One of the late Carl Sagan’s hallmark qualities was to engage in speculation to a degree that was unusual for a rigorous scientist. While this sometimOne of the late Carl Sagan’s hallmark qualities was to engage in speculation to a degree that was unusual for a rigorous scientist. While this sometimes resulted in largely unnecessary scorn and mockery from his fellow scientists, his honest skepticism combined with his open-mindedness also led to some of the most memorable popular science writing of our times. These qualities are on full display in this fascinating book, written in 1977.
Sagan tackles a topic that is far from his expertise – the evolution of human intelligence – and largely succeeds in presenting highly thought-provoking theses for us to ponder. Much of the book discusses what was then frontier research in neuroscience, but what makes it different are Sagan’s regular speculations.
The book tries to make sense of two important facts about the human brain: our strikingly different cognitive abilities relative to other animals and the interplay between emotion and reason. Sagan is quite upbeat about chimp intelligence and he spends a sizable part of the book talking about experiments that reveal chimps’ prowess in using sign language. He also talks about the mysterious communication used by whales and dolphins that still defies comprehension. Clearly apes can come quite close to using the kind of simple vocabulary that humans do, so why are humans the only ones which actually crossed the language barrier, profiting from breakthrough linguistic inventions like recursive embedding and complex sentence construction? Sagan advances a chilling and all too likely hypothesis, that humans killed off apes who they thought came dangerously close to mimicking their linguistic capabilities. Given how closely language is tied to human intelligence, it then ensured that humans would be the dominant species on the planet; chimps, gorillas and orangutans were presumably saved because they lived deep inside the inaccessible jungle. 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? Coming on the heels of this comparison is Sagan’s commonsense (in my opinion) take on abortion: he tries to reach a compromise by arguing that it should be unethical to kill a human fetus after it develops the first rudiments of a cerebral cortex, presumably the one thing that distinguished humanity from other species. Later work would probably cast some doubt on this assertion, since reptiles have also now been found to possess cortical cells.
This part provides a good segue into the even more interesting part of the book which deals with some fascinating speculations on the reptilian origins of human intelligence. Sagan’s fulcrum for this discussion is a theory by psychiatrist Paul McLean who divided the brain into three parts (the “triune brain”). At the top is the uniquely human cerebral cortex which controls thought, reason and language. The second layer is the limbic system containing structures like the amygdala which modulate emotions like anxiety. The limbic system also includes the basal ganglia and the R complex, an ancient, inherited assembly responsible for instinctive behaviour, including responding to reward and punishment. Finally you have the “neural chassis” which just like a car’s chassis includes structures like the brain stem responsible for basic and primitive functions: breathing, blood flow and balance for instance.
Sagan’s focus is the R complex, part of the “reptilian brain”. It is quite clear that parts of this brain structure are found in reptiles. Reptiles and mammals have an ancient relationship; reptiles originated 500 million years before human beings, so we came into a world that was full of hissing, crawling, terrestrial, arboreal and aquatic reptiles. As Sagan describes, it’s no surprise that many of the world’s foremost civilizations and religions used reptiles as key symbols; from the snake in Eden to the worship of snakes in ancient Egypt to snake symbolism in modern day India, reptiles and human have shared an indelible bond. Reptiles have also often featured as omens in dreams dictating the fates of empires and societies. Some of our reptilian connections raise mundane but fascinating questions; for instance, Sagan wonders whether the shushing sound we make for communicating silence or disapproval is a leftover of the hissing sound of reptiles.
But how does this relationship contribute to our behaviour? It is here that the book takes off from firm ground and starts gently gliding on speculation.
Sagan’s main springboard for investigating the R complex is Roger Sperry’s seminal work in delineating the separate roles of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. As Sperry demonstrated in amazing split-brain studies, the left brain is more logical and analytical while the right is more synthetic imaginative. Sagan’s contention is that the right brain is really the essence of our reptilian origins, helping us fantasize and imagine, and it’s also a key part of what makes us creative human beings. This is most prominent when we are dreaming. Notice that dreams almost never include details of problem solving, instead they feature highly imaginative scenarios, part familiar and part alien that seem to be largely driven by our fears and hopes: are we partly seeing the world through our ancient reptilian neuroanatomy when we are dreaming, then? Are dreams holdovers from a prehistoric world where, because of inadequate shelter and protection, we had to stay alert and awake during the night to engage with snakes and crocodiles on their own terms? And in the ensuing history of civilization, did reptilian anatomy contribute to our achievements in art and music? Sagan believes that we should encourage the operation of our reptilian brain, constantly tempering its excesses with the logical constraints of the left hemisphere. This distinction between right and left brain behaviour also raises very interesting questions regarding whether we can suppress one or another temporarily using drugs and surgery. In fact, it’s likely that that is partly what hallucinogens like LSD do. Here we see Sagan the Renaissance Man, trying to bridge hard scientific thinking with artistic intuition.
