How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

by Lisa Feldman Barrett

Emotions are thus thought to be a kind of brute reflex, very often at odds with our rationality.

This kind of internal battle between emotion and reason is one of the great narratives of Western civilization. It helps define you as human. Without rationality, you are merely an emotional beast.

Emotions are real, but not in the objective sense that molecules or neurons are real. They are real in the same sense that money is real—that is, hardly an illusion, but a product of human agreement.

They directed me to cry, an action that would calm my nervous system. And they made the resulting sensations meaningful as an instance of sadness.

Scientific revolutions tend to emerge not from a sudden discovery but by asking better questions.