Paradigm change

From: (1600s) Descartes postulated that we are rational beings (Cogito ergo sum – I think therefore I am) and that emotions are affections that make us non-rational and should be separated from the way we study how people think. Emotions create irrationality.

To: Damasio's book, Descartes' Error:
emotions create a 'soma' for the developing perception, which sets the background against which logical interpretation of the perception (cognition, or rational thinking) happens. (By soma he means the memory of how the body felt previously when it experienced what is being observed.)

'Far from interfering with rationality, the absence of emotion and feeling can break down rationality and make wise decision-making almost impossible.'

In essence, the new paradigm explains why emotions are vital to our survival, why emotions exist in organisms much older than us on the Darwinian scale and why evolution favours emotions.