I was raised a Quaker in England in the years after the Second World War. Quakers don’t have creeds, but they have strong beliefs about such things as the immorality of war. In the 1950s there was also huge prejudice, particularly against homosexuality which was then illegal. Issues like these gnawed at me throughout my 55-year career as a philosophy professor. Now 82 and finally retired, I'm turning against the problems of war and prejudice, applying much that I've learnt in my career as a philosopher interested in evolutionary theory, most particularly Charles Darwin. For this reason, intentionally, Why We Hate:Understanding the Roots of Human Conflictis aimed at the general reader.
Understanding human nature – nice and nasty – demands that we dig into the past, and this brings us at once to evolution. What are we and why are we? The powerful conceptual tool that we use for explanations is Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection. The Descent of Man is about human evolution. At times it reads very much like something out of the nineteenth century – Charles Darwin’s discussion of women makes your hair stand on end (and, if it doesn’t, it should). But the central doctrine of evolution through natural selection brought on by the struggle for existence is right there and once you grasp that, you have grasped the key to unlocking the main issues.
The Descent of Man, Darwin's second landmark work on evolutionary theory (following The Origin of the Species), marked a turning point in the history of science with its modern vision of human nature as the product of evolution. Darwin argued that the noblest features of humans, such as language and morality, were the result of the same natural processes that produced iris petals and scorpion tails.
Even before I became a philosopher I was wondering about everything—life the universe and whatever else Douglas Adams thought was important when he wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe. As a philosopher, I’ve been able to spend my life scratching the itch of these questions. When I finally figured them out I wrote The Atheist’s Guide to Reality as an introduction to what science tells us besides that there is no god. In How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories I apply much of that to getting to the bottom of why it’s so hard for us, me included, to really absorb the nature of reality.
Easier to read than On the Origin of Species, this book connects Darwin’s overwhelmingly significant explanatory insight to the last fifty years of advance in our understanding of biology, psychology, social science, and the nature of the mind. Dennett is a brilliantly ingenious builder of images and metaphors that really enable you to grasp Darwin’s breakthrough, one at least as important as Newton’s and Einstein’s, but more relevant to understanding the meaning of life.
In Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life Daniel C. Dennett argues that the theory of evolution can demystify the miracles of life without devaluing our most cherished beliefs.
From the moment it first appeared, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection has been controversial: misrepresented, abused, denied and fiercely debated. In this powerful defence of Darwin, Daniel C. Dennett explores every aspect of evolutionary thinking to show why it is so fundamental to our existence, and why it affirms - not threatens - our convictions about the meaning of life.
Our discovery that we are modified monkeys rather than modified mud is a human achievement on a par with a Mozart opera or a Vermeer painting. As a historian and philosopher of science, my lifelong mission has been to see how this knowledge transcends earlier myths about divine creation and opens the way to a far richer and more optimistic vision of human nature, our achievements, and our future possibilities. New knowledge can be terrifying. It can also be exciting and liberating. It is an obligation, a privilege, and a joy to be able to express our full humanity. The authors I shall introduce exemplify this so very much.
From anthropology and archeology, Douglas Fry and his co-contributors tell us that our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, in small bands, on a five-million-year camping trip around the globe. We had to have adaptations for harmonious communal living. Wary of strangers, we would realize that wanting to fight them was stupid. Man the “killer ape” is fiction. Then, 10,000 years ago, came agriculture, with a population explosion producing abundant goods that others would covet. The consequence was war and prejudice and other vile beliefs and behaviors. Ex-Quaker as I am, I have written a book, Why We Hate: The Roots of Human Conflict, appearing in Spring 2021, arguing that, by making the appropriate cultural moves, we can again attain our natural state of cooperation and peaceful living.
Have humans always waged war? Is warring an ancient evolutionary adaptation or a relatively recent behavior-and what does that tell us about human nature? In War, Peace, and Human Nature, editor Douglas P. Fry brings together leading experts in such fields as evolutionary biology, archaeology, anthropology, and primatology to answer fundamental questions about peace, conflict, and human nature in an evolutionary context. The chapters in this book demonstrate that humans clearly have the capacity to make war, but since war is absent in some cultures, it cannot be viewed as a human universal. And counter to frequent presumption the actual…
I can’t help but smile when I read stories about the underdog and the weak rising in strength. The small things that are overlooked are often what is most important, and something in me just itches to watch that tiny mustard seed grow into a powerful entity in its own right. When I started writing in earnest, I didn’t intentionally set my feet along the same paths. Nevertheless, the stories I write have my DNA within them. Though these books vary in genre, I’m excited to recommend them, and I expect that you’ll enjoy them as much as I did.
