by Edward O Wilson
Well written lay science book that argues that socialization was a major driving force of evolution that resulted in human intelligence growing rapidly. Wilson is an expert on social insects and uses that basis to extrapolate how humans are uniquely eusocial among the primates.
Some choice quotes:
- After the decline of logical positivism in the middle of the twentieth century, and the attempt of this movement to blend science and logic into a closed system, professional philosophers dispersed in an intellectual diaspora. They emigrated into the more tractable disciplines not yet colonized by science -- intellectual history, semantics, logic, foundational mathematics, ethics, theology, and most lucratively, problems of personal life adjustment. [p.9]
- We [humans] are an evolutionary chimera, living on intelligence steered by the demands of animal instinct. This is the reason we are mindlessly dismantling the biosphere and, with it, our own prospects for permanent existence. [p.13]
- The origin of eusociality, in which organisms behave in the opposite manner, has been rare in the history of life because group selection must be exceptionally powerful to relax the grip of individual selection. [p.55]
- Surely all will agree: [I don't agree!] a clear definition of human nature is the key to understanding the human condition as a whole. [p.191]
- [67 social behaviors from Human Relations Area Files by George P. Murdock (1945)]
- age grading
- athletic sports
- bodily adornment
- calendar
- cleanliness training
- community organization
- cooking
- cooperative labor
- cosmology
- courtship
- dancing
- decorative art
- divination
- division of labor
- dream interpretation
- education
- eschatology
- ethics
- ethnobotany
- etiquette
- faith healing
- family feasting
- fire making
- folklore
- food taboos
- funeral rites
- games
- gestures
- gift giving
- government
- greetings
- hair styles
- hospitality
- housing
- hygiene
- incest taboos
- inheritance rules
- joking
- kin groups
- kinship nomenclature
- language
- law
- luck supertitions
- magic
- marriage
- mealtimes
- medicine
- obstetrics
- penal sanctions
- personal names
- population policy
- postnatal care
- pregnancy usages
- property rights
- propitiation of supernatural beings
- puberty customs
- religious ritual
- residence rules
- sexual restrictions
- soul concepts
- status differentiation
- surgery
- tool making
- trade
- visiting
- weather control
- weaving
The final chapter on the future disappoints, devolving into what I would say are unsupportable personal opinions of the author. Wilson claims (as "justified by scientific evidence") that humans will never emigrate from Earth into space. While it might be so that it isn't rational to do so, my opinion is there are plenty of people driven to try so it will happen - and science will have little to do with the decision. Early attempts might prove futile, but people will keep trying and I would think eventually succeed (with technology we can't even imagine today). Wilson also deems it (without basis in my view) unlikely we are the first life form to venture off planet - based on why no signs of "ET" have been found - instead suggesting that other advanced lifeforms "just grew up" and decided not to explore distant regions of the galaxy.
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