Thursday 3 January 2008

Emotions

Scientists tell us that different emotions appear at different moment in the evolutionary saga (so, fear comes early; ennui late) and therefore differ in terms of brain physiology. One question is whether this developmental narrative of emotions will continue; whether new emotions will arise, adaptively, in our environment (specifically urban emotions, for instance; let's say 'spart', 'monahay' and 'fribbishness'); or whether our earlier emotions will become increasingly vestigial ... so that future humans know anxiety and angst, but never the heart-galloping terror that a predator is about to leap upon them.

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