De La Mettrie's Ghost

This book is about how we make choices. Drawing together evidence from 21st century chemistry to Victorian politics, enlightenment philosophy, Roman drama and beyond, it is a compelling hunt for the nature of free will.Psychiatrist Chris Nunn elegantly explores the revolutions in medicine, genetics, bioethics and neuroscience spurred by Julien de la Mettrie's 300-year-old tract Man the Machine. He finds that though formerly fruitful, this mechanistic view of human experience has now brought neuroscientists and philosophers to an impasse. He therefore proposes a powerful replacement metaphor for the workings of the human brain - 'man the story' - and demonstrates how this original approach could reconcile the results of cutting-edge brain-imaging with our intuitive understanding of decision making, responsibility and determinism.