The Biology of Emotions

by Jean-Didier Vincent, John Hughes (Translator)

What is love? Can we explain Romeo's love for Juliet? What are desire, pleasure, sadness and the taste for power and domination? In short, how do we make sense of our passions? Going beyond the traditional dichotomy of body and soul, of the reasonable brain and the passionate body, Jean-Didier Vincent proposes a new theory of emotions which aims to harmonize our understanding of humankind. Not that he reduces love to an equation. On the contrary, he aims to show what love and beauty mean in a book whose humour is paralleled by its serious intellectual endeavour.

Genres: Science

256 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1986

About the author

Jean-Didier Vincent was a French neurobiologist and neuropsychiatrist. He was Professor of Physiology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Bordeaux II and then at the University of Paris-Sud. From 1991 to 2004 Vincent was Director of the Alfred-Fessard Institute of Neurobiology at the CNRS. He was a member of both the French Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Medicine since 18 November 2003.