An Outsider's Guide to Humans
What Science Taught Me About What We Do and Who We Are
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- CHF 10.00
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- CHF 10.00
Description de l’éditeur
WINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE
An instruction manual for life, love, and relationships by a brilliant young scientist whose Asperger's syndrome allows her--and us--to see ourselves in a different way...and to be better at being human
Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder at the age of eight, Camilla Pang struggled to understand the world around her. Desperate for a solution, she asked her mother if there was an instruction manual for humans that she could consult. With no blueprint to life, Pang began to create her own, using the language she understands best: science.
That lifelong project eventually resulted in An Outsider's Guide to Humans, an original and incisive exploration of human nature and the strangeness of social norms, written from the outside looking in--which is helpful to even the most neurotypical thinker. Camilla Pang uses a set of scientific principles to examine life's everyday interactions:
- How machine learning can help us sift through data and make more rational decisions
- How proteins form strong bonds, and what they teach us about embracing individual differences to form diverse groups
- Why understanding thermodynamics is the key to seeking balance over seeking perfection
- How prisms refracting light can keep us from getting overwhelmed by our fears and anxieties, breaking them into manageable and separate "wavelengths"
Pang's unique perspective of the world tells us so much about ourselves--who we are and why we do the things we do--and is a fascinating guide to living a happier and more connected life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
First-time author Pang draws on her expertise as a scientist and on her experience as a person with autism spectrum disorder and generalized anxiety disorder to create an enlightening hybrid of popular science, memoir, and self-help. She begins by describing how, when younger, she found negotiating the world around her and particularly the behavior of other people baffling. Science, she writes, was "the key to unlocking a world whose door was otherwise closed to me," and she believes the neurotypical and neurodiverse alike can benefit from looking at human nature scientifically. In tying scientific phenomena to human behaviors, she posits, for instance, that understanding thermodynamics can ease perfectionism, writing: "our efforts to create order in our lives do not exist in isolation, but in a messy context of people and inanimate objects, all with their own energetic needs"; and that cellular evolution offers a useful perspective on relationships, because, "like a stem cell, every relationship essentially begins as a generic, unspecialized entity." By leavening scientific theory with personal anecdotes, Pang draws up a life guide that's accessible and entertaining if not entirely applicable to all. Nevertheless, this is a unique take on life's big questions.
