Robert Provine boldly goes where other scientists seldom tread-in search of hiccups, coughs, yawns, sneezes, and other lowly, undignified human behaviors. Upon investigation, these instinctive acts bear the imprint of our evolutionary origins and can be uniquely valuable tools for understanding how the human brain works and what makes us different from other species.
Many activities showcased in Curious Behavior are contagious, but none surpasses yawning in this regard-just reading the word can make one succumb. Though we often take it as a sign of sleepiness or boredom, yawning holds clues to the development of our sociality and ability to empathize with others. Its inescapable transmission reminds us that we are sometimes unaware, neurologically programmed beasts of the herd. Other neglected behaviors yield similar revelations. Tickling, we learn, may be the key to programming personhood into robots. Coughing comes in musical, medical, and social varieties. Farting and belching have import for the evolution of human speech. And prenatal behavior is offered as the strangest exhibit of all, defying postnatal logic in every way. Our earthiest acts define Homo sapiens as much as language, bipedalism, tool use, and other more studied characteristics.
As Provine guides us through peculiarities right under our noses, he beckons us to follow with self-experiments: tickling our own feet, keeping a log of when we laugh, and attempting to suppress yawns and sneezes. Such humble investigations provide fodder for grade school science projects as well as doctoral dissertations. Small Science can yield big rewards.
"An exercise in 'small science'- some of it speculative, all of it fascinating." --Nature
"Provine's investigations reveal captivating insights into the mundane." --New Scientist
"Pardon Me! A fearless Look at Our Bodies' Mundane Functions....With its many facts and anecdotes and unexpected stories, it begs you to continue where curiosity leads you, down both the boulevards and the back alleys of science." --New York Times
"Robert Provine is a real character. Not from a book, but from real life. "Could someone please make a movie about this scientist? He deserves to be a hero for more people than simply those who will read his work. He is a valiant man and this is an original book [...] He writes with wit. That is sometimes enough to keep me reading a book, but fortunately there is more. Provine fearlessly explores the borderlands of scientific experimentation by studying these non-verbal outputs of the body." --Tristan Bekinschtein, Times Higher Education, Thursday 15 November 2012
"Pardon Me! A fearless Look at Our Bodies' Mundane Functions....With its many facts and anecdotes and unexpected stories, it begs you to continue where curiosity leads you, down both the boulevards and the back alleys of science." --New York Times