I found this book to be a fascinating science-fiction pandemic thriller that covers an epic time scale and some really crazy ideas. The writing captured my attention quickly, and I found this story to be an intense read. The plot surfaced moments in my imagination where I couldn’t help but question the likelihood of these events happening in our modern-day world.
I also relate to Christopher Dicken (the protagonist), a virus hunter who makes an unbelievable discovery. His attempts to uncover the truth about human evolution and save his family against what seems like every power on earth felt very real to me. It’s a wild story that has stuck with me over the years, and it’s definitely worth reading again.
Ancient diseases encoded in the DNA of humans wait like sleeping dragons to wake and infect again--or so molecular biologist Kaye Lang believes. And now it looks as if her controversial theory is in fact chilling reality. For Christopher Dicken, a "virus hunter" at the Epidemic Intelligence Service, has pursued an elusive flu-like disease that strikes down expectant mothers and their offspring. Then a major discovery high in the Alps --the preserved bodies of a prehistoric family--reveals a shocking link: something that has slept in our genes for millions of years is waking up.
I was trained in physics and applied mathematics, but my mother—a teacher of literature and history—secured a place for the humanities in my intellectual luggage, and I finally ended up in the social sciences. One of my first encounters with economics was John Nash’s theory of bargaining, illustrating how a wealthy person will gain more from a negotiation than a pauper, thus reinforcing inequality and leading to instability. Decades later, I returned to this problem and found that relatively little had still been done to analyze it. I believe that a combination of mathematical tools and illustrations from history, literature, and philosophy is an appropriate way of approaching the complex of inequality.
This is a rich sourcebook on the emergence of inequality in human prehistory and history.
The authors move effortlessly across cultures from the entire globe, basing their analysis on written records, where possible, or archeological data such as buildings, art, tools, and bones. They confirm my own view that inequality is ubiquitous and that there is a tendency for it to grow over time, irrespective of the environment.
Political or religious elites have always tried to expand their power at the expense of the common man or woman, using myths about divine descent or other means of persuasion, and the majority has more or less successfully resisted such attempts.
For an armchair social scientist like myself, this wealth of data is tremendously valuable.
Our early ancestors lived in small groups and worked actively to preserve social equality. As they created larger societies, however, inequality rose, and by 2500 bce truly egalitarian societies were on the wane. In The Creation of Inequality, Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus demonstrate that this development was not simply the result of population increase, food surplus, or the accumulation of valuables. Instead, inequality resulted from conscious manipulation of the unique social logic that lies at the core of every human group.
A few societies allowed talented and ambitious individuals to rise in prestige while still preventing them from becoming…
I wasn’t always a joyful person. But today I’m freaking sunshine, and full-out committed to being an effective member of the team that’s elevating the level of love and joy in the world! My positions on that team have included writing dozens of mega-selling books (my own, and as a ghostwriter), founding my online Joy School at LisaMcCourt.com, hosting my Do Joy! podcast, and collaborating on projects with many other popular teachers of consciousness and joyful living. My books have sold over 9 million copies, earned 7 publishing industry awards, and garnered over 9,000 glowing Amazon reviews. Joy is my jam. I know a joyful book when I read one!
My books and trainings are all about joy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t geek out on the science behind it all.
I’ve long admired Eldon Taylor’s approach to bridging the gap between spirituality and what is considered hardcore scientific understanding at this current stage of human evolution, and this book addresses a question that underlies all of the work I do.
If more people could release the widespread, ridiculous idea that spiritual concepts (understood and practiced by our far wiser ancestors thousands of years ago) are somehow not as “real” as the other arbitrary, culturally-accepted paradigms they subscribe to, we’d have a far more joyous, compassionate, successful society.
Eldon provides a fact-based bridge for readers to cross in this well-researched book!
