The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of the Cultural Mind

is a pathbreaking investigation into homeostasis, the condition of regulating life within the range that makes possible not only the survival but the flourishing of life.  Antonio Damasio makes clear that we descend biologically, psychologically, and even socially from a long lineage that begins with single living cells; that our minds and cultures are linked by an invisible thread to the ways and means of ancient unicellular life and other life-forms; and that inherent in the very chemistry of life is a powerful force, a striving toward life maintenance that governs life in all its guises, including the development of genes that help regulate and transmit life.
offers us a new way of understanding the world and our place in it.