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THIS may be a book鈥檚 best ever summary of itself: 鈥渨hen fishing for happiness, catch and release鈥�.
With a title that inverts one of the inalienable rights established by the American Declaration of Independence, The Happiness of Pursuit is for fans of enquiries into the nature of brain, mind 鈥� and happiness itself.
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When the author Shimon Edelman was 8, he came upon Christopher Logue鈥檚 poem Epitaph, which asks: 鈥淲hat is the greatest happiness on earth?鈥� The poem was embedded in a story which turned on the possibility of writing a happiness algorithm.
As a computer scientist and psychology professor, Edelman could not rest until he had made the case for happiness to be given a scientific, perhaps even algorithmic, explanation.
鈥淓delman could not rest until he had made the case for happiness to be given a scientific explanation鈥�
He begins this search with the observation that 鈥渢he mind is inherently and essentially a bundle of ongoing computations鈥�. Over two millennia, he argues, we have come to realise that our notion of self is partly a construct of those computations, and partly a distributed entity that he believes is 鈥渂est thought of as a network of cause and effect that transcends the boundary between the individual and the environment, which includes society and the material world鈥�. It鈥檚 comforting to think that our experiences can help us achieve the kind of gradual self-change that might promote happiness.
In the end, Edelman does not deliver an algorithm for happiness, but offers a happy addition to the classic recipe of 鈥渟elf-knowledge, self-improvement, and, eventually, selfless conduct鈥� 鈥� a coherent notion of the self.
The Happiness of Pursuit: What neuroscience can teach us about the good life
Basic Books
