The Ape that Understood the Universe

Author: Steve Stewart-Williams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108776035
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
The Ape that Understood the Universe is the story of the strangest animal in the world: the human animal. It opens with a question: How would an alien scientist view our species? What would it make of our sex differences, our sexual behavior, our altruistic tendencies, and our culture? The book tackles these issues by drawing on two major schools of thought: evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory. The guiding assumption is that humans are animals, and that like all animals, we evolved to pass on our genes. At some point, however, we also evolved the capacity for culture - and from that moment, culture began evolving in its own right. This transformed us from a mere ape into an ape capable of reshaping the planet, travelling to other worlds, and understanding the vast universe of which we're but a tiny, fleeting fragment. Featuring a new foreword by Michael Shermer.

The Ape that Understood the Universe

Author: Steve Stewart-Williams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108425046
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 381

Book Description
Uses evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory to explain the mysteries of the human mind to an alien scientist.

The Ape that Understood the Universe

Author: Steve Stewart-Williams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108577520
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 382

Book Description
The Ape that Understood the Universe is the story of the strangest animal in the world: the human animal. It opens with a question: How would an alien scientist view our species? What would it make of our sex differences, our sexual behavior, our child-rearing patterns, our moral codes, our religions, our languages, and science? The book tackles these issues by drawing on ideas from two major schools of thought: evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory. The guiding assumption is that humans are animals, and that like all animals, we evolved to pass on our genes. At some point, however, we also evolved the capacity for culture - and from that moment, culture began evolving in its own right. This transformed us from a mere ape into an ape capable of reshaping the planet, travelling to other worlds, and understanding the vast universe of which we're but a tiny, fleeting fragment.

Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life

Author: Steve Stewart-Williams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139490990
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
If you accept evolutionary theory, can you also believe in God? Are human beings superior to other animals, or is this just a human prejudice? Does Darwin have implications for heated issues like euthanasia and animal rights? Does evolution tell us the purpose of life, or does it imply that life has no ultimate purpose? Does evolution tell us what is morally right and wrong, or does it imply that ultimately 'nothing' is right or wrong? In this fascinating and intriguing book, Steve Stewart-Williams addresses these and other fundamental philosophical questions raised by evolutionary theory and the exciting new field of evolutionary psychology. Drawing on biology, psychology and philosophy, he argues that Darwinian science supports a view of a godless universe devoid of ultimate purpose or moral structure, but that we can still live a good life and a happy life within the confines of this view.

Artificial Intimacy

Author: Rob Brooks
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231553854
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 387

Book Description
What happens when the human brain, which evolved over eons, collides with twenty-first-century technology? Machines can now push psychological buttons, stimulating and sometimes exploiting the ways people make friends, gossip with neighbors, and grow intimate with lovers. Sex robots present the humanoid face of this technological revolution—yet although it is easy to gawk at their uncanniness, more familiar technologies based in artificial intelligence and virtual reality are insinuating themselves into human interactions. Digital lovers, virtual friends, and algorithmic matchmakers help us manage our feelings in a world of cognitive overload. Will these machines, fueled by masses of user data and powered by algorithms that learn all the time, transform the quality of human life? Artificial Intimacy offers an innovative perspective on the possibilities of the present and near future. The evolutionary biologist Rob Brooks explores the latest research on intimacy and desire to consider the interaction of new technologies and fundamental human behaviors. He details how existing artificial intelligences can already learn and exploit human social needs—and are getting better at what they do. Brooks combines an understanding of core human traits from evolutionary biology with analysis of how cultural, economic, and technological contexts shape the ways people express them. Beyond the technology, he asks what the implications of artificial intimacy will be for how we understand ourselves.

Almost Everyone's Guide to Science

Author: John Gribbin
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300084603
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
Discusses the major issues in science, including the structure of particles within the atom, origins of species, and the birth of the universe.

Evolutionary Psychology

Author: Lance Workman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107044642
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 565

Book Description
Third edition of the classic undergraduate psychology textbook, entirely updated to combine traditional and cutting-edge research and additional pedagogical features.

My Universe

Author: Sophie R Yu
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781696989619
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 70

Book Description
Journey across a medley of memories and through pages of caressing, gentle words, as eleven-year-old Sophie guides the reader through her universe of original poetry. Breathe in deeply, and dive in! (Special note: Net proceeds from sale of this book will be donated to the Emery/Weiner School.)

Last Ape Standing

Author: Chip Walter
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802778917
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
Over the past 150 years scientists have discovered evidence that at least twenty-seven species of humans evolved on planet Earth. These weren't simply variations on apes, but upright-walking humans who lived side by side, competing, cooperating, sometimes even mating with our direct ancestors. Why did the line of ancient humans who eventually evolved into us survive when the others were shown the evolutionary door? Chip Walter draws on new scientific discoveries to tell the fascinating tale of how our survival was linked to our ancestors being born more prematurely than others, having uniquely long and rich childhoods, evolving a new kind of mind that made us resourceful and emotionally complex; how our highly social nature increased our odds of survival; and why we became self aware in ways that no other animal seems to be. Last Ape Standing also profiles the mysterious "others" who evolved with us-the Neanderthals of Europe, the "Hobbits" of Indonesia, the Denisovans of Siberia and the just-discovered Red Deer Cave people of China who died off a mere eleven thousand years ago. Last Ape Standing is evocative science writing at its best-a witty, engaging and accessible story that explores the evolutionary events that molded us into the remarkably unique creatures we are; an investigation of why we do, feel, and think the things we do as a species, and as people-good and bad, ingenious and cunning, heroic and conflicted.

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Author: Milan Kundera
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063290693
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
"An absolutely dazzling entertainment. . . . Arousing on every level—political, erotic, intellectual, and above all, humorous." —Newsweek "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting calls itself a novel, although it is part fairy tale, part literary criticism, part political tract, part musicology, and part autobiography. It can call itself whatever it wants to, because the whole is genius." —New York Times Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed, and experienced.