With its bold style and engaging language, “The Dragons of Eden” won a Pulitzer Prize. While I was aware of it, I always thought it would be too dated. I now realize that I was wrong and am glad I read it; it has given me plenty of fodder to think about and has prompted me to seek out new research on the topic. The book asks fascinating questions about our kinship with other creatures and about the evolution of our brain, topics that will be of perpetual and consummate interest as long as our species is around....more
Look at everything in your immediate vicinity. The chair you’re sitting on, the screen you’re reading this off of, the few other things you can smell Look at everything in your immediate vicinity. The chair you’re sitting on, the screen you’re reading this off of, the few other things you can smell and touch; this is your here and now. Everything else is inspired and manipulated by dopamine. Even an object that is across the room (one that you can see), the desire to go and pick it up is driven by dopamine, because dopamine is the molecule that allows us to imagine a potential future. It makes you believe that whatever you have at present is not as good as what you could potentially have later. Is the steak you’re eating for dinner right now really that good, or will the pizza you’ve got planned for tomorrow night be better? Have you finally found love, or is there a person even more suitable to you still out there waiting to be met and courted? Is this book review a good one, or will the next book be more interesting?
One of the most intriguing lessons I learned from this book was the connection between dopamine and creativity. Dopamine is the all important chemical for planning things in the future, and creativity is literally the process of imagining something new and creating it, therefore it makes sense that creative people have been found to have larger (or more populous) dopamine receptors in their brains. The world of science is similar. Scientists ask questions, imagine potential futures, and go in search of answers. Scientists have similarly been found to have more dopamine in their brains than the average person. Sometimes this can be a scary thing; how many great artists and scientists from history do we know who have had addictions or compulsions they were perpetually unable to overcome? Picasso and Einstein, both geniuses in their respective fields, are known to have philandered about with a variety of women (despite both being married several times throughout their lives). The line between madness and genius can indeed be a thin one. Nobel Prize winning mathematician John Nash made fundamental contributions to game theory, differential geometry, and economics, and also lived with schizophrenia (he is portrayed by Russell Crowe in the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind based on the book of the same name). There is a story about Nash in which he is asked how he can possibly believe that he is being contacted by aliens, to which he responds: “the ideas I have about supernatural beings come to me the same way that my mathematical ideas do.”
Another interesting anecdote is the idea that almost anything can become addicting if it triggers your dopamine circuits. I experienced this myself one year when I went on four separate multi-day vacations each precisely one month apart. After returning home from the fourth trip, I spent an entire week planning number five until I eventually talked myself out of it. I have personally found it true that any repeated behavior that gives me a positive hit of dopamine can become something that I crave again and again. For some people it’s an injection of heroin, for others it’s getting on an airplane to a vacation destination.
Here’s a question: Does Steven King still enjoy writing scary books? Or is he just chasing another dopamine hit? Do you think Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks still enjoy making movies, or are they simply looking for the rush of excitement they get from the next great script to be sent their way? Does Bob Dylan still get the same satisfaction from performing that he used to? Or is his dopamine drip firmly in control, always pushing him to play another show?
Our authors mirror all of this research with a study done on happiness, in which they found that people were less happy when their mind was wandering. “It didn’t matter what the activity was. Whether they were eating, working, watching TV, or socializing, they were happier if they were paying attention to what they were doing.” Especially with the rise of social media platforms, a lot of time spent mentally wandering is time spent comparing yourself to others who probably have more of what you want (or what you think you want). These platforms, and our cell phones in general, are the most addicting things ever invented—every ping triggers our dopamine receptors. The researchers concluded that “a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.” Living in the moment makes a human happy, as does appreciating what you already have and doing your best not to pine for more. Turns out all of those spiritual gurus really are on to something!
