★★★☆☆ Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, by Robert Sapolsky
It's complicated
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Robert Sapolsky
It’s complicated
Robert M. Sapolsky's Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst was a big disappointment to me. To help you understand that, I will add two data. First, I had high expectations. The book has been so extravagantly praised that I was expecting something transcendent, and my disappointment partly reflects the failure to meet a near-impossible standard. Second, I am a retired neuroscientist. Thus I was familiar with Sapolsky's broad themes.
But I have a definite reason for disliking Behave, summed up in Sapolsky's conclusion, "It's complicated." Here is what he sets out to do
This book explores the biology of violence, aggression, and competition—the behaviors and the impulses behind them, the acts of individuals, groups, and states, and when these are bad or good things. It is a book about the ways in which humans harm one another. But it is also a book about the ways in which people do the opposite. What does biology teach us about cooperation, affiliation, reconciliation, empathy, and altruism?
That's a broad portfolio. What's his answer? Here it is, from the Epilog
If you had to boil this book down to a single phrase, it would be “It’s complicated.”
In chapter 16 he says this
The biology of the behaviors that interest us is, in all cases, multifactorial—that is the thesis of this book.
That is a more verbose and specific version of "It's complicated".
"It's complicated" is a lousy answer. It is not a WRONG answer. In fact, it is an answer that is always right. If you ask any interesting biological question, "It's complicated" will always be a correct answer. That it is always right is what makes it a lousy answer. I didn't need to struggle through this brick to know that human behavior is complicated. Biology differs from physics and mathematics, where the deepest questions often have simple answers. However, even in these cases the answers are invariably simple in a way that takes a lot of work to understand -- simple ≠ easy. Simplicity is a struggle, and achieving it is a triumph. Sapolsky doesn't.
Two of my favorite books about biology are William H. McNeill's Plagues and Peoples and Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow. McNeill sets out to answer the question, "How important are infectious diseases in human history?" Here are two answers" "It's complicated" and "Very important". Both are correct. The second is by far the better answer. Of course, McNeill gives both answers -- like Behave, Plagues and Peoples is a brick. But it is fascinating -- I didn't want it to end. It was a struggle to finish Behave. Thinking, Fast and Slow covers many of the same subjects as Behave yet manages to arrive at some useful answers.
A month from now I will have learned little from Behave. I will forget most of the thousands of details that make up the bulk of the book. The broader points will remain with me, but I mostly knew those already.
Sapolsky gets a lot right. As other reviewers have said, his writing is lively, often funny, and usually clear. (Not always -- some of his more elliptical sentences had me scratching my head.) For the most part he knows his stuff, although his grasp of genetics is a bit wobbly.
I suspect Sapolsky would do better with a less all-encompassing book. By attempting to cover all of human behavior in one book, he put every conclusion more specific than "It's complicated" out of reach. Among the chapters of Behave one can discern the embryos of several better books.