A pragmatic case for the rational viability of a spiritual belief in a higher power. [Taylor] makes a compelling case that the scientific worldview--one that sees humans as "meat machines"--is inconsistent with people's experiences of themselves and is not nearly as rationally superior as it is so often presented. This alone makes the author's compact consideration a worthwhile read. A philosophically astute challenge to the rational supremacy of science over its spiritual rivals. Kirkus Reviews
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE ATLANTIC, KIRKUS REVIEWS, AND NEW STATESMAN
A radically immersive exploration of three pivotal moments in the evolution of human consciousness, asking what kinds of creatures humans were, are, and might yet be
How did humans come to be who we are? In his marvelous, eccentric, and widely lauded book Being a Beast, legal scholar, veterinary surgeon, and naturalist extraordinaire Charles Foster set out to understand the consciousness of animal species by living as a badger, otter, fox, deer, and swift. Now, he inhabits three crucial periods of human development to understand…
Garreau’s book highlights the promise and peril of enhancing our minds, our bodies—and what it means to be human.
In this, the 21st Century, AI, cloning, robotics, mind-enhancing drugs, computer chip implants, and bio-engineering pose the stark alternatives of a real-life Utopia or a Brave New World where the very definition of what it means to be human comes into question. Collectively, these scientific breakthroughs will produce “the biggest change in 50,000 to our environment and ourselves as human beings".
Garreau has managed to put these complex concepts into everyday terms and anecdotes that lay people can understand and grasp the consequences of.
Taking us behind the scenes with today’s foremost researchers and pioneers, bestselling author Joel Garreau shows that we are at a turning point in history. At this moment we are engineering the next stage of human evolution. Through advances in genetic, robotic, information, and nanotechnologies, we are altering our minds, our memories, our metabolisms, our personalities, our progeny–and perhaps our very souls. Radical Evolution reveals that the powers of our comic-book superheroes already exist, or are in development in hospitals, labs, and research facilities around the country–from the revved-up reflexes and speed of Spider-Man and Superman, to the enhanced mental…
My father bought this book for me because I write on
marriage and relationships.
I was skeptical that a book about the mating habits
of birds had much relevance to my own work, yet I found Prum’s arguments about
the connections between birds and humans compelling. According to Prum, female
mate selection led to changes in the physical attributes and behaviors of birds
and these changes can provide insights into the evolution of human sexuality as
well.
As a scholar of marriage, I am very familiar with the argument that men
choose partners based on physical attributes while women choose partners for
economic and social reasons. Consequently, it was refreshing to hear that this
difference may be more environmental that innate.
Prum suggests that for much of human
evolutionary history, it was female preferences that mattered and that these
preferences were so strong, they actually changed male bodies. According to…
A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences—what Darwin termed "the taste for the beautiful"—create the extraordinary range of ornament in the animal world.
"A delicious read, both seductive and mutinous.... Minutely detailed, exquisitely observant, deeply informed, and often tenderly sensual."—New York Times Book Review
In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin's theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life: which species thrive, which wither away to extinction, and what features each evolves. But can adaptation by natural selection really account for everything we see in nature? Yale University…
Our discovery that we are modified monkeys rather than modified mud is a human achievement on a par with a Mozart opera or a Vermeer painting. As a historian and philosopher of science, my lifelong mission has been to see how this knowledge transcends earlier myths about divine creation and opens the way to a far richer and more optimistic vision of human nature, our achievements, and our future possibilities. New knowledge can be terrifying. It can also be exciting and liberating. It is an obligation, a privilege, and a joy to be able to express our full humanity. The authors I shall introduce exemplify this so very much.
If you can read only one book on human evolution, this is it. “Lucy,” a fossil Australopithecusafarensis, discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, is the proverbial “missing link.” About three million years old, she had a chimpanzee-size brain, about 400cc (as opposed to modern humans, about 1200cc), and yet walked upright. Told by Don Johanson, one of the team who discovered her, and science writer Martin Edey, the book is informative, serious, and yet at the same time written with a light touch that makes the tale akin to a thriller like Stephen King. It is a thriller. Our great great grandma was not Eve, eating illicit apples, but a modified monkey roaming the plains of Africa.
“A glorious success…The science manages to be as exciting and spellbinding as the juiciest gossip” (San Franscisco Chronicle) in the story of the discovery of “Lucy”—the oldest, best-preserved skeleton of any erect-walking human ancestor ever found.
When Donald Johanson found a partical skeleton, approximately 3.5 million years old, in a remote region of Ethiopia in 1974, a headline-making controversy was launched that continues on today. Bursting with all the suspense and intrigue of a fast paced adventure novel, here is Johanson’s lively account of the extraordinary discovery of “Lucy.” By expounding the controversial change Lucy makes in our view of…