On the one hand, dopamine has made us Homo Sapiens the dominate species on the planet by giving our ancestors “the ability to create tools, invent abstract sciences, and plan far into the future.” We have brought into being a world in which buildings scrape the skies, the internet unites communities across the oceans, and 8 billion humans coexist relatively peacefully. We have achieved wondrous accomplishments thanks to our internal desires for a better and more comfortable life. The question on the other hand, however, is where does it end? Our authors cautious us, noting that “in an environment of plenty in which we have mastered our world and developed sophisticated technology—in a time when more is no longer a matter of survival—dopamine continues to drive us forward, perhaps to our own destruction.”...more
There are three main knocks I have against this book. The first being it's wordiness, the second being lack of references, and the third being lack ofThere are three main knocks I have against this book. The first being it's wordiness, the second being lack of references, and the third being lack of evidence when there might actually be some.
Dawkins addressed the comments of previous editions being too simple in explaining genetics. I am not referring to this type of explanation. I am referring to a different kind of wordiness- For example in the chapter Genesmanship, Dawkins went to great lengths explaining why individuals do not favor others who are not related to them when it is obvious they share some genes. He could have simply stated that one or two genes aren't likely to overpower millions voting to favor someone who is related. As a related note, I wonder why Dawkins never listed examples of exactly how much favoritism kin generally give each other and how much this changes when families are put together that are not blood related, adoptions, marriage with kids from previous partners, etc... Every chapter seemed to be begging for both more real world examples and simpler wording.
The second knock is lack of referencing. I know this is a book explaining a theory, which I give leeway for. But I wanted everything that could be referenced to be referenced. One small example is on page 130 where the author says “one well-authenticated story” but never references this story, shall I Google every bit of this? Lower down on the page Dawkins refers to a “respected authority” that “According to her” disagrees with Dawkins- WHO? It's as if Dawkins believes everyone keeps up on the latest in zoology. In the back of the book there is a bibliography, it does not list page number and I am stuck guessing if the reference listed is the one I am looking for.
The third knock, which in my opinion is the hardest it lack of real world examples. There is much research on how adopted children are treated, and it would have been nice to see a discussion of what happens in cases where a child is switched at birth, but the parents were unaware.
I will end with a recommendation to read the book anyway. This book is readable, and many books on evolution and psychology refer to this one, so for that this book is worth reading. At the end of this book I felt I had a deeper understanding of not just evolution as Dawkins sees it, but evolution as other authors see it. I would recommend this book before reading The Red Queen by Matt Ridley for example. Buy it, read it, but don't expect too much out of it....more
This book is about evolution: it is described as a very large amount of steps of very small improvements. Richard goes into great detail to help us unThis book is about evolution: it is described as a very large amount of steps of very small improvements. Richard goes into great detail to help us understand how it works. I enjoyed reading it as it takes theory a step further and I regret having not read this book years earlier. Richard follows logic if we accept A then it means the following. He also explores the opposite if A isn't true. He (and Darwin) logically rejects evolution as having anything to do with divine intervention because if that is needed to explain any steps in evolution it means the theory is false.
He makes the reader understand that this process is so complex and played at multiple levels - from genes and cells, to species to planetary conditions - and over a time scale that the human mind cannot comprehend. It may seem magical or divine but it really isn't. When reading the chapters about this I had to think about a conversation at the start of Deep Space Nine about time: "What comes before now is not different than what is now or what is to come. It is one's existence". If we were to meet such a being we would not understand this with our human mind. For a human a decade is quite long, on geological time scale 60,000 years is an instant. We look at the animals and plants today and we should realize they are all the outcome of a billion years long evolutionary process.
The fossil record is extremely limited, so we miss many steps and sometimes we aren't even looking in the right area. In Dawkins' view life does not have a meaning - 42 might be the right answer after all. It's interesting as recently I learned about another theory that looked at life as a way to recirculate nutrition - each animal and plant is part of a system. Dawkins would reject that and the system is there because of life. He spent the last chapter debunking 'alternative theories'. In a way it's quite academic but it does show clearly where Richard stands.
