How Did We Get To Be So Different?
The Secrets of Life: From Big Bang to Trump
1st Edition
Published on 31. March 2023
261 pages
978-1-83978-605-1 (ISBN)
Description
How is it we humans only arrived after 99.995% of the time there's been life on earth - and yet we're now so dominant? If mutations take generations to have an effect, how did we manage to change so completely in just a blink in time? And why were our rulers and societies always so horrible - yet we endlessly put up with them?Book One of The Secrets of Life quartet began the long narrative of existence by showing how the forces that Big Bang unleashed drove the Earth's evolutionary developments, and how it after 3.8 billion years of life and the extinction of many billions of species, our obscure forest-dwelling ancestors emerged in East Africa. Yet what, Book Two asks, were the steps that led to us humans becoming so totally different to anything that had appeared before? If we really were just another kind of animal off the production line of life, then what were the revolutions that turbo-charged our unique abilities?How did we evolve so that we could alter ourselves in an instant, and avoid being stuck in an evolutionary niche like every other organism? How did we manage to create the intelligence and insights that allowed us to make our own decisions in life? And where did the free will come from that would let us override the drives of our animal pasts? We alone of all the world's species have ever been able to predict the future, and then change our behaviour so that it suited our ambitions. But how did we grow our brains and imaginations so greatly that we could achieve this? And only we have evolved the capacity to reject the genetic instructions that shaped us. But why do we think this helps - and how has it affected our lives? Now, using the same easy-going conversational style of the other books in the series, O'Connor answers these and other questions to explain how we evolved to break away from everything that had existed before us. And yet why the effects of our heritage so often still emerge in how we exist.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Bishopstone
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Sea View Media
File size
5,30 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-83978-605-1 (9781839786051)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Content
- Intro
- Cover
- Copyright
- Title Page
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chapter One: After 3.8 billion years of life on earth we've finally got to an interesting bit, a species that we can all understand. us! But if humans are so special, where did we come from? And why have we changed so utterly in such a short period? Anthropologists and evolutionary biologists talk about the revolutions that made us. But what are they?
- Chapter Two: These early homo species were making progress. But how did the next great revolution make our brains grow to three times the size they'd originally been?
- Chapter Three: Few people would argue with the idea that language was what set humans apart from other organisms. It's man's unique attribute, and acquiring it changed everything. But how did it come about? And what were the changes that arrived with this third revolution that meant we could now think and plan?
- Chapter Four: So we're living in communities, hunting, foraging and even travelling. Basic language has taken root. but what were we using it for? And why do the answers to this question matter so much to us now?
- Chapter Five: If the brain is in a constant process of neuroplastic change, then how did we ever create the rules that underpin our societies - both in those early days and now? Did certain beliefs just become so powerful that we all ended up agreeing to them?
- Chapter Six: How was mankind ever going to progress if the big man was always squashing any new ideas? It was time for the fourth revolution and, as usual, it was the little man that discovered it. The breakthrough was to be a human version of 1+1=3, but this time cooperation was going to become effective with people outside the colony.
- Chapter Seven: Is trading between humans so very different from the specialisation and exchange of assets that one sees in the natural world? Non-human 'trading' occurs as symbiotic relationships, and they clearly evolved to suit both parties. But did we invent an entirely new version of this when we did the same sort of thing?
- Chapter Eight: Most people would agree that getting things you wanted by dealing with cooperative people had to make life easier - but why has this skill become so important to us? Why is the development of specialisation and exchange now reckoned to have been one of mankind's key revolutions?
- Chapter Nine: Sizeable societies were soon to emerge with mankind's fifth revolution - the birth of agriculture. And with this came a huge expansion in skills, hierarchies, trading, cooperation and social structures as people found they could grow their food rather than have to hunt for it. For the first time ever, an animal was now able to control its environment... us.
- Chapter Ten: How were people going to find ways of establishing trust in societies that had now grown so large that it was impossible to know everyone? The answer came with the sixth revolution - the use of outsourced trust with the invention of things like numbers, writing and money. It was time for the 'brain outside the brain.'
- Chapter Eleven: Writing and recording certainly helped people overcome the trust barrier in larger societies - and this led to far greater scope for specialisation and exchange. But it also led to repressive hierarchies and stratified social orders. Yes, there might have been winners, but there were also masses of downtrodden losers. So what happened next?
- Chapter Twelve: Aggressive warfare? How could anything so destructive and nihilistic have ever contributed to human progress? Surely it would have stopped non-zero activities in their tracks? What possible benefits could ever emerge from it?
- Chapter Thirteen: So, what strategies seemed to win in the sweep of the human story - and why? And how did the many attempts to resolve the hostilities inherent in social symbioses drive our progress? Were we ever able to say whether things were working or failing. or even if they were 'good' or 'bad'?
- Chapter Fourteen: It was time for the seventh revolution -something that would blow the world apart by altering the balance of human symbioses. It looked like a minor technical advance... but it was to lead to the knowledge revolution, and with it a complete rebalancing of how societies worked
- Chapter Fifeteen: If mass printing was indeed to be such an agent of change, then what was the change - and where would it lead?
- Chapter Sixteen: The argument that the acquisition of knowledge should be listed as our seventh great revolution is based on the belief that it allowed people to influence the relationship between the ruled and their rulers. The old model for the symbioses in human societies was over. But what was to take its place?
- Chapter Seventeen: If humans were able to use their collective genius to come up with better symbiotic relationships between the different interests in society - then what was it going to be? And how would arriving at this process avoid chaotic upheavals?
- Acknowledgements
- Picture credits
