Biology 202 Book Commentary

As someone with a passion for creative writing and a future career in medicine, I have always been interested in how others manage to intertwine these two disciplines. Oliver Sacks, author of several books including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, is one of the most prominent physician-writers. Sacks’s writing validates my belief that these two fields are not mutually exclusive but actually complement each other quite effectively. Sacks makes storytelling science and science storytelling. His book is divided into four sections—losses, excesses, transports, and the world of the simple—each of which contains a series of clinical tales focusing on an individual’s experience with a neurological disorder.

“Plugged In” is a book about the growing epidemic called video game addiction (VGA). The author, Terry R. Waite, discusses the psychological and physiological behaviors that are exhibited by video game addicts. The book is unique because the author gives a first hand experience of how VGA had affected him in the past. He acknowledges the fact that he was once an addict, and he gives personal accounts of his VGA and the effects it had on him and his family. This aspect really caught my attention because his personal involvement made him seem truly committed to helping fellow gamers. He also cites news involving VGA to inform the reader of the real life consequences of VGA. For example he

Julianne Rieders

An Anthropologist On Mars, Oliver Sacks

Explorations in Neuroscience, Pyschology, and Religion – A Commentary

Book By: Kevin S. Seybold

        This semester I read the book The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Steven

Pinker, a professor of Psychology at Harvard University.  This book explores the idea that language is innate. 

In other words he believes that all humans possess “the instinct to learn, speak, and understand language”

(pg. 3).  Pinker argues that language is biological, and that even without formal training children will develop

ways to communicate. He believes that language is an evolutionary adaptation that developed because

humans needed a system of communication.  

Frans de Waal’s Primates and Philosophers is an intriguing exploration of animal and human behavior, and a fierce attempt to link them intrinsically and inseparably.  De Waal attacks the notion that morality is a uniquely human trait – opposing those who believe that homo sapiens is a loner in ethics, and that our species rose magnificent out of the barbaric and uncomplicated ashes of our ancestors.