Brooks, D.(2011) The social animal  New York: Random House, 424 pages.

David Brooks is a well known essayist, author, journalist with numerous appearances on various cable and commercial television. This new book  has become a best seller. Fortunately, it is one of those books that cover the social, psychological, and biochemical components of human behavior. This reviewer  also happens to write in this area* so it took on even additional  importance. Brooks is a conservative writer and yet he appears to have moderated over the years. He is one who all sides want to have on their talk and analysis shows.

The major contemporary  precursors to bring the social and physical science together is Steven Pinker, with his the blank slate and E.O. Wilson, in consilience. Brooks takes a big step into this arena and hopefully other social methodological writers will do the same. His social animal brings numerous disciplines together through fictional characters.

He uses these various disciplines to describe the unconscious. This is not necessarily the unconscious as described by Freud. Rather, for Brooks there are 2 levels, conscious and unconscious. Freud is more elaborate. Brooks needs that Level 2 unconscious as his working definition. He begins after the Crash of 08′ This has been the largest economic downturn since the Great Depression.  He focuses on the upper middle class who have business backgrounds. They all have in common that they were smart but not superior and that they were talented, but not the most talented. Rather they had the non-cognitive skills to persuade and manipulate others into the positions that they now hold. They are workers of calm composure who live and consume with what appears to be an effortless and political correct lives.

Julia and Rob are introduced. Again, they were an attractive couple but not the fairest of all couples. They attended good schools and had non-doctorate degrees in business and commerce. They partied and traveled in just the right way. Their house was a neat but not an ostentatious McMansion. After many years of competing and climbing, Harold is created. Harold life from early stages  of pre-birth to death is described in a multi-discipline way. As Harold grows, he becomes the high school star and by college he is the backup man to a very big man on campus. Harold meets Erica, the perfect minority of Latino-Asian.

Together they step into many corporate settings. Erica creates her own consulting firm and Harold spends most of his life in a historical society and museum.  Their climb to the top is described as well as  a downward  spiral. This  is the 21st century life of a child free couple.  Erica is just in the other room when  Harold dies. She sees his death from this world and he sees a path to the light.

From this story, he makes many points including the following:

1) Rationalism from the British Enlightenment assumes that humans have the capability to be rational as well as irrational. Overall, humans are non-rational  or semi-rational which means that many activities may be given a rational explanation but it really covers a need to be acknowledged, loved and numerous other non-cognitive desires.

2. Especially the social sciences, cling to science when they are really methodologies that describe current, past and in some instances future behavior. This last is called prediction. Without predictions, universal laws, hard number theory, and related, they fear that they will be doomed irrelevant. However, their contributions as a semi-science are still found to be very useful. They should not worry.”Facts” should be considered “indicators” a more moderate term for the information gathered.

3. Unconscious inputs are extremely hard to measure, but still must be included in the research process.

4. Information should be presented humbly without falling into haughty scientism, that separates academic information gathering from information gathered from trial and error of those who are working in the field.

5. Except for the hardliners in each discipline, there appears to be a gathering or consilience among the soft sciences or methodologies that they can complement each other and find , gather, and analyze new information in a cooperative manner. Their findings will be useful even if there is a loss of a perfect theory systemized by testable and related propositions which are statements of reality. The public has accepted that and Academia should do so. Classical Economics is probably the worst offender in it’s  formulation as a science and we have been driven by this theory in the last 30 years. Yet economics is still the queen of the methodologies.

Brooks goes well beyond his first book on  Bobos in Paradise. His Social Animal must be included as one of the best reads in the early twenty-first century. It should have appeal  to both civilian readers and academia.

Prof. Joel  Snell

Emeritus

Kirkwood College

*see Google Scholar