rating : 6 : unfinishable
review : 12 March 2023
The celebrated scientist Lewis Wolpert investigates belief’s psychological basis and its possible evolutionary origins. Is it the lack of an explanation about life’s fundamental questions which is truly intolerable? Has human kind evolved to believe in things which make us feel better?
Why do we believe things that are demonstrably not true? Wolpert examines this quirk in our cognition from an evolutionary perspective. Or at least, I assume he does. Although I wanted to like this, I bounced off it after a couple of chapters. I found it too rambling, and too full of unevidenced claims, to keep me reading. I think maybe this is an attempt at a popular-style book where I'm not a fan of the particular style being used.
