The Feeling of What Happens by Antonio Damasio
Published 1999 · 400 pages · 120,000 words · about 8 hours at an average pace · Nonfiction, Philosophy, Psychology, Science & Nature
How hard is The Feeling of What Happens to read?
The Feeling of What Happens scores 39 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 42 out of 100
- Neuroscientific terminology and careful philosophical distinctions.
- Sentence structure: 40 out of 100
- Abstraction: 52 out of 100
- Three-tiered model of consciousness requires sustained abstract reasoning.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Dense with clinical cases, neuroscientific evidence, and theoretical argument.
- Narrative indirection: 12 out of 100
- Builds systematically from proto-self through core to extended consciousness.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- The body as ground of consciousness. Feeling as the origin of knowing.
- Ironic distance: 80 out of 100
- Earnest, careful scientific prose with moments of wonder.
- Resolution withholding: 18 out of 100
- Damasio offers a model but acknowledges consciousness remains incompletely understood.
- Structural complexity: 35 out of 100
- Four parts building from basic neuroscience to a complete theory of consciousness.
How The Feeling of What Happens is regarded
The Feeling of What Happens holds a literary regard score of 57 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.