Why we learn the wrong things from narrative history, and how our love for stories is hard-wired.
To understand something, you need to know its history. Right? Wrong, says Alex Rosenberg in How History Gets Things Wrong. Feeling especially well-informed after reading a book of popular history on the best-seller list? Don't. Narrative history is always, always wrong. It's not just incomplete or inaccurate but deeply wrong, as wrong as Ptolemaic astronomy. We no longer believe that the earth is the center of the universe. Why do we still believe in historical narrative? Our attachment to history as a vehicle for understanding has a long Darwinian pedigree and a genetic basis. Our love of stories is hard-wired. Neuroscience reveals that human evolution shaped a tool useful for survival into a defective theory of human nature. 
Stories historians tell, Rosenberg continues, are not only wrong but harmful. Israel and Palestine, for example, have dueling narratives of dispossession that prevent one side from compromising with the other. Henry Kissinger applied lessons drawn from the Congress of Vienna to American foreign policy with disastrous results. Human evolution improved primate mind reading―the ability to anticipate the behavior of others, whether predators, prey, or cooperators―to get us to the top of the African food chain. Now, however, this hard-wired capacity makes us think we can understand history―what the Kaiser was thinking in 1914, why Hitler declared war on the United States―by uncovering the narratives of what happened and why. In fact, Rosenberg argues, we will only understand history if we don't make it into a story.

How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories

History

Rosenberg, Alex

Americas

The MIT Press

How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories (Mit Press)

A book for nonbelievers who embrace the reality-driven life. We can't avoid the persistent questions about the meaning of life-and the nature of reality. Philosopher Alex Rosenberg maintains that science is the only thing that can really answer them―all of them. His bracing and ultimately upbeat book takes physics seriously as the complete description of reality and accepts all its consequences. He shows how physics makes Darwinian natural selection the only way life can emerge, and how that deprives nature of purpose, and human action of meaning, while it exposes conscious illusions such as free will and the self. The science that makes us nonbelievers provides the insight into the real difference between right and wrong, the nature of the mind, even the direction of human history. The Atheist's Guide to Reality draws powerful implications for the ethical and political issues that roil contemporary life. The result is nice nihilism, a surprisingly sanguine perspective atheists can happily embrace.

The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

W.W.Norton&Company

“A tough test of the intellectual mettle of the armchair atheists and those teetering between faith and committing to life without it.”―Boston Globe We can’t avoid the persistent questions about the meaning of life―and the nature of reality. But science is the only means of answering them. So declares philosopher Alex Rosenberg in this bracing, surprisingly sanguine take on a world without god. The science that makes us nonbelievers, he demonstrates, tells us the nature of reality, the purpose of everything, the difference between right and wrong, how the mind works, even the direction of human history. 8 illustrations

Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy)

This user-friendly text covers key issues in the philosophy of science in an accessible and philosophically serious way. It will prove valuable to students studying philosophy of science as well as science students. Prize-winning author Alex Rosenberg explores the philosophical problems that science raises by its very nature and method. He skilfully demonstrates that scientific explanation, laws, causation, theory, models, evidence, reductionism, probability, teleology, realism and instrumentalism actually pose the same questions that Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant and their successors have grappled with for centuries.

Routledge

Is life a purely physical process? What is human nature? Which of our traits is essential to us? In this volume, Daniel McShea and Alex Rosenberg – a biologist and a philosopher, respectively – join forces to create a new gateway to the philosophy of biology; making the major issues accessible and relevant to biologists and philosophers alike. Exploring concepts such as supervenience; the controversies about genocentrism and genetic determinism; and the debate about major transitions central to contemporary thinking about macroevolution; the authors lay out the broad terms in which we should assess the impact of biology on human capacities, social institutions and ethical values.

Philosophy of Biology: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy)

McShea, Daniel W.

Philosophy of biology (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy)

Identifies the philosophical problems that science raises through an examination of questions about its nature, methods and justification. A valuable introduction for science and philosophy students alike.

Identifies the philosophical problems that science raises through an examination of questions about its nature, methods and justification. A valuable introduction for science and philosophy students alike.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rosenberg, Alex. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Rosenberg, Alex

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rosenberg, Alex. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories

How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories (Mit Press)

The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions

The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions

Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy)

Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy)

Philosophy of Biology: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy)

Philosophy of biology (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy)

Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy)

Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy)