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The animal and the thinker. A conversation with Professor John Duncan

Professor Duncan will be in conversation with Dr Moataz Assem about his new book followed by a Q&A with the audience.

The Animal and the Thinker book cover
Mode
In-person
Date
17:30–19:00, 25 November 2025
Location
Buckingham House Lecture Theatre, Â鶹ƵµÀ, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, CB3 0DF
Link

In our divided times, there has never been more need to know ourselves. The big questions of our lives bring fierce debates. Right and wrong. Freedom and responsibility. Women and men. Democracy and justice. Ambition and fulfilment. Where does the truth lie in a mind that produces the many sides and needs of humanity?

In The Animal and the Thinker, the neuroscientist John Duncan lays out the principles, strengths and weaknesses of two sides of ourselves. One side follows the principles of instinctive animal behaviour. Often our animal side has been seen as a disruptive Mr Hyde, to be overcome by human reason, but Duncan shows this is far from the truth. Our own animal side is elaborate, sophisticated, conflicted but essential - without it, our life would have no meaning. On the other side is our rational brain. It generates an infinite world of new ideas, essential for adapting our lives to complex changing circumstances. Often, however, its need for focus generates sterile social beliefs and destructive culture wars. Our rational side is brilliant, but often, it is wrong.

For thousands of years, writers, thinkers and philosophers have seen human life as a war between Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Duncan argues that there is no war. To bring humanity and reality to the great, conflicted questions of our lives, we need the dance between these two essential sides of ourselves.

Speaker: 

Professor John Duncan. Following first and second degrees at the University of Oxford (1970-1976), and a postdoc at the University of Oregon, John Duncan has spent his research career at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge. He is among the pioneers of modern study of brain and mind, with work combining cognitive science, neuropsychology, neuroimaging, and single cell electrophysiology. The animal and the thinker (2025) is his second popular science book, following How intelligence happens (2010). Duncan is a Fellow of the UK Royal Society and the British Academy, and winner of the 2012 Heineken Prize in Cognitive Science.

Speakers

Professor John Duncan

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