Why Humans Prevail

[rug]

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
By Yuval Noah Harari (Harper)

April 6, 2015
By Marlene Zuk and Michael L. Wilson

Remember Jared Diamond’s 1997 best seller Guns, Germs and Steel (W.W. Norton)? Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, an international publishing phenomenon now in English translation, is a lot like it, but without the weaponry, disease, or metals. It is audacious in its reach, perhaps even more so than Diamond’s attempt to explain the predominance of Western society. Harari’s goal is to explain nothing less than the predominance, and the character, of humanity itself.

While Diamond focused on the material, Harari, a historian at Hebrew University, points to the role of the imaginary in humanity’s success. It was only when people agreed to hold common myths — whether about money, gods, or limited-liability laws — that he sees humans becoming fundamentally different from other animals.

Reading Sapiens is like looking at one of those pictures that, when viewed from a distance, is clearly a portrait of, say, Lincoln, but when viewed closer turns out to be a mosaic of thousands of other tiny images. But look closely at the tiny images and many of them are just a bit off — a horse with six legs, or George Washington wearing a cocktail dress. The big picture is compelling, admirably composed by making connections among disparate topics, but some details, from the role of mutation in speciation to the timing of the cognitive revolution, reveal misunderstandings or outdated views.

The first part of the book dwells on human exceptionalism, and the ways that people are not like other species, or even much like our early human ancestors. Such comparisons often become self-fulfilling, not to mention self-congratulatory: People possess Characteristic A, which other animals do not, which must mean that Characteristic A is not only key to being human but also laudable. In Sapiens’ case, the characteristics are sometimes flimsy. For example, although Harari correctly nods to the influence of both genes and the environment on all behaviors, he also claims that "in a given environment, animals of the same species will tend to behave in a similar way," whereas humans are all different. In the case of the honeybee, "its DNA programs the necessary behaviors for whatever role it will fulfill in life." But anyone observing animals, whether insects or apes, will soon see far more variation than they expected. We all tend to see more minute variations in those most resembling us.

http://chronicle.com/article/Book-Review-Why-Humans/229025/

[guillaumeb]

1. the role of the imaginary?

So sentient, self aware beings are capable of visualization? I never would have imagined that. Wait, does that make me an evolutionary throwback, an example of devolution in action?

[LongTomH]

2. Excellent post! Please consider cross-posting to Good Reads!

[rug]

5. Done.

http://election.democraticunderground.com/1016119388

[Cartoonist]

3. Spare me

What a load of BS in trying to justify God. What makes man different from animals is science. The ability to make weapons and tools out of metal. The ability to raise crops. The ability to measure the seasons. God was as worthless to man then as he is now. When confronting a beast, the knife he held in his hand would give him a chance. His prayer to God wouldn't work that well.

[rug]

4. Speaking of BS . . . .

[cbayer]

6. As in "Spare me the details?". While the reviewer discusses the role of religion, he never, ever

talks in a way that would be "justifying god". In fact, he discusses religion as belonging to the realm of imagination, myth and even fiction.

You really might consider reading the article before commenting on it.

[TM99]

7. Did you ever stop to consider that

man's imagination is what devised not only religion but also science, tools, etc?

Edison would take cat naps and keep himself from going into anything more than a light dreaming sleep in order to tap into that imaginative mental process.

Ever read about the discovery of the double helix? Yeah, another one of those pesky imaginative events.

[AtheistCrusader]

17. "Thomas Edison: Inventor or Patent Thief?"

http://www.studymode.com/essays/Thomas-Edison-Inventor-Or-Patent-Thief-1890873.html

Though, like Edison, I run on about 1.5-3h of sleep per night.

[bvf]

8. Notice how lively the traffic on the x-post in Good Reads is?

[cbayer]

9. What's your point?

Good reads is a group that gets a fair amount of traffic but not a lot of discussion.

What did you think of the article?

[bvf]

10. "What makes humans different from animals?"

Yeah, that sounds like great woo fodder.

Do you have any pets?

[cbayer]

11. Did you read the article or is your response solely a reaction to the headline?

It's a pretty interesting look at the development of homo sapiens and why we have diverged so far from our closest relatives.

Is that what you consider woo?

I have no pets at this time, though I have many friends with pets. You?

[bvf]

12. Of course I read the article.

Do your friends' pets believe in god?

[cbayer]

13. So,what did you think of the article? What part of it do you think is woo?

The article doesn't address the issue of god at all, so I'm a little skeptical about how thoroughly you may have read it.

I'm thinking you really don't have much to say about it.

[bvf]

15. Heh.

No less than eight mentions of religion in the piece, at least one of god, and even a mention of the author of the original work putting Nazis in the atheist camp.

Lots of words I can think of to describe your reply, but any honest one would surely elicit an alert.

[bvf]

16. Opposable thumbs are a gift from god.

Didn't you know that?

Tell some people that, and they'll wholeheartedly agree. Then you've got 'em in your pocket.

[Jim__]

14. Sounds like an interesting book.

Here's an excerpt from an interview with Harari in Haaretz:

...

You believe that we are not talented enough to cope with everything we have created.

“Without a doubt. It’s much bigger than us. We release tremendous forces and foment amazing revolutions, but no one has a clue where it’s going. Take the Industrial Revolution, which shaped the world over the past 200 years. That is no more than a collection of small, specific decisions ? let’s say, to take a steam engine that pumped water in a coal mine and use it to move a train. Or today’s genetic engineering ? its future impact on the world is beyond our understanding. Our consciousness is sufficient to create the change, but insufficient to understand its implications.

...

Effectively, we are monkeys who succeeded in obtaining the keys to the universe.

Yes. It is a truly astonishing story. You look across 4 billion years of evolution and you don’t see anything that even approaches it. Where life is concerned, there are only two points on a cosmic axis of time: There is the appearance of life, 4 billion years ago, and there is us, at the point we are arriving at today, with the ability to engineer life. For a billion years life developed on the basis of the logic of natural selection. Suddenly we have changed the disc.

...