The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

Product Information

All of recorded history occupies the last ten seconds of December 31; and the time from the waning of the Middle Ages to the present occupies little more than one second. Some of the information may be a little dated, and in retrospect, while he claimed Bronowski a little anthropocentric in his disregard for the significance of chimp signing, sometimes he comes across as all too enthusiastic and seems a little anecdotal in his case for chimp linguistics, although there is no doubt that Washoe did sign in the Gardners' program, which he covers in some detail.

For the lay person, such as myself, there was a bit of (admittedly basic) mathematics which I struggled with for a bit, but it is by no means difficult for somebody who isn't as inept as me. Much to the contrary, I was delighted to hear a history of the study of the brain, taken at its own point in time instead of through the usual look back at what we deem in hindsight to have been relevant from the past. We do our best to provide good quality books for you to read, but there is no escaping the fact that it has been owned and read by someone else previously. The title is derived from his thesis that the innate mammalian fear of reptiles is a genetic endowment left over from a titanic battle. Although I read this book years ago, I have thought of it several times a week since then, as I speculate upon some of the biological causes of human behavior.

Carl Sagan served as the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences and Director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University. Images in the book are all showing the screen dots from where they've been scanned and reprinted in low res. Interestingly enough, Sagan points out that dragon myths aren’t just found in the Western world, but are instead a worldwide phenomenon. But this book, one of his best, shows that he was just as interesting when he focused on man's origins, as opposed to his destination. In a diagram of brain mass versus body mass for primates, mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and dinosaurs, Homo sapiens rank number one while dolphins rank second.

It ends with a firm conviction that the survival of our species depends on education, and shows how the same technologies that threaten our survival can be harnessed to allow children to understand concepts at a young age that were once the purview of accomplished 18th century scientists and mathematicians. Science is just a Latin word for Knowledge is how he chose to envelop the ending of this book and I choose to wrap up this review of mine by expressing my gratitude for, first and foremost, the existence of such a brilliant human being, scientist and the most prolific advocate and proponent for the acquisition and expansion of our knowledge and understanding of the physical world around us.I do believe that he is a bit heavy handed with some of the science, more so than is probably necessary here and making the book feel over-long, but it is generally speaking an interesting book. Among the most memorable of his well-thought out and original theories are: his belief that man's inherent fears of snakes and heights can be traced back to his days as a tree-dwelling primate during which the snake constituted his only natural enemy; his idea that the ogres, elves, goblins, and "little people" that pop up in every culture's myths and fairy tales are genetic memories of a time when man's ancestors shared the earth with other intelligent humanoids; and his speculation that perhaps man is the only primate capable of verbal speech (chimpanzees and other primates are right on the brink, so to speak, as evidenced by their quick grasp of sign language) because his ancestors engaged in genocide against other linguistic humanoids- their primary competition.

Miguel Atwood-Ferguson is a producer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, music director, and educator. But, since I have yet to find that book, I’m giving Sagan a curve and ranking his book a four out of five. Book was listed as 'very good' condition, but when it arrived the cover had stains, creases and folds, and a small tear on one edge. Our brain gives us the ability to think about the future and focus on long-term benefits, but we get a lot of anxiety from it and from thinking about our inevitable end. Even though this book is now out of print, if you can get your hands on a copy, I would say that you are unlikely to regret doing so.Presents an overview of human evolution and discusses human and animal intelligence, the mechanisms of the brain, memory, sleep, myths and legends about evolution, and the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life. He does this by essentially taking the ~14 billion years of time since the Big Bang occurred and scaling it onto a typical 12-month calendar. Sagan achieved worldwide recognition as an advocate for science education with his television series, Cosmos. The question of whether we will one day sail the galaxies, or blow ourselves up in a nuclear shooting match (or make our planet uninhabitable through environmental damage), is one that Sagan asked for the rest of his life. Or does the metaphor of the serpent refer to the use of the aggressive and ritualistic reptilian component of our brain in the further evolution of the neocortex?

One was the experimental demonstration of the synthesis of the energy-carrying molecule ATP (adenosine triphosphate) in primitive-earth experiments. I had no idea that he wrote extensively on the field of evolutionary biology-stimulated by his wife, the biologist Ann Druyan. Since a reptile has been the downfall of man once, it’s possible man stays away from reptiles to avoid another mistake such as the one committed by Eve.Sagan's role in developing the "Cosmos" series, one of the most successful series of any kind to be broadcast on the Public Broadcasting System, and his book The Dragons of Eden (1977) won the Pulitzer Prize in 1978. When scientists began teaching apes to sign, it became clear that our linguistic abilities might have more to do with having the right muscles and anatomy to support vocalizations than it has to do with superior intellectual abilities. Sagan’s discussion of animal intelligence hems uncomfortably close to ethical discussions about the killing of animals that are still so pertinent; what gives us the right to clearly assign personhood to a one-month-old fetus but not to a two-year-old chimpanzee, to have serious qualms about terminating the life of the former while cheerfully ending the life of the latter?