Unfortunately he does not know how life started and he postulates some theories that sound the same as how we explain the universe using terms like dark energy and dark matter - it could be true but for now it's not more than an educated guess. I understand that this is still one of the large mysteries of life. As the book was written a few decades ago, some of the examples that Richard uses sounds dated - it does not take anything away from his message, but I can see my daughter for example not being able to understand what he means with a laser disc or a DC-8. If you are religious and have an open mind I would recommend reading it - Dawkins is not against religion in a way that he condemns religious people, it's more that it is not the right explanation for how life is today. There is no Watchmaker at work....more
I had no idea the topics inside the human body were going to be as varied as they are in Cells at Work! volume 2 by Akane Shimizu. The first book was I had no idea the topics inside the human body were going to be as varied as they are in Cells at Work! volume 2 by Akane Shimizu. The first book was mostly respiratory related, with allergies and flu and such. In this volume, though, we get food poisoning, heat stress, and a two-part battle against creepy-looking cancer cells.
The various types of white blood cells continue to be personified with different character quirks. The chapter on food poisoning focuses on an eosinophil, a type of white blood cell useful during allergic reactions and parasitic infections. She wears a pink uniform with pigtails, and her struggle is to be taken seriously.
She tries hard to fight the invading germ, but she’s called puny and weak and has to be saved by the brawnier neutrophil (our friend the white blood cell seen on the cover and in the previous book). Even other cells question her abilities, although she’s determined to keep fighting regardless. The white blood cell knows she has other abilities that make her valuable, but it’s not until we see the stomach lining attacked by a parasite that we see her true worth.
It’s a very manga-typical story — keep trying your best and your skills will be demonstrated! — in a bizarre setting with plenty of violence against exaggerated monsters. The parasite, in particular, is drawn as a huge amoeba-snake-thing. Plus, the explanatory captions keep reminding us of the dangers of eating contaminated seafood, so I won’t be going out for sushi any time soon.
Red blood cell returns in the second chapter, as part of a march through the capillaries in an attempt to better regulate the body’s heat. The area is drawn as a scorched desert, with references to global warming, a timely approach. It’s too humid, and the body isn’t cooling as it should, plus there’s an attack (of course) by a bacterium.
There are a few tips on how to protect oneself in the heat scattered throughout, as well as the usual high drama as the invading germ rants about plans for domination and the white blood cell expresses his determination to never give up, regardless of how futile his struggles (although not really). That’s what’s so amusing about this series, how manga conventions are recast in this new, unusual setting.
That’s seen in a chapter which flashes back to the red blood cell’s early life, showing how blood cells are created in bone marrow. In addition to fleshing out the scientific information, there are a ton of cute kids and babies here and the typical “fated meeting” that’s so common in manga background stories.
The final story ramps up the monsters as cancer cells are drawn as a kind of zombie, but with random limbs exaggerated in ropy, bulbous fashion. Various additional body defenders appear, with the NK cell in particular reminding me of a Lara Croft type. Unlike the guy cells in their full-body uniforms, she’s running around in tank top and shorts, although she’s tough and fierce.
The crowds of cancer cells are packed and ready to move, symbolising metastasis, when cancer spreads throughout the body. These particular ones keep complaining about why they have to die, just because they were born different. It’s a troubling concept that has no real resolution, other than for the immune cells to do their job and wipe them out to keep the body healthy. His last threat, to return if you “keep on being careless with your health!”, is a good reminder to take away from the series.
The author is a neuroscientist and sexologist—the latter a solid, if somewhat outré, speciality—who left academia in despair, feeling herself the victThe author is a neuroscientist and sexologist—the latter a solid, if somewhat outré, speciality—who left academia in despair, feeling herself the victim of antiscientific attacks on her research (brain‐imaging study of paraphilias, sexual orientation, and male hypersexuality). To the point, she was savaged on social media when she contested the idea that young children who expressed to their parents the view that Somebody Up There made a Big Gender Mistake should be allowed to precociously transition to what they think they ought to have been born as. Soh's counsel to parents, children, and physicians was that all this be put up on the shelf to be talked about in a few years. This offended the transgender lobby, whose offence triggered a vigorous defense on the part of the religious right, and you can imagine the rest of the mess. Despite once burned, Soh has not been twice shy, subsequently defending gender conversion therapy if applied according to ethical standards that she proposes, as well as defending the notorious internal Google memo that disparaged women in tech.
