Remember Plato's Cave?

David Brooks' new best-selling overview of cognitive science, The Social Animal: The Hidden Source of Love, Character, and Achievement, is cleverly written through the perspective of a composite couple (Erica and Harold) and though the book is a review of many books that have already been mentioned on this blog (such as this book, this book, this book, and this book) and many books that I read about cognitive science before I began this blog (which annoys me to no end . . . I really wish I had a record of all the books I read before I started this project) the book was still an excellent read, mainly because of Brooks' effortless novelistic style, and I highly recommend it, although it should be called The Emotional Animal, because the main theme is that people, despite all our conscious powers of logical deduction, are stuck inside flawed but powerful minds, that are biased, opinionated, intuitive, fragmented, difficult to sway, in search of details that match already formed hypotheses, and generally illogical economically and syllogistically as far as our motivations and character.