our left brain makes for a wonderful servant, it is a very poor master.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The Master and His Emissary
- By Michael on 11-07-20
By: Iain McGilchrist
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What Love Is
- And What It Could Be
- By: Carrie Jenkins
- Narrated by: Carrie Jenkins
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 76
What is love? Aside from being the title of many a popular love song, this is one of life's perennial questions. In What Love Is, philosopher Carrie Jenkins offers a bold new theory on the nature of romantic love that reconciles its humanistic and scientific components.
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5 out of 5 stars
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What Philosophy Is and What It Could Be
- By Amazon Customer on 03-09-17
By: Carrie Jenkins
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The Landscape of History
- How Historians Map the Past
- By: John Lewis Gaddis
- Narrated by: Jack Chekijian
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 98
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 89
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 85
What is history, and why should we study it? Is there such a thing as historical truth? Is history a science? One of the most accomplished historians at work today, John Lewis Gaddis, answers these and other questions in this short, witty, and humane book. The Landscape of History provides a searching look at the historian's craft as well as a strong argument for why a historical consciousness should matter to us today.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent Book!
- By Billy on 09-15-18
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Orientalism
- By: Edward Said
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 19 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 576
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 463
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 464
This landmark book, first published in 1978, remains one of the most influential books in the Social Sciences, particularly Ethnic Studies and Postcolonialism. Said is best known for describing and critiquing "Orientalism", which he perceived as a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the East. In Orientalism Said claimed a "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture."
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5 out of 5 stars
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We're lucky to have this on audio
- By Delano on 02-27-13
By: Edward Said
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Primates and Philosophers
- How Morality Evolved
- By: Frans de Waal
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 76
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4 out of 5 stars 53
"It's the animal in us," we often hear when we've been bad. But why not when we're good? Primates and Philosophers tackles this question by exploring the biological foundations of one of humanity's most valued traits: morality.In this provocative book, primatologist Frans de Waal argues that modern-day evolutionary biology takes far too dim a view of the natural world, emphasizing our "selfish" genes.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Having Just Read...
- By Douglas on 12-14-13
By: Frans de Waal
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The Age of Insight
- The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present
- By: Eric R. Kandel
- Narrated by: James Anderson Foster
- Length: 16 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 102
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 81
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 83
A brilliant book by Nobel Prize winner Eric R. Kandel, The Age of Insight takes us to Vienna 1900, where leaders in science, medicine, and art began a revolution that changed forever how we think about the human mind - our conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions - and how mind and brain relate to art.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Worth the listen
- By Amazon Customer on 01-28-19
By: Eric R. Kandel
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The Soul of the World
- By: Roger Scruton
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 118
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 100
In The Soul of the World, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton defends the experience of the sacred against today’s fashionable forms of atheism. He argues that our personal relationships, moral intuitions, and aesthetic judgments hint at a transcendent dimension that cannot be understood through the lens of science alone. To be fully alive - and to understand what we are - is to acknowledge the reality of sacred things.
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4 out of 5 stars
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"Against Reductionism"
- By Edmund Schilvold on 10-08-15
By: Roger Scruton
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The Courage to Create
- By: Rollo May
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 4 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 198
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 163
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 164
What if imagination and art are not, as many of us might think, the frosting on life but the fountainhead of human experience? What if our logic and science derive from art forms rather than the other way around? In this trenchant volume, Rollo May helps all of us find those creative impulses that, once liberated, offer new possibilities for achievement. A renowned therapist and inspiring guide, Dr. May draws on his experience to show how we can break out of old patterns in our lives.
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5 out of 5 stars
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May takes on the Creative Act
- By Lowball on 01-16-19
By: Rollo May
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How Language Began
- The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention
- By: Daniel L. Everett
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 13 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 300
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 252
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Story4 out of 5 stars 252
Mankind has a distinct advantage over other terrestrial species: we talk to one another. But how did we acquire the most advanced form of communication on Earth? Daniel L. Everett, a "bombshell" linguist and "instant folk hero" (Tom Wolfe, Harper's), provides in this sweeping history a comprehensive examination of the evolutionary story of language, from the earliest speaking attempts by hominids to the more than 7,000 languages that exist today.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Hard to endure
- By Michael D. Busch on 09-09-18
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Out of Our Heads
- You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness
- By: Alva Noe
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 100
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 51
Alva Noë is one of a new breed - part philosopher, part cognitive scientist, part neuroscientist - who are radically altering the study of consciousness by asking difficult questions and pointing out obvious flaws in the current science. In Out of Our Heads, he restates and reexamines the problem of consciousness, and then proposes a startling solution: Do away with the 200-year-old paradigm that places consciousness within the confines of the brain.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A bold, yet ultimately unsupported, hypothesis
- By Keith Pyne-Howarth on 01-17-10
By: Alva Noe
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Breaking the Spell
- Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 749
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 655
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 642
For all the thousands of books that have been written about religion, few until this one have attempted to examine it scientifically: to ask why - and how - it has shaped so many lives so strongly. Is religion a product of blind evolutionary instinct or rational choice? Is it truly the best way to live a moral life? Ranging through biology, history, and psychology, Daniel C. Dennett charts religion’s evolution from “wild” folk belief to “domesticated” dogma.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Reader Actually Enhances A Great Book!
- By Don Caliente on 07-14-14
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William Blake vs the World
- By: John Higgs
- Narrated by: John Higgs
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 87
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 74
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 74
A wild and unexpected journey through culture, science, philosophy, and religion to better understand the mercurial genius of William Blake.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Best book ever
- By idamae on 11-04-22
By: John Higgs
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The Blank Slate
- The Modern Denial of Human Nature
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,946
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,279
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,243
In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits, denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Don't bother. Outdated science & poor logic...
- By ejf211 on 03-31-10
By: Steven Pinker
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Jung
- A Very Short Introduction
- By: Anthony Stevens
- Narrated by: Tim Pigott-Smith
- Length: 3 hrs and 52 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 617
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 384
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 374
Anthony Stevens argues that Jung's visionary powers and profound spirituality have helped many to find an alternative set of values to the arid materialism prevailing Western society.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Very nice - will not be disappointed
- By Edgar on 12-15-05
By: Anthony Stevens
What listeners say about The Art Instinct
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Michael
- 02-19-14
A breath of fresh air!
Any additional comments?
As an artist and art teacher I have read or listened to dozens of books about or relating to art and aesthetics. The Art Instinct is a very welcome change to other books in these genres. it is clear and concise, tough but fair, and overall a very engaging listen.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Sharon E Johnson
- 10-21-18
Is this a computer?
The context is interesting but the narrator sounds like a computer. Literally sounds like a voice from my biology video clips from my textbook explaining cellular function. Which, for school is fine because it is only 2 mins. But for an entire book? No way, not the right context for this voice. I couldn’t make it past the intro.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Mixed Blessings
- 01-30-18
A Waste of Time & Money
If you are an artist, this book is annoying. It talks about art on a very superficial level. Maybe it gets better past chapter one, but the audio presenter does not do a good enough job for me to continue to listen. I want my money back.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- james scott
- 04-08-22
Excellent!
An incredible journey into the art, the mind, and humanity! A must read for every artist, thinker and seer!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Teeg
- 06-30-19
Arts philosophical
For the creators and observers of the arts, an exploration of the Gestalt that art is. The creation (painting, symphony, ballet, novel) is greater than the sum of its parts. That this is a beautifully and distinctly human experience, is clearly and heartfully described by the author.
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