Demography has been no stranger to such controversies, typically having to do with eugenics and heritability in one way or another. The field perhaps came closest to the issues discussed here in Richard Udry's research program combining primatology, hormones, and sociology to study the biological limits to the social reconstruction of gender. These are not trivial questions (Udry made it into top journals such as the American Sociological Review), and passions run high. But one of the thoughts provoked by this book is that, for a field well connected to sex, demography talks little about it.
The book consists of the demolition of roughly 10 myths (the author's word). It would take up too much space to enumerate them and summarize the arguments presented. The first one discussed is of perhaps the most direct interest to demographers and gives this journal the opportunity to issue editorial guidance to potential authors. This is the difference between biological sex and gender identity. We at PDR have always applied the rule that, if it is biology, it is sex (e.g., “sex‐specific death rates”); if it is society, it is gender (e.g., “gender roles”). We are in agreement with the author: biological sex is not socially constructed. Our approach may be rough and ready, but it has served us well; we have avoided policy prose embarrassments such as “population by age and gender” and “gender‐specific enrolment rates.” To these, Soh adds the absurdity of an animal's (or a fetus's) gender. Perhaps (this reviewer's idea, not Soh's) the linguistic hypercorrection that promotes “gender” and suppresses “sex” arises from a neo‐Victorian prudery of the sort that that gave turkeys white‐ and dark meat instead of breasts and legs.
Intersex births, by no means rare, are discussed, with the author criticizing early surgical intervention and supporting intersex rights. However, she also protests that the clinical condition has been instrumentalized by advocates to argue that biological sex is a harmonious continuum, a claim she vigorously disputes. Much more than can be summarized in a short review is written about transgender issues. There are niceties which this reviewer had not thought about. In sexology, a transgender female (i.e., born male) who is attracted to men is considered gender‐identity gay; whereas one attracted to women is considered gender‐identity straight. Vice versa for a transgender male. Apply this way of looking at things (essentially two two‐by‐two matrices) to transgender women in the ladies’ room and transgender men in the trenches and you begin to sense the unease that stalks the land.
This is just to scratch the surface, because there are many other gender–sex issues explored; myths debunked, to adopt the author's style. The end of gender is a trade book, not an academic one. However, the journalism is good and the writing style is engaging. ...more
We humans like to think we are something special, that we have qualities no other animal possesses. Many people believe that our emotions are among thWe humans like to think we are something special, that we have qualities no other animal possesses. Many people believe that our emotions are among the things that make us human. Primatologist Frans De Waal used to go along with this prevailing belief, but he has spent many years studying our closest relatives, and he says “More and more I believe that all the emotions we are familiar with can be found one way or another in all mammals, and that the variation is only in the details, elaborations, applications, and intensity.” In Mama’s Last Hug he makes his case for this position, and the result is both fascinating and convincing.
De Waal says that modern emotion research puts too much stress on language, and that is part of the problem. We humans don’t use language to recognize and respond to emotions of other humans in our daily lives; we observe; and DeWaal uses observation as his scientific tool to argue engagingly, but also convincingly, in favor of a rich emotional life for animals other than humans.
He won me over in Chapter 1 with a description of a moving reunion between Mama, a 59-year-old chimpanzee who was on her deathbed, and 80-year-old Jan van Hooff, who had been De Waal’s dissertation advisor and who had worked with Mama for many years. If you are skeptical of De Waal’s description, the reunion video is available on YouTube, and to me there is no doubt about Mama’s genuine joy at seeing her old friend.
If DeWaal’s wonderful anecdotes do not convince you, consider his credentials. How often do you read a book by an IgNobel Prize winner? For those of you not familiar with the Ig Nobel prizes, they have been awarded annually since 1991 (on the Harvard campus but not by Harvard) to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." The paper that won the Ig Nobel for De Waal was called “Faces and Behinds”, and it was a study in which his team learned that apes have a “whole-body” image of familiar individuals and could even pick out individuals they knew from pictures of that ape’s derriere.
My first reaction, of course, was to laugh, but then I had to recognize that this was clever work that tells me something rather impressive about apes.
I had more laughs, some more sad moments, and a lot of thoughtful moments throughout the book. Do read it; I am confident that you will come away with a greater feeling of kinship with all the creatures, great and small....more
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