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    Unavailable
    Michelangelo's Finger: An Exploration of Everyday Transcendence
    Unavailable
    Michelangelo's Finger: An Exploration of Everyday Transcendence
    Unavailable
    Michelangelo's Finger: An Exploration of Everyday Transcendence
    Ebook203 pages3 hours

    Michelangelo's Finger: An Exploration of Everyday Transcendence

    By Raymond Tallis

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Raymond Tallis is a renowned polymath: he was listed by the Independent in 2007 as one of fifty 'Brains of Britain' and in 2004 Prospect magazine voted him one of Britain's top public intellectual.

    In this startlingly original and persuasive book, Raymond Tallis shows that it is easy to underestimate the influence of small things in determining what manner of creatures humans are. He reveals that over time the repeated and multiple effects of the seemingly insignificant can make an enormous difference and argues that the independent movement of the human index finger is one such easily overlooked factor. Indeed, not for nothing is the index finger called 'the forefinger'. It is the one we most naturally deploy when we want to winkle things out of small spaces, but it plays a far more significant role in an action unique to us among primates: pointing.

    In Michelangelo's Finger, Raymond Tallis argues that it is through pointing that the index finger made a significant contribution to hominid development and to the creation of a human world separate to the rest of the natural world. Observing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the hugely familiar and awkward encounter between Michelangelo's God and Man through their index fingers, Tallis identifies an intuitive indication of the central role of the index finger in making us unique. Just as the reaching index fingers of God and Man are here made central to the creation of our kind, so Tallis believes that the simple act of pointing is central to our extraordinary evolution.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtlantic Books
    Release dateFeb 1, 2010
    ISBN9781848875524
    Unavailable
    Michelangelo's Finger: An Exploration of Everyday Transcendence
    Author

    Raymond Tallis

    Raymond Tallis trained in medicine at Oxford University and at St Thomas’ Hospital London before becoming Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences for his research in clinical neuroscience and he has played a key role in developing guidelines for the care of stroke patients in the UK. From 2011–14 he was Chair of Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying. He retired from medicine in 2006 to become a full-time writer. His books have ranged across many subjects – from philosophical anthropology to literary and cultural criticism – but all are characterised by a fascination for the infinite complexity of human lives and the human condition. The Economist’s Intelligent Life magazine lists him as one of the world’s leading polymaths.

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